Our seventh commandment of a Christian Baseball Parent is to model and teach good sportsmanship. One of the things I have seen missing in sports in general over the past few years is sportsmanship and baseball is no exception. Too many times I have witnessed parents cheering against another player from a rival team. There is no excuse or reason for us to ever cheer against someone. I want to win as bad as anyone, but not at the expense of cheering an error or a bad plate appearance.

Sportsmanship begins at the core of our faith in Christ. Did not Jesus teach us to love one another and to treat others as we would want to be treated? We must take our faith to the stands as we watch and use our faith in teaching moments to teach our players the importance of sportsmanship. We cannot be guilty of setting a bad example to our players. Educators and coaches are not the greatest teachers in the lives of our children, it is us as parents. We must look for ways to model good sportsmanship and encourage the same behavior in our players.

How can we do this? If a player from another team makes a good play or gets a good hit, acknowledge that in a positive manner. It is just fine to compliment a great play from the opposition. It is important for us to model and to teach humility in winning and graciousness in losing. Our task is to show winning isn’t everything, but giving our best effort is everything. Good sportsmanship comes from good character and that is molded from an early age by us as parents.

Let’s take a good look at ourselves and our actions as we watch our children play the game. Are we modeling Christ like behavior? If we are then we are well on the way to modeling and teaching good sportsmanship! Blessings!

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