Back in the early days of baseball, amateur teams, teams that weren’t professional big city ball clubs, that played out in the country, small towns, or any such back and beyond baseball fields were said to play in the “Bush Leagues.” It was a descriptive phrase, or noun (all my English teachers pat yourself on the back you penetrated my skull), that simply meant anything other than professional level baseball teams.

This origin of the term wasn’t meant to be derogatory but soon shifted from a noun to an adjective (go ahead pat yourselves on the back again) and took on a new meaning, a derogatory meaning, that was used in and out of baseball as a reference to something or someone of low quality that is lacking professionalism (think Ponzi Scheme in the corporate world).

Nowadays, we use the term in baseball when other bush league synonyms (one more pat on the back) we would like to use might get us tossed out of a game for not being very lady like. More accurately, we yell the term (rather than “use” it) at an opposing player or more likely a coach for being an unsavory jerk (synonym). It goes without saying, but I’ll say it, you don’t want to be referred to as “Bush League” in baseball or any other arena of dealings with human folk.

I played for a coach in college one season (for some reason he didn’t last long) that loved to run a variety of trick plays. Plays that were designed to outwardly deceive opposing players and get them out in what many of my teammates and myself felt to be an unsavory manner. We hated running the plays as we didn’t think they were very sporting and knew that they were considered bush league.

We would often times accidently-on-purpose “missed” the coaches signal (mutiny on the bush league seas) to put one of his trick plays into action to save ourselves the embarrassment of having the insult of “bush league” hurled our way by the opposition and all goodly baseball folk from the bush to the big cities.

Winning by embarrassing another player through trickery is not winning in my book (I don’t actually have a book so don’t ask for it in your local bookstore). If you win or gain an advantage in this manner the baseball gods will surely frown upon you and karmic misfortune will most certainly track you down and bounce a baseball into your groin at the most inopportune moment (see “Bernie Madoff”). I don’t like to have baseball’s bounced into my groin and as far as I know there is no “opportune” moment for such a ghastly event to occur.

Coaches that employ bush league tactics and teach them to the players under their charge defend their less than sporting ways by claiming that winning is what matters most and you should try and win at all costs. These are not coaches I want my son to play for. I want my son, and all kids for that matter, to have the opportunity to play for coaches that teach respect for their opponents and respect for the game. Those are teachings that will foster character and sportsmanship. Useful and desirable attributes on and off the field.

Thankfully my son has had the opportunity to play for such coaches and will be better because of it…win or lose.