The weekend of June 7, I attended a youth softball tournament in North Liberty and unexpectedly, it became a vivid metaphor for contemporary American culture. It wasn’t a collegiate game, nor a high-stakes high school matchup. These were nine-year-olds—children—playing at what I’ve since learned is called 10U fastpitch. But you wouldn’t know it from the spectacle surrounding them.

What struck me first was the sheer magnitude of the event. A sprawling sports complex buzzed with hundreds of families, each clustered around separate diamonds like tribes encamped around tiny battlegrounds. Many had been there since dawn. The economy was humming—but not for anything essential. It was humming for children’s softball.

The players were clad head-to-toe in elite athletic gear: black eye stripes, matching team jerseys, Nike cleats, Under Armour backpacks, Easton bats, and Rawlings gloves, brand names paraded like status badges.

By the time we arrived, it was the third game of the day for these girls. The dugouts were full. The parents were lined up along the fences like rival political factions, each deeply invested, each analyzing every play with the fervor of partisan pundits. We were barely seated before we heard how unfairly the games were going, how poorly the umpires had officiated, how other teams had skirted rules or been given unearned advantages. It felt less like sport and more like a proxy war for adult frustrations.

The game played on, and as someone not deeply familiar with softball, even I could sense the disarray. Confused players missed or reversed calls, confrontations between coaches’ parents and umpires. At times it felt chaotic, like the rules were being written mid-play—fluid, exploitable, bendable for those loud enough or connected enough to take advantage.

But it all came to a head in a moment I won’t forget.

A new pitcher, a small girl with a blond ponytail and neatly tucked jersey stepped onto the mound to relieve her teammate. She warmed up and faced her first batter. The pitch was thrown. The crack of the bat rang out, sending a line drive screaming back toward the mound, hitting her square in the face. She slouched then dropped to the ground.

Thank God for face masks.

The ball had slammed her so hard and even with protection, she crumpled to the dirt. Yet the coaches from the opposing team were already waving their runners forward, windmilling their arms like generals urging troops into battle. “Keep going!” they shouted. The umpire, shockingly, allowed it. The bases had been loaded. One run crossed the plate. Then another. Then another.

All the while, the little girl lay sobbing on the mound.

I heard one parent scream, “Stop the game!” Others joined in, their voices rising above chaos. My own voice joined them “STOP THE GAME!” just as one coach and what I can only assume was the girl’s father sprinted onto the field.

Only then did the play finally stop.

Stunned, I later looked up the rules. At the 10U level, a direct hit to the pitcher’s head by a batted ball is supposed to result in a dead ball. The play should stop immediately. The runners return. The batter redoes the pitch. The girl is checked for injury. Safety is prioritized. That’s the rule. And yet in that moment, rules bent under pressure, under the weight of competition, of ambition, of ego.

I haven’t been able to shake the scene.

That game wasn’t just about softball. It was a reflection, maybe even a parody, of where we are as a culture. We reward the optics of success, even if it comes at the cost of compassion. We chase victory so feverishly that we ignore the cries at our feet. We’ve traded in the joy of play for the grind of performance. And our children? They’re growing up thinking this is what life is, a relentless contest for validation, visibility, and dominance.

When did recreation become another rat race? When did our children’s games become so entangled with our adult insecurities and ambitions? Who benefits when competition outweighs compassion?

It’s not just about softball. It’s about everything: how we work, how we vote, how we scroll, how we measure our worth. We’ve created a culture where even a game can become a proxy for status, where winning matters more than wellness, where the show must go on even when someone is lying in the dirt, crying.

We need to ask ourselves, are we still teaching our kids to play? Or are we only showing them how to perform?

There are places though few, where play is still sacred. In parts of Europe, adventure playgrounds invite children to engage with risk, creativity, and collaboration using little more than scrap wood, old tires, and their imaginations. These environments have no referees, no scores, no shiny uniforms. Just the raw, messy joy of discovery. The kind of play that teaches resilience, empathy, and independence.

Likewise, a stream in the woods or a tree to climb offers the same invitation: explore, create, fall down, get back up. These are the spaces where childhood thrives. No pressure, no scoreboard, no performance.

Maybe we don’t need more tournaments and sports complexes. Maybe we just need to remember what it means to let our kids be kids.