Over the past several years, there has been an explosion of articles, sites, tweets, and blog posts about the negative impact parents are having on youth sports across the country. As adults involved in youth athletics, many of us can attest to the outrageous behavior we have observed from other adults in youth athletics. “Daddyball” has become a pejorative used to disparage teams or whole programs. Despite this, we believe the majority parents are motivated by a genuine love for their children and generally do not view their children as potential college or professional athletes, but rather are just looking for an enjoyable, healthy experience for their child. With regard to the role of parents in youth baseball, we think there are two separate but related issues to address: parents as fans and parents as coaches. We’ll try to address each separately.