From the source I was talking with, this is a fairly common occurence when I think about it. Virtually every Little League has that kind of a-hole coach that wants to win and live vicariously through the kids.
Besides, this was a rec league team. Sure they were kicking the crap out of teams in Canal Winchester, but that is a small town. This team would be destroyed in Pickerington or Reynoldsburg by their common teams, i.e. drafted teams, and probably most of the rest of Columbus as well.
Nailhead, hammer, bang!
I came back to this thread today to say precisely what you have said so well.
No community needs a Steinbrenner in their kids league but virtually every one has one.
The first time I coached a kid's team I was 19. I was year out of high school when I bumped into the fine gentleman who was head basketball and baseball coach and assistant football coach at my alma mater. He cared about kids!
Our kid baseball teams were organized around grade school districts. Coach K told me that the district adjacent to the one I grew up in couldn't seem to come up with a coach, and would I be willing?
Well, as is very often the case, in the group of enthusiastic kids that greeted me there was one lad that was endowed with skills far above the level of his peers. You know the kind, I'm sure. Well, I decided instantly that he would be our Pitcher/Shortstop.
A couple of weeks later practices were going pretty well and Jimmy C. was turning out to be a good leader as well as a sterling performer. Then one evening he came to me after practice.
"Mr. C, I have something I have to tell you. My birthday is four days past eligible for the league."
What I thought was, "Oh, dang Jimmy, I wish you would have kept that to yourself!" ;o)
But I swallowed hard and said, "Jimmy I'm proud of you for coming forward like this". We're not a big town and I continued to run into him and we were friends for years afterward.
We wouldn't have been a great team with Jimmy, and we proceeded to pretty consistently take our lumps without him. Then, about mid-season, a team from a few districts way approached me for a scrimmage game, and I thought why not, we need all the practice we can get. ;o)
Well, long story a little shorter we beat 'em and my kids were ecstatic. They got a taste of victory and loved it! They bugged me the rest of the season for practice games with "G.P." school. I was happy to comply and we won enough of 'em to make the boys first exposure to competitive play a more pleasant memory.
Kid sports should be about building pleasant memories and life long relationships. But, as you point out, there are unfortuantely those few a-holes who will never get it.