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There have always been "dirty" coaches. These are the types that encourage their players to do more than just mentally intimidate the other team, but actually go so far as to injure them. For the most part it's accepted, especially in full contact sports like lacrosse and football. The soccer-fairies notwithstanding, you expect a lot less deliberate injuries in other sports like basketball and baseball. They happen, yes, but it's generally not anything like hockey where blood is part of the institution.

Kiddie leagues are also not without their dastardly types, although it's not too often you hear news about a teammate being asked to take out one of their own. The case in point is one little league coach that offered to pay one of his team $25 for beaning the autistic boy on the team, ostensibly to keep him off the field.

Before I continue with my opinion on this topic, I'd like to remind the reader where they are - consider it a public service announcement or "station identification". This is World of Suck, where our opinions are, usually, slightly off color.

But back to the story: Coach offers kid money to bean teammate, kid gets thwacked with a few balls but nothing serious, people find out, case goes to court and the coach is slapped with 1 to 6 years in jail.

Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering $25 to an 8-year-old boy to hit his mildly autistic teammate with a ball while warming up before a June 2005 playoff game. The younger boy testified at trial that, on Downs' instructions, he purposely threw a ball that hit his teammate in the groin, then threw another that hit him in the ear.

Of all the things I have an issue with it's offering the teammate money. To be honest I have a problem with the whole "everyone needs to be equal" bullshit. Realistically the parents of the autistic kid should have had the common sense not to force their child onto other people. Following that, I'm sorry, sidelining ineffective members so the team can win isn't really all that bad in my book. It's happened for years and fifty years ago, the autistic kid never would have been let on the team to begin with.

The better way to handle the situation would have been for the parents to keep their kid out for the high-pressure game, and if not, the coach should have asked them to. If that wasn't an option he should have talked to the kid and asked him to sit out for the good of the team, and then in the last resort talk to the team about minimizing the weak link by having the rest of them play harder.

I don't outright condone his asking a teammate to take him out with a ball, but then again in the grand scheme of things he was only trying to do what was best for the whole team after being saddled with an ineffective player. And yes, money should never have entered into it.

But one to six years? I don't think so.