ESPN.com reports that Mark R. Downs Jr., a Pennsylvania tee-ball coach, was convicted of corruption of minors and criminal solicitation to commit simple assault, after he allegedly offered to pay one of his players $25 to hit a 9-year-old autistic teammate with a ball while warming up before a June 2005 playoff game, so the challenged child could not play.  Downs actually avoided more serious charges, because the jury felt the autistic boy did not suffer serious enough bodily harm.

To all readers: this IS serious.  Let’s run through this quick.  A guy is in the playoffs, coaching a team of 9-year-olds, and decides that a mentally and physically challenged player on his team is holding back the performance of the team as a whole.  Subsequently, he decides this game is important enough to him that he would rather purposely injure a mentally and physically challenged 9-year-old than say, “Whatever happens, happens.  After all, it’s only 9-year-olds that want to have fun.”  Anyone else think this guy is a shoe-in for Hell?  I don’t know if he was planning on going there, but he just got bumped to the front of the line. 

As a sidenote, I’m glad to see that the citizens of our country are thinking clearly too.  I mean, the jury sat down and looked at this case and essentially thought to themselves, “Well, the kid wasn’t injured THAT badly.  Let’s not give this guy a hard time, we’ve all been in the position where we wanted to bean an autistic kid to win a 9-year-old tee-ball playoff game.”  Classy.  Good times.