Coach Lets High School Baseball Team Name His Baby, and the Kids Took the Repsonsibility Very Seriously

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(Via GIphy)

Letting people name one’s child as the stakes in a bet is practically asking for trouble. There’s practically no way it can end well. In The League, there’s a whole plot line where one guy puts the name of his upcoming baby on the line in his fantasy football league, and he winds up with a kid named Chalupa Batman. (OK, the name is vetoed to “Christopher,” but everyone calls him Chalupa Batman.) So you’d think it would be a terrible idea and nobody would really go through with it, especially not by offering naming rights to a team of high school kids, but recently one high school baseball coach did that, and it’s pretty adorable how seriously the kids took the responsibility.

According to SheKnows, coach Rob Querry told his team–the Heritage High School Panthers from Palm Bay, Florida–that if they won the season they could name the baby he was expecting. Honestly, it probably seemed like a pretty safe bet, because the Panthers have never won a single season, ever.

They won this one though! As of Tuesday the team officially won its season, and the boys on the team technically won the right to name the baby, and their choice is really pretty sweet. I expected them to name the baby Panther, or Snapchat or something, but the kids suggested Benjamin Smalls Querry instead.

Benjamin and Smalls both come from the main characters of The Sandlot: Scotty Smalls and Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez. I didn’t know kids today even watched The Sandlot, but the baseball-themed coming-of-age movie appears to have made a big impact on the Panthers.

Letting a bunch of high school kids name one’s baby is a risky proposition, but this whole situation turned out really cute. Instead of being glib or snarky, the boys picked a meaningful name that also sounds like a completely decent name for an adult human being. The Sandlot writer and director heard about the bet and was so touched that he showed up Tuesday to watch the kids win the season.

Coach Querry’s wife, Julia, appears to be totally down with the results of the bet, too.

 

Now someone just needs to make a meaningful coming-of-age movie about this story, and we’ll be all set.

If we’re not getting that movie, though, at least we can enjoy The Toast’s script for “The Divorce-Themed Sandlot Sequel That Wendy Pfeffercorn Deserves.”

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