Winning at all costs?

[Michelle]

By JOSE MARTINEZ

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

How's this for wanting to win at all costs?

A Pennsylvania youth baseball coach was busted yesterday for allegedly

paying off a player to bean an 8-year-old autistic teammate in the head, police

said.

Mark Downs was accused of slipping $25 to one of his players for clocking a

teammate with a baseball, knocking him out of a youth league game in North

Union Township, Pa.

"The league rules are that each kid has to participate for at least three

innings," said Pennsylvania State Trooper Brian Burden. "Obviously, he didn't

want this kid to play."

The alleged attack took place before a June 27 game between teams of

8-year-olds. Downs, the head coach of the Falcons, allegedly offered the payoff

because he didn't want an underwhelming performance by the autistic boy.

Downs was hit with several charges, including solicitation to commit simple

assault and corruption of minors.

But league President Eric Forsythe defended Downs as a good coach, and said

the autistic boy wasn't badly hurt, even though he was sidelined after being

struck in the ear.

"There wasn't a bruise, there wasn't a bump," Forsythe told the Daily News.

"There wasn't nothing."

After the game, Forsythe said, all the players - including the injured boy -

went for ice cream.

Forsythe said he was stunned when the mother of the boy who hurled the

baseball told him her son had accepted a bonus for throwing at a teammate.

"I said to her, 'You gotta be kidding,'" Forsythe said. "It sounds

ludicrous, but you never know."

Forsythe said Downs denied putting a bounty on his own player. He said he

had not received any complaints about Downs, but added: "If it happened,

something needs to be done to this man."

_http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/328589p-280762c.html_

(http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/328589p-280762c.html)