Man Headed to Jail After Attacking His Son’s Coach

The father of a Northridge Little League player was sentenced to 45 days in jail Thursday for attacking and threatening to kill his son’s coach--all because his son was only allowed to play three innings of a six-inning game in April, prosecutors said.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Robert Schuit also sentenced Granada Hills resident Mitchell Craig Gluckman, 49, to six months of anger management sessions and three years of probation after a jury found him guilty of one count of battery.

Schuit also ordered Gluckman to stay away from the coach and the Northridge Little League complex, and to refrain from “any verbal dispute at any sporting event.”

League officials said Gluckman had a long history of verbal confrontations at Northridge Little League functions before the attack.

“This isn’t a brand-new situation for Mitch Gluckman, at least as far as conflict with other people around the Little League goes,” said league president Lee Benson. “He was acting way beyond what most parents do.”

Gluckman, who is 5 feet 8 and weighs 300 pounds, had once been banned from attending league games, several years ago. And last year, the league restricted him to watching from the stands as a result of “overly aggressive” conversations with his son’s coach and other league officials, Benson said.

On the Saturday afternoon of April 15, Gluckman showed up at the complex to pick up his 11-year-old son and approached Kirk West, the 48-year-old manager of his son’s team, the Northridge Tigers.

According to prosecutors and witnesses, Gluckman threw his son’s jersey in the coach’s face and slammed him against a truck. “He said, ‘How dare you make my son a three-inning player,’ ” West said.

Gluckman, a part-time city parks employee who said he also coaches softball at Granada Hills High, acknowledged that he lost his temper.

“I told him I would kill him, [and that] my son would kill his son. I said a lot of bad things.”

But Gluckman said he was making hollow threats and doesn’t belong in jail.

West, who has spent 17 years as a youth sports coach and referee, disagreed. He said aggressive behavior from parents is on the rise and needs to be addressed.

“When you put on the stripes or the coach’s hat, we’re trying to teach them more than just baseball,” he said. “It’s a lesson in life. When an adult takes it into his own hands to go beyond that, it’s just not right. Now maybe some guy’s going to think twice before he acts like a lunatic on a Little League field.”

Benson and West both stressed that Gluckman is the exception to the rule at the normally mellow Northridge Little League. But youth sports experts around the country have grown increasingly concerned about the degeneration of manners and morals among parent fans in recent months in the wake of a number of highly publicized violent incidents.

In July, a dispute between fathers at a kids’ hockey game led to a fight that left one man dead in Reading, Mass. A few weeks earlier, a Little League coach punched an umpire in Davie, Fla., breaking his jaw.

Deputy City Atty. Jina Kim, who prosecuted Gluckman, said sentences in such cases need to send a strong message. She said she had originally asked that Gluckman be banned from attending any of his kids’ sporting events.

“I think there are a lot of parents who live vicariously through their kids, but it becomes a problem when their actions lead to violence,” she said. “This guy obviously went overboard.”

Gluckman, a single parent raising two children, is to begin serving his jail time March 12. He said Judge Schuit offered to let him sign up for a work furlough, which would allow him to work during the day and serve in jail at night. But he would have to pay a fee to participate in the program, and Gluckman said he was not sure he could afford it.

Friends and even Little League board members have offered Gluckman’s children a place to stay while their father serves his time.

Gluckman said he confronted the coach after being frustrated by what he perceived as league officials’ efforts to force him out of the league.

And though he admits that what he did was wrong, he still can’t believe it has come to this.

“I always stuck up for my kids,” said Gluckman. “I didn’t always do it the right way. I’m a loud guy.”

The Northridge Little League gained national attention in 1994, when its 11- and 12-year-old all-star team won the national Little League championship months after the Northridge earthquake, earning them the nickname “The Earthquake Kids.”

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Times research librarian Ron Weaver contributed to this story.