Pitcher’s Father on a Losing Streak

Thank heaven for small favors. At least Marc Martinez and John Emme dueled each other with lawsuits and not pistols. There was never the suggestion of parent-coach violence that has reared its ugly head elsewhere in this civilized land of ours.

Just parent-coach absurdity.

You’d think two professionals dedicated to public service -- Emme is a teacher-coach and Martinez an emergency room doctor -- would have ended this nonsense long ago. But on they slogged until Thursday, when an Orange County jury awarded Emme $700,000 in his defamation-and-slander suit against Martinez, the father of a former baseball player under Emme at Corona del Mar High School.

From my seat in the bleachers, the greater responsibility for this kookiness fell squarely on Martinez. To cut through the legalese, he thought his son had major-college chops as a pitcher, and Coach Emme did not. The two men quarreled over how to maximize J.D.’s potential, and Martinez eventually took his complaints to the school district and then to Superior Court.

At every step of the way, Martinez lost. That tended to caricaturize him as the parent with totally unrealistic ideas about a child’s ability. Martinez certainly didn’t invent the caricature; he just seemed insistent on perfecting it.

Emme, obviously fed up, fired back with his lawsuit, saying in so many words that Martinez’s unproven and discredited accusations damaged his reputation.

It’s not hard to see why he’d be miffed. But Emme could have just walked away. I’m not sure how Martinez’s tossed-out-of-court accusations could hurt anyone’s reputation -- except his own -- but Emme rolled the dice and won the kind of payday Martinez hoped his son might someday get.

If the verdict doesn’t kill Martinez, the irony might.

To show you how crazy this squabble is, here’s how Emme’s lawsuit describes J.D. Martinez, now 21, as a high school pitcher:

“He used several different pitches that included a curve ball, change-up and a fastball that topped out at approximately 78 mph. In order to be effective, J.D. needed to use his off-speed pitches and rely upon strategic control to make up for his lack of an overpowering fastball.”

I’ve read dozens of legal briefs over the years but never one that doubled as a scouting report. Couldn’t the parties take a step back and see how ridiculous this is?

Of course, high school coaches have mishandled players. Of course, overzealous parents had inflated opinions of their child’s athletic talent. The coach-parent dynamic, especially in these days when college and pro careers mean big bucks, always has the potential for conflict.

But the Martinez/Emme legal battle has gone to ridiculous extremes, like an extra-inning game still going on at 2 in the morning. It now is four years since Martinez first formally complained to Corona del Mar officials. It has gotten so nutty that Martinez, according to Emme’s lawsuit, once asked the school district to prevent Emme from discussing J.D.’s potential with college recruiters. Not to be outdone, Emme refers to Martinez’s “pathological obsession” regarding his son’s ability.

This would be merely tongue-clucking stuff if it weren’t for the specter of anger and violence that hangs over the American sporting scene. That it happens relatively rarely is only partly reassuring; that high school sports generates coach-parent violence at all is what’s troubling.

It was just three years ago that a Massachusetts man received a 6- to 10-year prison sentence for beating a youth hockey coach to death after a practice. At the time, the head of a national organization said parental violence was on the rise at youth sporting events.

The kindling is always there.

Oh, by the way. On Thursday, Martinez’s attorney indicated he’d appeal the verdict.

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.