Prison for Coach Who Got Child to Hit Another

A youth baseball coach convicted of offering money to a child to bean an autistic teammate so he couldn’t play was sentenced in Uniontown to one to six years in prison.

Mark R. Downs Jr., 29, was convicted by a jury in September of corruption of minors and criminal solicitation to commit simple assault.

Authorities said Downs offered to pay the 8-year-old player $25 to hit the 9-year-old mildly autistic teammate with a ball during warm-ups for a June 2005 playoff game. The younger boy testified that, on Downs’ instructions, he purposely threw a ball that hit his teammate in the groin, then threw another ball that hit him in the ear.