Little League exploits players and should vanish from the sports landscape

Redmond resident Josh Benaloh will not allow his 7-year-old son Steven to play baseball for the Redmond West Little League team because the Little League organization's pledge begins with the words "I trust in God."

Benaloh, an agnostic, said he did not feel comfortable in the organization. He should not feel comfortable, nor should parents of the other 2.6 million American children who play Little League, and religious affiliation is only one of the reasons why.

Little League harms participants and youth baseball itself, and it should disappear like the career of an 11-year-old who destroys his arm throwing a curveball.

Many coaches and parents involved in Little League care about only one goal - winning. This often acts to the detriment of the players' health. More than 40 percent of pitchers ages 9 to 12 suffered elbow injuries that threatened the growth plate, according to a 1999 study published in The Physician and Sportsmedicine journal. Many coaches and parents force 11- and 12-year-old pitchers to throw curveballs, despite the study's finding that this pitch can be unsafe for pitchers younger than 13 because of the difficult mechanics players must master to throw it.

While pitchers are subject to excessive physical risk, all players face the possibility of incurring psychological damage from adults who take games too seriously. Many young athletes in all sports are not able to enjoy the game because of coaches who are too concerned with winning or parents who attempt to live vicariously through their children.

The pro-like atmosphere of Little League exacerbates these problems. ESPN and ABC televise the Little League World Series, the organization's championship event. This type of exposure puts too much pressure on children who are, at best, in their first year of junior high school.

The most reprehensible part of the World Series, however, is the fact that organizers seek to profit from the games. ESPN and ABC paid Little League more than $7 million to broadcast the games, and companies such as Russell Athletic have run advertisements featuring Little League players, according to an Aug. 19, 2003 article on ESPN.com.

Despite this gross exploitation of children, sports provide children with important lessons, and some argue that removing one of the most successful youth sports organizations in existence would be counterproductive.

They are partially correct. Little League does teach children values - the wrong ones. Children should continue to play baseball, just not in the Little League organization.

Instead of fair play and confidence, Little League seems to preach a win-at-all-costs philosophy. Benaloh may be right to feel uncomfortable about the organization's religious pledge, but his complaint is just a drop in the sea of exploitation that is Little League.

Well....I went to see what the "westernfrontonline" is, and where this is taking place....Redmond, Oregon? Redmond, Washington?? Redmond, ?????.....and, then, I found THIS....which makes me think it's a socialist front in the western US.....

Bush should nix use of terror victims in ads

by Rob Morrell
March 09, 2004

President George W. Bush's latest television spots have reduced the already debaucherous art of campaign advertising into unadulterated political vulgarity. The ads feature footage of the smoldering ruins left from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and identify Bush as the choice for "steady leadership in times of change."

The obscenity of these shameless promotions should finally convince Americans that Bush is a rabid egomaniac who will go to any extreme to win another four years as the president.

Bush's cheap exploitation of those horrifying scenes offended the International Association of Firefighters Union. According to a March 4 article in The New York Times, the union passed a resolution calling on Bush to discontinue the ads. The resolution also asked Bush to apologize to the families of firefighters killed on 9/11 for demeaning the memory of their loved ones and attempting to curry support for his reelection.

By offending firefighters - heroic people who lost their lives in attempts to save others that day - Bush has abandoned whatever compassion he initially had in his draconian brand of conservatism. One of the ads depicted a crew of workers carrying a casket covered with an American flag, indicating that Bush sees nothing wrong with using a scene of gut-wrenching loss and sadness as a campaign spot. His overwhelming drive for power and reelection seem more important than the tenets of common decency.

To notice a pattern of Bush's manipulative public relations moves, one needs only to remember when he appeared on television touring a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in the midst of the Iraq war. Bush, who allegedly managed to stay out of the cockpit during his brief stint in the Air National Guard, was fully clad in flight gear and looked ready to track down some "bogies."

The scene looked like a surreal alternate ending to "Top Gun" but was an obvious attempt to boost the president's sagging approval rating.

In another March 4 article in The Times, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the ads did not misuse the memories of the attacks but rather illustrated the continuing necessity of the president's hard-line stance against terror.

"It is vital to our future that we learn what September 11 taught us," he said. "The president's steady leadership is vital to how we wage the war on terrorism."

One of the only lessons that Sept. 11 and the ongoing war on terror taught Americans was that their president is a hopelessly inept man, incapable of understanding the complicated world of foreign policy and willing to convert any tragedy into a political photo opportunity.

Now, with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., clearly emerging as Bush's competitor, the president is once again seeking to politically profit from tragedy. The families of those who died in the terrorist attacks do not deserve to see what could be their loved ones' remains being carried out of the burning World Trade Center just so that Bush can scare people into voting for him and his aggressive military stance.

These ads do not serve as reminders of Bush's supposed "steady leadership" but rather underscore the fact that the upcoming presidential election should be a time of change. It should be a time for changing presidents.

The real problem that the libs have with Little League is that there's no hiding that some of the kids can play better than others.

The liberal "accomplishment" of doing away with legitimate competition in as many areas as possible won't work in Little League because they still keep score and kids have to earn positions on their teams by having better skills - natural and/or developed - than other kids. Libs can't stand this because they think everyone should be the same, of course averaged by the lowest common denominator.

Of course there are lots of human problems in Little League as there is in every area of life, but Little League Inc. is an excellent organization with reasonable regulations and, from my experience, with good people in Williamsport who put the kids first.

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