Don't sugarcoat it: Jackie Robinson West is not the champion

chicago trib ^ | 2-13-15 | Huppke

[doug from upland]

If you care at all about the players on the Jackie Robinson West Little League team, don’t call them champions.

They aren’t. Wednesday’s announcement by Little League International that the team has been stripped of its U.S. title and all its wins from the 2014 Little League World Series tournament is all the proof you need.

These are not champions. To say otherwise is a disservice to these kids, and they’ve already been handed a disservice big enough to last a lifetime.

So don’t say, “It’s OK, kids, you’re still champions in our eyes.” Don’t say, “We don’t care, you guys still won it all.”

Tell them the truth, and don’t sugarcoat a bit of it.

Tell them they’re not champions because, according to a lengthy Little League International investigation, the adults that the young players trusted to lead them to a title “knowingly violated Little League International rules and regulations by placing players on their team who did not qualify to play because they lived outside the team’s boundaries.”

[zwerni]

The real racism is how many white kids or Hispanic kids or Asian kids did they gloss over and didn’t have an opportunity to try out because of the color of their skin?? They were on a quest to make history as an all black team... That should be investigated.

[ronnie raygun]

The lawyer representing claims there were other teams that did the same so we can only guess this is racist