Posted on 12/16/2014 12:33:39 PM PST by YeahBuddy
The Jackie Robinson West sluggers from Chicago’s struggling South Side became national celebrities this summer when they hit and pitched their way to the Little League World Series and took home the U.S title.
But now the adults who put together the team — parents, coaches and league administrators — face allegations they violated Little League residency rules by stacking the lineup with All-Star ringers from the suburbs to create a “super team” that became champs. http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20141216/morgan-park/jackie-robinson-west-broke-residency-rules-suburban-league-claims
(Excerpt) Read more at dnainfo.com ...
It’s amazing how the media always want to portray poor ghetto black kids as being so superior to suburban and rural white kids. This story so fits their constant narrative that they’ll obviously ignore any repercussions of any cheating.
Media: kids’ residency important
Media: presidential residency at birth unimportant
Hmmm. Appears my sarcasam tag was erased by a naughty moderator. Darn.
I'm sure if you did a rectal exam of ALL the regional finalists you would likely see the same violations.....Same thing for all the international finalists..........
There's very little integrity in sports anymore and that includes our Little League......
As a side note, when I was in my last year of little league as a 12 year old in the small town I grew up in in northern Michigan, I was chosen as a 3rd baseman for the league's all star team......
We won our first game then lost the second and that was the end of it. There is no way that the best players of our league at that time could come close to the little league all star players of today.
For the kids today, it is all organized with coaching from as young as 7 years old. There is no such thing as neighborhood "pick up" ball where a few kids get together and go out to the playground and play "flies and grounders" or "500" or two kids playing "fastpitch" with a rubber ball on the school wall......
I'm a senior now and play senior softball with like minded fanatics. We play pick-up ball all year around with the weather permitting here in S.E. Michigan.
It doesn't matter how many guys show up, we have a format for every possibility. 10, 12 guys, we have batting practice. 14, 16 and more, we play right field out. It doesn't matter the numbers out there, what matters is that we're just out there playing.........
You NEVER see kids doing that anymore...........and that's sad.
Same here in northeastern NJ; no pick-up baseball or stickball games (though we have plenty of 40-on-40 soccer games of mixed ages).
Seeing the lineups before Major League baseball games today, there doesn’t seem to be many Americans playing anymore. Years ago “black leaders” bemoaned the lack of black American players (Sammy Sosa & co. apparently didn’t count - they are “Hispanics”); now you could say the same about white Americans.
Ah... yes. The “select” teams.
Thank you for clarifying for me.
No, no. I understood.
"Pinson was so quiet that spring that coach Jimmy Dykes believed he was Hispanic. Dykes spoke to him in gestures and broken English until Pinson finally said, 'Mr. Dykes, if there is something you want me to do with my stance, please tell me.' Dykes nearly fell over."
Shame on the ADULTS!
But the kids did nothing wrong. Thye played some terrific baseball.
I suspect it's because the majority of the American players come from the college ranks and have potential educational "careers" to fall back on if they don't make the majors.
The foreigners from the S. American countries have nothing to fall back on if they don't make the majors. For them, baseball has been their entire lives............They either make it or they return to their poverty stricken countries doing whatever wannabe baseball players do........
We still have a lot of kids playing baseball in our community, and I coached my boys’ teams and was on the league board for several years. There are some differences between youth baseball today and what I played with Fall Creek Little League back in the 1960s.
Back then, you played in the house leagues, either “majors,” “intermediate” or “minors.” At the end of the house league playoffs in late June, they announced the “All Star Team,” which would go on the path to Williamsport. It was always the best players from the “majors.” And that was it, the season was done. Did we play some pick up ball after that? Not really. Being Hoosiers, we went straight to may friend’s concrete basketball court in his back yard.
In our local league today, they still have the house league, but immediately select out the top kids (or the ones with the political connections to board members) to travel, and they start practice in March and play through late August. They can then play Fall Ball through October. Kids also had the option of being recruited by “rogue” or “elite” travel teams even as young as age 8. They are more or less semi-professional players for all intents and purposes.
So it has become much more competitive at the top end. My older son had the talent to play on those travel teams (he had the wheels and could drive the ball a long way into either gap), but neither he nor I wanted him to play 100 games a year and give up every day to the game. And I saw a lot of kids who tried it put up their gloves and bats in disgust at age 14 because they were just plain burned out.
However, the neighborhood kids did go play “home run derby” at the park a few block over. My son even got the cops called on them by a guy who lived in the house beyond the center field fence. He didn’t like my son hitting balls off his roof.
That’s funny; for the longest time Mariano Rivera of the Yankees didn’t give interviews because he was learning English (he got the hang of it in time for retirement).
“500”
Wow. I haven’t heard that in 50 years. In fact, I don’t really remember it. It was what the big kids did.
There’s nothing sadder than passing a rusted out backstop. Especially if there’s a soccer field there.
When I played rec league summer baseball back in the sixties, it seemed like most of best players ended up playing for one of the city’s biggest and most prominent employers/sponsors. Year in and year out. The teams were supposedly picked at random, but it didn’t turn out that way.
are you familiar with the baseball diamonds around Chicago? Ever see the one just south of North Ave by Clybourn? Deepest outfield fence in the world.
Because there was a big age disparity among the neighborhood kids when we played hard ball, the pitcher usually just lobbed the ball to the batter. So when I started playing rec league ball, I had a difficult time hitting the fast pitching which I never saw in neighborhood sandlot games. And we never got to practice either against fast pitching in rec league ball. We just showed up for games.
The summer after we started playing wiffle ball seriously, I hit the heck out of the ball in rec league. I'd never been a strong rec league hitter before that. Constant repetition helped enormously. I would bet those kids who played stickball against school walls were also good hitters. I played that a few times, and it was a lot of fun.
Here’s a breakdown of racial demographics for MLB 1947-2012. I thought it was pretty interesting.
http://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/baseball-demographics-1947-2012
Freegards
Kinda sad really and it brings some tears to my eyes......
We also played "fast pitch". That only required two kids and we would chalk a square on the school wall which was the strike zone. Behind the pitcher was the fence since it was likely the driveway behind the school.
Using a rubber ball, the pitcher would throw and if it hit the strike zone then it was a strike. If the batter hit the ball on the ground and the pitcher caught it then it was an out.
If the batter hit it on the ground past the pitcher then it was a single. If the batter hit the ball on a line drive past the pitcher then it was a double If the batter hit the ball over the pitcher's head and hit the fence then it was a triple. If the batter hit the ball over the fence then it was a home run.......
It didn't matter how many kids showed up to play, mostly 6, 7 or 8, we had rules governing every situation and just played baseball all day long.......LOL!
The only complaints our parents had during those times was coming home for lunch and getting home before the street lights came on..........
up until 10 years ago when I was 40 my buddy and I, who grew up with guys who played league (hard) ball all the time all over, would go to fields in Chicago by ourselves or with another guy and workout.
Sack full of 30 balls, a fungo and 3 wood bats. Throw 60-70 BP (no catcher), then do groundballs, then fungo for outfield. After 2 hours or more you’d be dead tired but it felt great. Chicago had a great field to play on by Comiskey, IIT College Field.
Gorgeous field and we probably were not allowed to play but we did and we left the dirt around the plate in good shape. The field I mentioned in an earlier post was closer to us, Cabrini Green area but you had to climb and 8 foot fence.
I got the chance to do this again this year a few times here in MO in our town’d field. Felt great. I could still hit the league ball with wood too.
My same buddy who is 49 years old still plays in a Men’s Semi Pro Wood Bat League in Chicago. He can hit and he says that the ex college guys have a devil of a time using wood instead of their former hyper expensive new tech bats. Put wood in their hands and its foreign to them.
I love wood bats and the sound when a ball comes off the bat. It is sad how everyday kids pickup baseball games played in the summer is a thing of the past.
“He didn’t like my son hitting balls off his roof.”
Almost all my neighborhood friends were decent, respectful kids EXCEPT that we did the same thing to a poor guy across the street from my friend. His house was the Green Monster.
Looking back I feel bad. We were using a tennis ball though.
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