Letters to the Editor
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Little League World Series
An exercise in futility. No 12 year old should have to link their self worth to hitting a pitch which looks like a 105mph big league fastball. That's when I had enough.
Did you just open up the barn door for Bonds comments?
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As a former LL sponsor and coach
And having listened to parents tell their kids to bean other players from the mound, I have to say that the 'fun' of LL has been missing for a while. Ever since LL teams required parents to become full time fund raisers and leagues were designed around single all-start teams that got to cherry pick their own competition in order to move through the regional tournaments faster.
Even seen a 12 year old kid with a 'scoped knee? I have. Ever wondered about the medical necessity of some pre teen needing hormone therapy 'to manage his growth spurt'? I have.
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It's not about participation
When I was a kid, I could never understand why the local Little League season ended at the end of June when there was still two perfectly good months of summer left for playing ball. Now I realize that LL isn't about encouraging kids to play ball, but rather about finding a handful of players from each town for it's tournament, because that's where the money is. The rest of the kids who want to play, the ones who aren't stars by age 12, can go to hell for all LL is concerned.
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LLWS
Let me start by saying that I find baseball boring and no fun to begin with. But I enjoy the LLWS precisely because the kids seem to be playing for the fun of it. There are plenty of smiles and hi-5s when they make a great play or hit a home run. I like to see the teams from other countries compete on a more level playing field with US teams, altho I think they should mix them in pool play instead of making US and international brackets.
Sure there are parents who are overboard and ESPN has to turn everything into a human interest melodrama. But they do that with everything they show these days. The coaches have to be on their best behavior because they are mic'd up. And Brent Musberger is still insufferable and painful to listen to. And they showed the same 4 commercials over and over and over. It's cool to watch those guys play baseball-tennis once or twice but I don't need to see it every half inning.
But for the most part the kids in this tournament are pretty good players and the level of defense is generally quite good.
It must also be a generational thing, but I found it heart-warming in a way to see these 12 year old boys openly expressing their joy and affection for each other. Maybe that will go away the older they get but I don't think I've ever seen so much hugging among boys as that Georgia team displayed. And they seemed to have genuine empathy while consoling and hugging the Japanese players right after the championship game. It gave me an odd sort of hope for the future and that is saying something for a cynic like me.
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DX
It was a 104 degrees here last week. That's why.
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Just how do they pick those Japanese players anyway?
I remember, at the beginning of the game, the announcers who said that Japanese delegation included their future "allstars" for next years game, who came at their own expense. Now, I seem to remember that allstars were selected at the end of the season, not at the end of the previous season. Not that the Japanese are alone in gaming the system....
I think the "fun" of watching the LLWS came to an end when that pitcher from the Bronx turned out to be a few years older than stated. You always had suspicions about the Taiwanese and Korean teams having older players, and then you had the underdog ghetto team win it all with at least one older player - there's just no joy in watching anymore.
I agree with one of the writers - the season is too slanted towards allstars - let the season end later - it's a summer sport, and if vacation gets in the way of all players not being there, well, that's the reason the roster contains 12 players - develop and play them all.
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As a one-season little league parent...
I found the kids to be great.
It's the parents who were obnoxious. I mean... these are my neighbors out here in burbland... I see them volunteering at the elementary school, putting on neighborhood garage sales, washing their cars, and so on.
Put them in a lawn chair at the side of a field watching a bunch of second graders playing baseball, and they turn into an entirely different animal. All of a sudden, they know every kid on the team. They "cheer" for their kids, but it sounds an awful lot like yelling at the kids to me. They get all their pent-up burbland emotions out on their sleeves for a bunch of second graders. The kids... some of them are actually interested in baseball, some are building sand castles in the infield. That's ok, they're kids.
Lucky for me, my son and daughter decided that baseball wasn't their thing. We tried it. Fine by me... there are plenty of sports/activities that they can participate in that don't seem to have quite the level of parental angst involved as baseball.
And... unlike the kids in the LLWS, I'm proud to say that mine still have time to do things like build stuff with Legos, read books, stare at the sky, and participate in sports at a reasonable level. Kinda nice.
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Anybody vs Roberto Clemente
As I said last week...
Where is the stat: player didn't try to go from first to third on a single to right field cause he knew he'd be thrown out by 5 feet?
The same stat doesn't exist for players who didn't try to tag up on a fly ball to right field from second to third or third to home...
And Sid Bream still scored from second base on Barry Bonds' arm.
Truth is, there are so many elements to what constitutes the best that can't be measured by statistics that all we really have is our own eyes to determine who is or was best. If you saw Roberto Clemente play, you know he was the best... if you didn't, you might think Ichiro, Bonds or anyone else you've seen highlights of is better.