Little League Screws Things Up Even More

I like the idea of no 13 year olds.  From age 12 to age 13, or one grade/class to the next, there can be a tremendous amount of growth both physically and athletically.

 

I love Little League Baseball.  I also love travel baseball at that age.  It is all great IMO.  Not sure how anyone can love baseball and dislike Little League.  Perfection doesn't exist at any level of baseball.  Those that promote the game should be applauded and Little League might promote the game as well as anyone.

 

I once saw a 6'2 12 year old pitching and he topped out at 84 mph.  This was in travel baseball, but even at that, I was genuinely worried about the little kids he was facing.  They were unable to react to his pitches.  One of the first things I thought of was, what would this look like on television if he were in the LLWS.  What would 84 mph translate to comparing it to normal distance?  Anyway, he was pretty much impossible to hit and extremely dangerous IMO.  I did hear that he also was on the 15U team, but they put him on this team for a tournament.

I believe it was Sidd Finch's kid.

I was told that Dylan Bundy also threw in that range at 12-13 years old. As an 8th grader he was upper 80s.

It's not LL that is screwing things up. It's parents who think the future for their child is in him making to the pros. Therefore we have the explosion of travel baseball which kills the joy of playing the game a lot earlier. I've watched travel ball player, after travel ball player quit playing because they are burnt out. I can tell you from our LL the 12 boys who left at 11 year olds to play travel full time only three are still playing.

 

Personally, I liked the fact that my son didn't advance to the regular size diamond and game until he was 13. At 11 and 12 years old boys are just learning how to throw not pitch. They don't need all the distraction of a runner on base. They need to learn how to pitch and this is the perfect time to do it. Then at 13 open the game up to more.

 

I think LL has done things right. Protecting the players and giving them a chance to develop. Travel is killing baseball in younger kids because if you don't have the funds your kid will not be playing.

 

For what its worth, travel baseball below age 13 is ludicrous and a huge waste of money. The only people making out are the ones holding the tournament organizers.

 

 

 

I greatly enjoyed LL baseball with my two sons and, more importantly, they did as well.  Also enjoyed, and still do enjoy, travel ball with my youngest.  Things I liked about LL.  1. Closed bases for youth pitchers.  Let the 9 year old pitcher focus on trying to pitch without worrying about the batter on first stealing. (Not sure what the ideal age is for open bases.)  2. Team and community spirit and friendships. (Not to say that does not happen with travel ball as well.)  Meeting the same kids and parents at the same fields during the week and on weekends is something the whole family enjoyed and it was convenient to do so.  3.  LL allows for the full range of players, in terms of talent, experience, and level of committment to find a place to play and hopefully learn to love the game.

The overall popularity of any sport, at any level, can have its up and downs for any number of reasons. A strong case can be made that it is the casual fan of a sport or the fan that has an interest only because they currently know someone in the sport (at any level) that helps drive the popularity of the sport. Which is the same as saying the creation of the "causal fan" can indeed be at least part of the life blood of a sport or one of the driving forces to help the sport reach as high as it possibly can. Naturally this casual fan my be around for the short-term or long-term but the important aspect is the continuous creation of these casual fans. Of course there will always be the true fanatic (God luv'em), and the blowhards, and the "I can buy my child some talent", and the "mines bigger than yours" for the rest of us to laugh with or at. But in the end, Little League may have created (and continues to create) more of baseball's casual fans than any other org or activity. This includes both those that play and those that watch LL games. And if for nothing else, LL deserves a tip of the hat from anyone that cares or loves the sport of baseball.

Why throw travel ball under the bus?  of the 12 kids on my sons 11u team most are playing college or pro ball.  i have literally never seen a kid "burn" out who was a gifted player on an elite team.  I have seen kids whose talent didn't develop and their parents use the burnout word as a buzz word.  

Why do parents like to throw out the B word so often? If a kid has a change in interest is it truly the end of the world? If Bruce Lee quit playing ping pong to focus on karate, someone would say that competitive ping pong burned him out!

LL is not a year-round assoc. Great idea is to use player's current age when the season starts.  Other organizations that play year-round like usssa would seem to make more sense to use the Jan. 1st age cut-off. 

 

My young son plays in two assoc., and he has an April BD. One assoc. has an age date of 4/1 and the other 5/1. So in one league he is the oldest in the other the youngest. So, it does not matter what the age cutoff is those just under it will complain, and those just over it will be happy. This is a game....get over it.

 

 

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/st...estions-chicago-team

 

LL looking a little deeper.

Isn't this the same reason chinese taipa was stripped of some wins too?

I think that was a team from the Phillipines you're thinking about. Not only outside of their boundaries, but also had quite a few kids that were too old.

Late 70's early 80's time frame?

Zamboanaga City, Philippines won the 1992 title and was disqualified for ineligible players.

In 1993 a Taiwanese team and the Dominican team were both disqualified before the LLWS started for the same reasons.

just another in a long list of LL BS. The Tainey Dragons were the subject of much controversy in PA as well...the "charter" used apparently had been dorment and included the entire city of Philadelphia...then a travel program called something or other (worst part is I know the team and can't think of the name) picked it up and hey look we are now LL...lets go to Williamsport!! Tainey was not LL team - it was all BS as much of LL is.

"It's not LL that is screwing things up. It's parents...."

 

Parents can absolutely cause problems.

 

But Williamsport is, IMHO, populated by the masters of officious intermeddling.  Like Catbert in the Dilbert strips, they seem to take pleasure in making rules just to prove that they can -- rules that enhance no interest, just present obstacles.  I have taken issue in particular with certain rules that presented safety risks.  No debate allowed, no complaints heard, this is how it'll be, the end.

 

The other thing they've done is sold the entire program down the river, sacrificed on the altar of TV dollars generated by the August World Series.  Everything revolves around an event that a fraction of a percent of the players ever have hope of participating in.  In our area, the regular season is over when school lets out, and playoffs end soon after -- all so that the few all stars can play. 

 

You can say that travel ball is killing Little League, and there may be some truth in that.  But to me, Little League's failure to serve its target clientele is driving people out of Little League and into travel ball.  Because travel ball is flexible.  No matter what your goals are, you can find a program that matches up.  In response to which, Little League gripes about how everyone abandons them.  You may as well be the horse-and-buggy makers complaining about that Henry Ford guy.

 

Sometimes I think people go to Wiliamsport in hopes that, if they make big enough nuisances of themselves, maybe they'll get the call to the big leagues -- and land a job with the NCAA.

Land a job with NCAA....now, that's funny!!!!!!!!

Man did Midlo nail it. I had the distinct pleasure of being part of a Little League "development committee" for 50/70 in 2012. We were part of numerous conference calls, meetings, meetings about the conference calls, Facebook presentations, etc etc etc. Reality is no one in Williamsport wanted to hear a thing, they were doing it their way - period. I was representing Orange County CA, where travel ball is certainly king yet dozens of kids my sons age wanted to stay in LL for the social aspects of the game & then move into travel ball come summer. It was a nightmare I'd prefer to not re-live, and our league alone lost 27 families (including us) that would have been paying customers for 50/70 because of the archaic way the district & Williamsport wanted to do things. At the beginning we suggested that the 50/70 fields & rules may actually be better suited to the Majors division for the 11's & 12's - that was shot down practically before I finished saying it. Why? "Because then we'd have to modify the fields in Williamsport and thats not happening." So as Midlo points out, what may be best for the survival of the league as a whole is shot down due to a tournament that 1/10 of 1% of the kids get to participate in?

 

Going back to the OP - Williamsport will spend months & months discussing 50/70 rules about a players ability to have a sticker on his helmet, but it wasn't until NOW that someone decided to get serious about the Chicago boundary issue? There was no way to do that between sign ups in Dec / Jan and the World Series in the summer? Seriously? Last time I was on a LL board we checked & verified residency on 350+ kids in 2012 in about three weeks, how hard can it be to do ONE team???

 

 

Monarchs

Going off topic but just saw on the local news here in Chicago that Williamsport is investigating the Jackie Robinson national championship team for residency violations.

It'll be sad if the Chicago team is stripped of their national championship because adults played fast and loose with the residency rules.  I know many in our local LL grumble about the verification process, but I'm glad our local LL board takes the time to verify correctly.  Nothing against LL or the kids, but it seems adults/parents are the problem - not the players.

I'm surprised that Williamsport is not being labeled as racist. 

Any new, news from this story? Why would LL be labeled racist?

This has been going on for years, with the full knowledge, and oftentimes tacit approval, of the Little League hierarchy.  I have seen it up close and personal.

 

 

I don't believe Williamsport is racist but since the team that is being investigated is all black I'm surprised that the naacp hasn't responded.

.My last year coaching in town (we played pony ball at the 12u here) I sat in meeting with adults who had actually come up with a plan so that the all star team could have 1 more real good 12u player.Couldn't believe it.Thankfully plan wasn't allowed to move foward.Tho one of the culprites is now an assistant at the H.S.

 

There's a link in the other thread that covers many of your questions.

 

It seems that JRW LL redrew their league lines to include players who otherwise would have to play All-Stars in bordering leagues.  JRW LL failed to get the bordering leagues to agree to the changes and submitted the "revised" district boundary as "official" when the redrawing had not been agreed upon.  It appears that quite a few players were just out of the original boundary lines - some were in a development that was not within the league's boundary, but bordered the league.

 

It also pointed out some questionable addresses were uses as "residence" where the parents owned multiple properties with only one within the league boundary - whether they actually resided there was questionable.  Or addresses of relatives were used as the parent's address.  

 

They did not address whether the players had actually played the minimum number of games during the regular season prior to All-Stars.

 

Link here:

 

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago...burban-league-claims

They stripped the Chicago team of the title today. To bad the kids are made to suffer the consequences for adult behavior.

Not baseball but I thought.....2016 football team played into state semi-final (chi. area) we played against a "Charter school.There are no boundrys with charter schools.Why/how are they not playing using the multiplier as the chatholic/private schools use.Anyone ran across this?

proud - what class?  8A? I think we may have lost to the same team the week before you guys saw them.

 

<edit> Though now that I think about it if it were 8A there would be no room for them to go up.

Just another example of why a "World Championship" for 13 year-olds is a bad idea.

No 4A.Look I'm not saying anyone cheated to win.I just think this could be a big problem no one sees coming with charter schools.Also I do think charter schools are viable options in horrible situations.But theres no boundries.If you can show up on time everyday you're in.Where most charter schools are at they can draw from close if not over a population of a million.Thats a very large school distict.

I get this arguement a little....but I feel worse for all the teams that the Chicago team beat on their way to Williamsport who lost a chance to play in the LLWS because they played a team that shouldn't have been there.  The Chicago kids got to play and experience the LLWS....whether they keep a trophy or not really doesn't matter all that much.

I hear you, sorry, didn't meant to say you thought they were cheating.  I've often wondered about the magnet/charter schools myself.  How does Simeon become a basketball powerhouse year after year when they are a magnet school.  You can't tell me they are not out there looking for players.  

I had a funny conversation with the parent of a catholic school kid a few weeks back at one of our practices.  Its a school that is know for recruiting in football.   We were discussing the IHSA playoffs and he kept insisting to me that the public schools are out there recruiting too and that they private schools are being punished for doing the same thing.  

Nevada coach (now US LL champions) is a class act.

 

http://espn.go.com/chicago/sto...nship-suspends-coach

Jess "the race pimp" Jackson is in the middle of it.

Had Taney won the LLWS they might be the story today. There were a lot of accusations about them the district and the region refused to investigate.

 

This story is deeper than one league cheating. Nevada didn't get to celebrate their victory on the field and the following days. Indiana didn't get to celebrate winning the region. Neither did the Illinois state, section and district runner ups. Also kids from JRWLL who were legal were cheated out of an all star experience.

http://www.click2houston.com/n...ting-ruling/31221056

 

Buckeye and RJM called it!

As someone interested in creating interest in baseball among the inner cities and African American youth, this hurts.

 

I actually knew the team from Chicago was a combination of talented young kids, some from travel ball, I never thought there was a problem.  Then what they did was great for promoting the game.  Now it might have the opposite effect and I for one think that is a bummer.  Seems like all of this should have been avoided much earlier in the process. 

 

I don't know all the particulars involving these players. Apparently they were the right age, so it's not as bad (in my mind) as the Almonte case.  I am fairly close to some people that were indirectly involved and know that several of these kids live in poverty. 

 

It's just to bad that this had to happen.  I feel bad for everyone involved including the teams that lost because of it.  If LL has rules they need to enforce those rules long before a half of a year after their nationally televised event is over.  Why did it take so long to find out where someone lives?  And in this case it wouldn't surprise me if some of these kids lived in more than one location. Just for safety if nothing else.