The Early Show

Cheatin' Hearts

2007-02-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

From today's Los Angeles Times comes this sobering report:

Where is sport steering youth?
By Lance Pugmire, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 18, 2007

For generations it has been one of the great American axioms, accepted truth on diamonds, courts and gridirons everywhere: Sports builds character, instilling the values of teamwork and good sportsmanship.

But amid fresh headlines of alleged cheating in auto racing, continuing controversies over steroid use in baseball, track and cycling and ugly brawls among basketball players comes a nationwide survey suggesting a decidedly darker vision of sports.

"There is reason to worry that the sports fields of America are becoming the training grounds for the next generation of corporate and political villains and thieves," says Los Angeles ethicist Michael Josephson.

The latest two-year study of high school athletes by the Josephson Institute found a higher rate of cheating in school among student-athletes than among their classmates. It also found a growing acceptance of cheating to gain advantages in competition.

Josephson's report, based on interviews across the country with 5,275 high school athletes, concluded that too many coaches are "teaching our kids to cheat and cut corners."

The provocative findings were met with strong reactions from all sides — some acknowledging problems while others scoffed.

James Staunton, commissioner of the 565-school California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section, which governs high school sports for most of the Southland, said he "hopes" ethical deviance hasn't "gone that far."

"What this points out to me is that we still have a tremendous amount of work to do with our athletes, parents and coaches," Staunton said. "For all the good things we talk about in sports, and the wonderful things we promote, we're fighting some societal pressures."

The commissioner acknowledged finding "that kids are powerfully motivated for the wrong reasons."

Some established Southland prep coaches dismissed Josephson's conclusions, including Chino Hills Ayala High's Tom Gregory, a 27-year veteran basketball coach. "I've used basketball as a tool for my players to become better people," he said.

The survey's conclusions may be open to some dispute. Josephson found, for example, that about 25% of teen athletes considered rule-bending and aggressive behavior in competition acceptable. A substantial majority did not find it acceptable, though the percentage who considered that behavior acceptable had risen since a previous survey.

Among other notable survey results were:

• At least 65% of athletes acknowledged cheating on an exam at least once within a year, compared with a 60% rate among a general student population.

• 72% of football players acknowledged cheating.

• 48% of baseball players believe it proper for a coach to order his pitcher to throw at an opposing batter in retaliation.

• 37% of boys think it is acceptable for a coach to motivate a player using personal insults and vulgarity.

• 43% of boys endorse trash-talk and showboating during games.

• 6.4% of male athletes acknowledged using performance-enhancing drugs in the last year.

"I'm not trying to fool people, or be an alarmist," Josephson said. "But I believe in looking at these numbers; there are so many kids learning to cheat that there is cause for great concern."

He said the survey did not pinpoint "whether this enhanced propensity to cheat is due to values that put winning over honesty or a reflection of pressures to stay [academically] eligible or simply manage their time given the high demands of sports."

But Josephson said: "The fact remains that for most kids, sports promotes rather than discourages cheating."

Barbara Fiege, commissioner of the CIF City Section in Los Angeles, called the survey results "amazing to me."

She speculated that positive values of high school sports may have been diminished in recent years by a diluted pool of experienced teacher-coaches. In the City Section, for example, 40% of coaches do not teach any classes at the school, not even physical education courses.

"When your coach has not gone through four or five years of college, does not have a degree in education and is not involved in the kids' grades or classes, there's going to be an inherent amount of drop-off in the effect they have on the kids," Fiege said.

Gregory, the coach at Ayala who disputes Josephson's findings about sports, nonetheless agrees that coaches make a big difference.

"When I see problems with undisciplined teams, many times there's a young coach on the bench," he said.

Higher incidents of poor sportsmanship can also be attributed to less-than-perfect "role models like Barry Bonds, violence in professional sports, the showcasing of kids as individuals in a team game, and parents becoming much more aggressive," Gregory said.

"It's cool now to be overly aggressive, taunting, boisterous," Gregory said. "Many kids don't want to be a yes man."

But warped values are not the fault of sports, he insisted. The failure rests on parents, teachers, coaches and role models.

Said Fiege: "Participating in sports still teaches kids the lessons of work, of working with a team, of conflict resolution, of learning to win and lose, and how to deal with a competitive world. But now there's a bigger influence on the need to win by coaches, with parents who are motivated to get their kids in the best club programs and to that elusive college scholarship.

"Now it's about more than just being a high school kid proud to be playing at your local high school."

With 660 victories and four Southern Section boys' basketball titles in 28 years of coaching, Glendora High's Mike LeDuc said his most troubling ethical concerns are the number of coaches engaged in recruiting players, the prevalence of amateur teams that displace high school team loyalties, and "illogical" parents.

Josephson "went too far if he's not saying the vast majority of players and coaches are OK," LeDuc said. "I still believe sports promotes winning, but not at all costs. We promote values ahead of success. We define winning as doing the best you can. I think you can have two winning teams on the same night."

Southern Section commissioner Staunton did not hesitate to embrace Josephson's survey.

"As kids grow and change and learn, if they're learning all along that cheating a little is OK, what will they do when they're at a greater level in life?" Staunton asked. "We have the facts of what these kids have reported to us. I can't deny this is happening. We need to do something about it.

"Sports should be the training ground to do things properly. These numbers tell us we have a ways to go, and it's on all of us — administrators, coaches, parents and athletes."

The Southern Section holds a series of one-day training sessions for coaches to examine ethical decisions and dilemmas, and requests ethical mission statements from athletic departments.

On March 8, its council members will vote on a measure to stiffen penalties for bad behavior by athletes — banning players for the remainder of any season in which they are ejected from two games. Two ejections now result in a two-game suspension.

"Our belief is to install more punitive measures," Staunton said. "Education is the answer. We want our athletes to accept that wrong is wrong, not to dismiss what they do as part of the game."

Sure penalties tend to deter cheating, according to the student survey, Josephson said. He credited NASCAR and the NBA officials with setting a good example. NASCAR removed driver Michael Waltrip's crew chief from Sunday's Daytona 500 after a banned fuel additive was found in his race car. The NBA imposed a 15-game suspension on Denver star Carmelo Anthony for fighting during a game.

"We have bad sports in athletics, in the political world and in the business environment," Josephson said. "These people are polluting it, and in some cases, they're corrupting it."

The City Section's Fiege commended Josephson's strong words.

"I'd venture to say he's saying these things to make the very strong point that this is a crisis," she said. "He might be going a little overboard to get people's attention, but this surely deserves attention, because whatever we've done to this point isn't working."

Cal Ripken and the Future of Youth Baseball

2006-08-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to talk with Cal Ripken today about his participation in the longest game in professional baseball history -- a 33-inning marathon between the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox in April 1981. After we discussed that game, I asked him about the way Cal Ripken Baseball is changing the landscape of youth ball.

Ripken Baseball started seven years ago when the Babe Ruth League offered to rename its Bambino division -- the 12-and-under bunch -- after the Iron Man of the Baltimore Orioles.

"I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to have an impact on the grassroots level of baseball," he said. "I don’t control the league. But I am not just involved in name alone either. I wanted to have an impact on the landscape of the game."

Ripken Baseball is the only community league growing its numbers every year -- about 6 or 7 percent a year, according to the future Hall of Famer. To keep the growth going, Ripken wants to offer not only world-class youth tournaments. He also wants to restore "real baseball" to the 12-and-under set.

Ripken Baseball announced this summer that it would expand its field size from 60 to 70 feet between the bases. It's a move that's been in discussion for years. "It takes a long time, but we're doing it and it's going to make a big difference," Ripken says.

The 70-foot bases -- the same dimensions used in PONY League competition for the same age group -- is "going to breathe some fresh air into the game." The bigger field not only accepts the reality that today's young athletes are bigger and stronger, but also acknowledges the growing importance of travel teams. Love them or hate them, travel teams will dominate youth baseball for the foreseeable future. The question is how community-based leagues adapt.

"In recent years, the numbers of kids playing ball after 12 or 13 have dwindled," Ripken told me. "And at the same time, there are more kids playing year round. We want to get more kids to extend the ages that they play baseball."

By playing on a bigger field, Ripken can draw many of the best travel-ball players to his program. At the same time, Ripken can continue to offer competition on 60-foot bases for less developed young athletes.

Baseball's standard 90-foot-base field fits the power and speed of most players from the teenage years all the way to the elites of the major leagues.

"There were some fundamental truths that were being violated," Ripken says. "Sixty feet [from the mound to the plate] gives you the right reaction time. And the bigger field gives you the right reaction time for fielders and baserunners too. Who’s the fastest player down the line now? It’s Ichiro [Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners]. But with 90-foot bases, there’s still enough reaction time for infielders to get Ichiro out.

"When those fundamental truths are violated, you change the game. When you have so many kids, you want to be all things to all people. There’s still a 60-foot path if you want to do that. But physically, there are a lot of kids these days who are ready and want to play real baseball and put people in motion, and move the mound back four feet."

During the recent Cal Ripken World Series, a couple of teams eliminated in early play played an exhibition game on 70-foot bases.

"We watched the offense became more of a spark, and they enjoyed the stealing and the game was natural to them. This is what real baseball is all about."

Could Territorial Reform Recover the Soul of Little League? And Other Topics

2006-08-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

Notes and comment on territorial reform for Little League, not using players, protecting young arms, and the Little Leaguer's 15 minutes of fame . . .

GEOGRAPHIC TERRITORIES

Little League might consider changing its ancient rules governing territory. From the beginning, Little League organizations have operated within population areas of 20,000. But maybe that's obsolete.

Maybe -- in order to offer programs for both the studs who want to play in tournaments and the ordinary kids who just like baseball and want to play for fun -- Little League ought to consider areas of 30,000 or 40,000. The tournament teams would have access to a broader range of talent and would have better competition. A 40,000-population area would have twice as many pitchers, creating less pressure to overuse young arms. Travel team coaches have a point when they say they abuse kids arms less because they draw from broader territories. Those bigger kids could play on bigger fields and develop their whole game -- real pitching (not just big kids blowing away little kids), fielding (because not so many K's and more balls staying in the infield and in the ballpark), baserunning and hit-and-run and even bunting (because you can lead off the bases).

Best of all, the kids with modest abilities -- the Charlie Euchners of the world -- would be able to play after school lets out. When I was a kid playing deep right field for my Little League team in Muscatine, Iowa, I was mystified why the season ended in early June. Hey! Where's everyone going? Didn't summer just start? The reason, of course, was that the good players were pursuing their dreams of state championships and an eventual trip to Williamsport. If you want baseball to be popular, don't cut the game off just when the vast majority is getting going.

UNUSED BENCH STRENGTH

A sad reality of the Little League World Series is that teams bring fewer and fewer players to Williamsport. The mandatory play rule scares teams that don't believe in their 13th and 14th best players. What's sad is not only that deserving kids get left home, but that teams overwork other kids and don't discover potential stars in their midst.

A reader sent this summary of the number of players on teams in the regional tournaments and in the Little League World Series:

Number of players ........... Regionals ......... LLWS
Ten players ......................... 1 (2%) ............ 0 (0%)
Eleven players ...................... 9 (18%) .......... 3 (38%)
Twelve players .................... 22 (43%) .......... 3 (38%)
Thirteen players ...................18 (35%)........... 1 (13%)
Fourteen players ................... 2 (4%) ............ 1 (13%)

PITCH COUNTS

Little League's decision to adopt pitch limits in 2007 is welcome news, as I have said before. But implementing the rules remains a challenge.

Little League officials might take a page from welfare reformers to figure out the best approaches to enforcing the new rules. In the years before the 1996 welfare reform act, President Clinton granted state governments dozens of waivers from federal regulations to experiment with the best approaches to getting welfare recipients off the rolls and into work and training programs. That period of experimentation helped identify what worked and what didn't.

Without some experimentation, we might never discover the best ways to limit the workloads of pitchers. Either Little League's new standards will work perfectly ... or they'll fail and critics will claim vindication for their skepticism about any and all efforts to protect young arms.

Critics make some good points. How will the paperwork be handled? What can you do about teams that work deep pitch counts to get aces off the mound? Why should some teams with favorable schedules (e.g., two days off between games) be given advantages over other teams (e.g., one or two days between games)?

Leagues should get waivers if they adopt creative plans to limit pitching loads. The 500-plus leagues that experimented with the rules might be given preference for the waivers, since they've already shown some commitment to protecting young arms.

Maybe Little League can provide incentives to encourage leagues to do even more to protect young arms. If a league adopts even more stringent measures to protect arms, maybe they should get a home-field advantage in tournaments.

BREAD AND CIRCUSES

As teams in the Little League World Series return home, they're being celebrated with parades and presents.

In the old days, only the winners got the ticker-tape treatment. But in this garrison Keillor world we live in today, where everyone is above average, even the also-rans get to ride down the local Canyon of Heroes. Not that there's anything wrong with it . . .

On September 2, the Ahwatukee Little League all stars, from Phoenix, will ride on Corvettes loaned by a local dealer.
“You don’t get to the Little League World Series every year,” Freeway Chevrolet general manager Eddie Espinosa said. “We want this to be a memorable experience for these families.”

Other towns are making plans for parades. Last year, the champions from Hawaii were part of four parades.

If you win, the parades are just the beginning of the rewards. The players and coaches also get free vacations at resorts, free tickets to pro and college sports events, opportunities to pose with cheerleaders and Hollywood stars, TV appearances, athletic clothing and shoes, spots on TV commercials, passes for video arcades and movie houses, a year supply greasy food from of KFC and McDonald's ("Ba-da-da-da-da, it's killin' me!"), soft drinks, you name it.

The 2004 champions from Curacao also got computers and $600 in savings accounts. They also got a visit from Miss USA, a self-described tomboy who urged them to win again in 2005 and help attract more tourism to the Caribbean idyll.

The 2005 champions from Ewa Beach were smart with their newfound celebrity. They used it to gain admittance and scholarships to elite private schools. Coach Layton Aliviado used his celebrity to become a JV coach at one of the top prep schools on the islands. I can't imagine anyone doing a better job teaching the game.

In one of the broadcasts last year, Brent Musberger chuckled that the "youngsters" from Curacao might be in violation of NCAA rules for amateur status by taking all the loot thrown their way.

Georgia Wins Pitching Classic

2006-08-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

No one pitched any no-hitters in the championship game of the Little League World Series, but a kid named Kyle Carter made history when he won his fourth game of the tournament.

Carter gave up just one run in three starts and one relief appearance as Georgia stormed to the second straight championship for a U.S. team.

Carter and the other all stars from the Columbus Little League of Georgia beat the team from Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1, in the title game Monday afternoon.

The game winner came on a two-run home run by Cody Walker, a screaming line drive over the left-center field fence. Japan has played smallball to take a 1-0 lead. Go Matsumota hit a run-scoring single in the third inning to give the Asians the early lead.

Carter gave up three hits and struck out 11 for the win. Besides yielding the home run to Walker, Matsumota was almost perfect. He struck out nine batters and gave up only three hits.

Both pitchers regularly threw major-league-equivalent 100-m.p.h. pitches and spotted their balls perfectly. Only rarely did the pitchers leave the pitch over the plate.

As expected, home plate umpire Troy Carmont tightened the strike zone for the championship game. Had the strike zone remained as expansive as it was throughout the LLWS, both pitchers might very well have brought no-hitters into the sixth inning.

Japan appeared to have a chance in the sixth inning when carter walked one batter and hit another, but he settled down to retire the side without further incident.

The championship was the second for a team from Georgia. In 1983, the team from the Atlanta suburb of Marietta took the championship with a 3-1 victory over the Dominican Republic.

Georgia’s victory marked only the second time U.S. teams won back-to-back titles on the field. The teams from Kirkland, Wash., and Marietta won titles in 1982 and 1983. Long Beach, Calif., won consecutive titles in 1992 and 1993, but the first title came on a forfeit because of rules violations.

A team from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, won last year’s Little League World Series. That series is recounted in Little League, Big Dreams.

Good News (WITH ADDENDUM)

2006-08-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Little League Baseball has just announced a momentous decision -- to limit the number of pitches that kids can throw in games and over the course of the week.

Young pitchers have been ruining their arms for years because of overuse. The reason is simple. Teams playing in tournaments -- not just Little League, but also other community leagues and travel ball -- are always trying to advance to the next level. In almost every game, a team faces the possibility of elimination. So managers and coaches use their best one or two pitchers over and over again.

Many pitchers throw in excess of 100 pitches a game and work with two days of rest. Think about that. Roger Clemens, the most physical pitcher of our time, usually leaves the game after 90 or 100 pitches -- and then he gets four days of rest. If Houston Astros Manager Phil Garner ever told the Rocket that he had to pitch on two days of rest, Garner would find himself upside-down in the trash bin. And yet Little Leaguers -- whose bodies are still developing -- have been working on just a couple days of rest. Absurd.

Little League CEO Steve Keener, the American Sports Medicine Institute, and other partners deserve a big cheer for this move.

Still, there are detractors.

One criticism is that there simply are not enough good pitchers to go around. The answer is simple: Get more kids a chance to take the mound. Only when you think that it's essential to win all the time, with a manchild power pitcher, can you resist giving more kids a chance.

Another criticism is that tracking the pitch counts will be too hard and that all kinds of disputes will arise. I agree that Little League -- and all youth sports, for that matter -- has gotten too rule-bound and bureaucratic. But you mean to tell me that the official scorer cannot have a clicker in his hand as he or she watches the game? Or that the scorer can't mark the book for each at bat and then report the counts every inning to both managers? Or that a volunteer cannot track pitch counts on a white board for all to see? Please.

A third criticism is that teams will work the pitch count to drive the best pitchers out of games. That might happen, although I'm not sure how many kids have the bat control of a Bobby Abreu. But the result could be very positive in two ways. First, it could encourage youngsters to pitch to put the ball in play rather than pitch for strikeouts. It's much more efficient to get grounders and pop flies than strikeouts. That could make games move faster and involve the rest of the team in games. How much fun is it for a left fielder or second baseman to stand around in a 14-K game? Second, even if the rule does enable some teams to work the count and get the aces out of the game, so what? The teams should be developing four or five pitchers, not just two or three.

This decision is very good news for every kid who plays Little League. Other organizations should follow suit, not just to protect young athletes' health and wellbeing but to involve all kids in a more well-rounded game.

ADDENDUM: Brent Musberger, in his broadcast of the U.S. championship game between Georgia and Oregon, effusively praised Little League's decision to establish pitch counts. Orel Hershiser and Joe Morgan, former major league stars doing the color commentary, agreed. But then Musberger said something about how these limits probably would have to be loosened for the Little League World Series and its qualifying tournaments. Hold it! Why is that, Brent? If the rule is ever essential, it's in those tournaments where the coaches and parents push their kids hard to get "to the next level." If this pitch-count rule does not apply to the tournaments, it is a fraud. It's the tournaments where the kids get pushed beyond their limit and damaged. Readers: Write to Steve Keener at Little League International, 539 U.S. Route 15 Hwy, PO Box 3485, Williamsport, PA 17701-0485. Tell him congratulations for the pitch-count rule, and then demand that the rule be applied to all tournaments.

The Answer Man (Part 2)

2006-08-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

QUESTION: This might seem like a strange question, but here goes: What was the fuzziest moment -- the lump-in-throat moment that makes you get all gooey and sentimental about kids baseball? You know, like "Field of Dreams"?

ANSWER: A few years ago, Kevin Costner was at the LLWS to be inducted into the Hall of Excellence at the Little League museum. He got some kids together to play softball under the lights at Lamade Stadium. I'm not a huge fan of Costner's oeuvre, but that sounds like fun to me.

QUESTION: You said in a recent post that since the kids are getting bigger, pitchers are having greater success shutting down hitters. And we certainly saw it with five shutouts in the eight regional champinship finals. But it also seems like there are a lot of home runs. What gives?

ANSWER: Kids start swinging when they see the ball coming out of the pitcher's hand. When they connect, they can give it a ride. In fact, just putting the ol' aluminum on the ball is sometimes enough to send it flying with the blistering speed of some pitchers. The difference, this year, is that Little League has moved the outfield fences back 20 feet. Balls that flew out of the parks last August have been harmless fly balls this year.

QUESTION: At one point, you say that Little League should consider creating two tracks for this age group. You point out that youth football and wrestling have weight brackets as well as age brackets for the athletes and teams. How might that work?

ANSWER: There is such a huge range in the physical maturity of kids these days. The big kids have their way with the little kids. When I talked with Little League CEO Steve Keener, I asked him what he thought of the Hawaii team wthat won the title in 2005. I told them about the team's intense training regimen. He waved me off. They're just bigger, he said. It had nothing to do with training or skills.

Well, if that's the case, why not create a two-track system for Little League? Why not let the bigger kids compete on bigger fields, like the PONY League's 70-foot bases? (Little League officials say they cannot retrofit the fields to go beyond the 60-foot bases, but I'm not so sure. Anyway, at the very least, Little League can move the mounds back a foot or two.) Why not let the smaller kids stay on Little League fields? There's lots you could do with two tracks, including experiment with pitch counts, and kids running teams. Little League is an old and venerable institution, but needs to think about modernizing its 60-year-old World Series structure.

I believe that there's a battle for the soul of youth sports -- but that the most important side in the battle has not mobilized. Most kids play Little League because they want to have fun learning and playing a great game. But the last majority of kids' experience gets abruptly stopped in realy June, when leagues form the all-star teams that will compete for the chance to play in the Little League World Series. What happens to the kids who want to just have fun playing ball? They're let loose. meanwhile, most of the community's ball diamonds go unused.

I'l like Little League to create a two-track system. Let the all stars compete for Williamsport in the leagues that decide that's a worthy goal. But keep the other games going. And let the kids take charge of their own childhood. Let the adults reserve the fields, teach skills, and come and cheer. But give the kids the opportunity to make lineups, make substitutions, and make decisions about bunting and other on-field strategies. They can do it, you know. Provide some basic ground rules, make sure every kid who wants to be coach of the day has a chance, and let go.

In promoting my book Little League, Big Dreams, I have been approached by countless coaches and parents who have told me how depressing it is when kids are taught that every activity needs to be organized for them. We need to find a way of reviving the spirit of pickup games, where the kids are responsible for making things happen. Organized leagues are great -- but not if micromanaging adults don't allow kids the opportunity to do things for themselves.

My critics say that I just don't understand that competitive youth baseball is here to stay. But I do, and I don't have a problem with hard-core kids playing in tournaments. But I don't see why it's not possible to have an alternative approach, where playing ball is for fun -- and doesn't end when the all-star teams begin their quests to play in Williamsport, Aberdeen, Cooperstown, Orlando, and the other meccas of kidball.

QUESTION: I realize Williamsport isn't exactly Manhattan, but I understand that there are celebrities that go there. Who were some of the top celebs to go to Williamsport for the LLWS?

ANSWER: Little League is very eager to get big names to the LLWS. Since the beginning, Little League has cultivated politicians, corporate bigs, and ex jocks to raise the profile of the organization. President George W. Bush attended the 2001 LLWS and the 2005 Southwest regional championship game in Waco, Texas. Secretary of State Condi Rice joined W and Laura for that one. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge -- later, secretary of Homeland Security in the Bush Administration --also attended in 2001.

In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney watched a game from The Hill. Concessionaires joked about making sure Cheney, who has a history of heart attacks, be kept away from the fried dough.

QUESTION: How come we never hear anything about girls in Little League?

ANSWER: Twelve girls have played in the Little League World Series. No girls will be on any of this year's teams. In 2004, two girls pitched against each other in a Friendship game between Venezuela and Kentucky.

QUESTION: I'm kind of bummed out by the quality of broadcasts on ESPN. Is there anything they could do to jazz up the games, to put the Little League competition into better perspective?

ANSWER: I agree. I'd love to see videos of practices, highlights from the best youth baseball elsewhere (like Cooperstown Dreams Park), and more detailed breakdowns of the pitcher-hitter confrontations. It's amazing what you can see when you slow the two motions down into microseconds. I'd also like to see computer overlays of the PONY League's 70-foot bases, Cal Ripken Baseball's more expansive outfields, and the standard 90-foot playing field to give a sense of where hits would fall playing under different rules. Broadcasting baseball has not advanced much from the 1950s when games first appeared regularly on TV. Seems to me that ESPN could try out all kinds of new expnanatory tricks with the kids game.

I like the job Orel Hershiser has done with the broadcasts. He does a great job explaining the game's fundamentals and has been honest about calling on coaches to do the right thing -- like getting tired pitchers out of games.

Notes and Comment

2006-08-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

THAT'S FAST: In its wrapup of the Georgia-New Hampshire game, ESPN reported the Kyle Carter was throwing 77 mile-an-hour heat to lead Georgia to the 9-0 victory. That's the equivalent of 174 miles and hour in the major leagues, ESPN reported. Actually, 174 m.p.h. would be a physical impossibility. Taking into account the different field sizes -- 60 and a half feet from the mound to plate on a standard field, 46 feet on a Little League field -- a 77-m.p.h. pitch leaves the hitters the same reaction time as a 100-m.p.h. pitch in the majors. That's fast enough, thank you very much.

THAT'S BIG: The surprise of the Little League World Series has got to be Saudi Arabia, the team of ex-pats from Dhahrin that went 2-1 in pool play before losing to Japan in its first-ever single-elimination game. Last year, the Saudis were arguably the weakest team in the tournament. But the kids have gotten bigger and stronger. The paucity of baseball in the Kingdom might have helped the Saudi club. Without boys their own age to play, they competed against older boys to get ready for the annual summer march to Williamsport. The biggest story was, of course, Aaron Durley. Last year he set a LLWS record for size with his 6-5 frame. He grew three inches to break his own record. Last year, Durley was awkward; this year he was a force. After going hitless last year, he went three for 11 this year. Another big kid, Andrew Holden, turned in ace pitching performances for the Saudis. He gave up just one hit, in the sixth inning, in his six shutout innings against Venezuela, which won the game 1-0 in eight innings, and pitched a five-hit shutout in the 5-0 win over Canada.

THAT'S DISGRACEFUL: The intensity seemed to be greater at this year's LLWS than in other years. ESPN's miking of the coaches didn't seem to restrain them much from their aggressive barking. They came to the mound and gathered the kids near the dugout and barked at them as if they were the assembly-line workers. One manager reportedly slapped his player when the player, egged on by his hyper yelling, cursed on national TV. Guys! Lighten up! If not for yourself and your kids, than for the image you project on TV!

THROWN FOR A CURVE: Most baseball people -- including the brass of Little League baseball -- say it's impossible to ban curveballs because of the inherent difficulties judging what's a curve and what's a changeup or a slow fastball. Two points: (1) If a curve is no different from a changeup, why not mix up a range of fastballs and changeups, and (2) at a book event last night in Madison, Conn., an umpire at the Cooperstown Dreams Park tournament told me he doesn’t allow pitchers to throw curves. "I give them one warning, and if they do it again they get thrown out of the tournament," he said.

AND IN OTHER ACTION . . . : A team from Hilo, Hawaii, defeated a team from Mexico to win the Cal Ripken World Series. In a game televised on OLN (the Outdoor Life Network, soon to be called the Versus Network), Hawaii won, 5-0, despite inadvertently lifting its top pitcher in the third inning. After striking out six batters in two and two-thirds innings, Kawika Pruett left the game when manager Kaha Wong mistakenly made two trips to the mound. Kean Wong, the manager's kid, took over and retired nine of the last ten batters for the victory.

LEAD-PIPE GUARANTEE: Mike Dukakis got in trouble as Massachusetts governor when he broke his campaign promise of a "lead-pipe guarantee" against raising taxes. He jacked up taxes and got voted out of office. But I'm willing to use that same phrase. I offer you a lead-pipe guarantee that Little League will adopt some kind of pitch-count rule after this year's World Series. Why am I so sure? The announcers on ESPN are praising the idea as if it's the answer to all problems facing the world. Hell, if Little League adopts pitch limits, I'd say it's safe to bring the troops back from Iraq. All kidding aside, it's a great idea and Little League deserves all the praise in the world if it goes through. (See articles in USA Today and The Oregonian.)

CRACK GOES THE HELMET: The team from Lemont, Illinois, was alone among the 16 teams in the LLWS to bring their own helmets top the series. Austin Mastela got nailed in the left earflap and went to the hospital with a bloody face and mild concussion. (He was OK and played in the next game.) On impact, the helmet broke. What standards does Little League have for helmets? Even more important, will Little League consider moving the mound back to prevent injuries to both batters (facing major league-equivalent speeds approaching 100 m.p.h.) and pitchers (who can be seriously injured on liners up the middle)?

TOUGH POOL: Curacao did not make it out of pool play for the first time in three years despite having six returning players from last year's team. Like last year, the team from Japan beat the Caribbean all stars. But the kids from the Pabou Little League of Willemstad also lost to Mexico, which plays Japan Saturday for the International championship. The only team Curacao beat was winless Russia. Conspiracy theorists might wonder why Curacao played in such a tough bracket while Mexico played three relative creampuffs (Saudi, Canada, and Saipan).

GEORGIA PEACH: Kyle Carter is the big man on Georgia's team. He has won all three of Georgia's games -- with one inning of relief in the 3-2 win over New York, six innings of one-hit ball in the 4-1 win over Arizona, and six innings of three-hit pitching in the 8-0 win over New Hampshire in the U.S. semifinals. He's also the hitting star -- a player so feared that he's intentionally walked like Barry Bonds. He's three for 10 with two homes runs so far.

ARMPITS TO TOES: Cheers to the umpires for calling a huge strike zone in the LLWS. It keeps the games moving fast. What's scary is the pinpoint control of many pitchers this year -- much more pronounced than in last year's classic series.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS: Mike Hall, the manager from Illinois, rallied his kids with this pitch in its 2-0 losing effort against Georgia: "You're the best Little League team in America." Then he went on, in a hyper-jumbled way, about how Mayor Richie Daley of Chicago, Governor Rod Blagojevich, and President George Bush were all watching. Was this a confidence booster or just more pressure for kids who have already had enough criticism of their travel-team makeup? You make the call.

THE LINE: Japan has to be the heavy favorite to breeze to the LLWS title. Japan has the deepest pitching staff in memory and the only lineup stacked with power. They face a tough Mexican team for the International championship but should be strong enough to win. Georgia has to be considered the U.S. favorite because of its strong pitching. After resting Kyle Carter in the U.S. title game against the surprising Oregon team -- with fingers crossed -- the stud will take the mound on Sunday afternoon.

HISTORY LESSON: Japan has won six titles and appeared in one other title game in 16 previous LLWS appearances. The most recent title came in 2003, when the Musashi-Fuchu Little League of Tokyo manhandled Boynton Beach, Florida, 10-1, to cap a perfect 6-0 series run. Mexico has won two championships and finished in the runner-up position three times in its 21 previous tries. The Monterrey team won two straight titles in 1957 and 1958 -- the first times that foreign teams won the tournament. Only one team from Georgia -- from the Atlanta suburb of Marietta -- has appeared in the LLWS before 2006. But that team won it all in 1983 with a 3-1 victory over the Dominican Republic. Oregon has appeared in the LLWS once before. The Rose City Little League of Portland lost its only game in the 1958 tournament won by Monterrey.

PIED PIPER MISSING: Harold Reynolds, who worked as a color commentator the last ten Little League World Series and became a favorite of the players, was fired before the LLWS for sexual harassment. The charge came after ESPN staff members went to dinner together. “It was a total misunderstanding,” Reynolds told the New York Post. “My goal is to sit down and get back. To be honest with you, I gave a woman a hug and I felt like it was misinterpreted.” Brent Musberger, the veteran play-by-play man, delighted in calling Reynolds the “pied piper” of the Williamsport event for his involvement with kids on Kelloggs training clips played during the series.

REAL KINGS OF THE HILL Cooperstown Dreams Park will hold its annual Tournament of Champions from August 26 to September 1. The event in upstate New York is considered by many experts to be the best baseball tournament for the 12-and-under set anywhere. The champions from the Dreams Park’s 10 weekly tournaments—each involving 96 travel teams from across the country—will compete for the title. Here are the champions eligible for the elite tournament: the San Diego Stars, West Boyton Gators of Florida, Miami Force, South Oakland A’s (featured in my book Little League, Big Dreams), Houston Heat, the Hit After Hit Baseball Academy of Tennessee, the O Town Sportscenter Baseball Academy of Florida, the Texas Tarheels, the Chicago North Shore Stars, and the Nevada Wildcats.

Pitching Determines Everything

2006-08-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

It's all about pitching — as it was in the beginning, and now and forever shall be.

Everything flows from pitching. Good pitching shuts down good hitting. Therefore, good pitching keeps games close. Therefore, good pitching increases the importance of the smallest events on the field — a bad call by the umpire, a missed relay, a missed signal, a late jump on the base paths. Therefore, good pitching increases intensity of the games and the pain of the losses. Therefore, good pitching frays the nerves of parents and coaches and players and reveals the true characters of all involved.

After 33 games of pool play, the Little League World Series eliminated eight of its original 16 teams — and moved right into the single-elimination phase of the tournament on Wednesday. Wednesday's games eliminated two more teams. Today's games will eliminate two more.

Japan is the consensus best team in Williamsport. Japan last won a World Series back in 2003 when a team from Tokyo overwhelmed Boynton Beach, Florida, 10-1, in the championship game. This year, Japan's Kawaguchi Little League is the only team with the chance to go undefeated. Kawaguchi went 3-0 in pool play with convincing victories over Russia (11-1), Mexico (6-1), and Curacao (7-2).

Venezuela was the only other undefeated team in pool play, but lost to Mexico, 11-0, in Wednesday's single-elimination opener.

Japan should have an easy time dispatching the ex-pat team from Dhahrin, Saudi Arabia, and then face Mexico for the international championship.

The pitchers from Japan have been almost perfect. Ryoya Sato pitched a no-hitter and recorded 10 strikeouts in Japan's 11-0 five-inning win against Russia in the opener. Then Yada gave up one run and allowed four hits, fanning 12, in the 6-1 win over Mexico. Go Matsumoto allowed two runs and struck out 12 batters in the 7-2 victory over defending International champion Curacao.

Japan has the tournament's only top-to-bottom power lineup. Japan hit eight home runs in its first three games. Seigo Yada hit three, producing a constant stream of Seinfeld-like yada, yada, yada jokes around the complex.

Because of its overwhelming pitching, Lemont, Illinois, appears to be the class of the American bracket. After dropping a 1-0 heartbreaker to Arizona in the opening game, Illinois beat New York, 1-0, and Georgia, 2-0. Illinois yielded a grand total of one run in its first three games.

Josh Ferry is the undisputed star of the Illinois pitching staff. He lost the opener to Arizona, 1-0, yielding just two hits and one run and fanning 11 batters. Then he won the third game of pool play, 2-0, against Georgia, allowing only one hit and striking out 13. In between, David Hearne pitched a one-hit 1-0 shutrout against new York, striking out eight batters.

A heavily favored Illinois will play Oregon for the right to play in the U.S. championship game. Meanwhile, a heavily favored team from Columbus, Georgia, will fight Portsmouth, N.H., the other U.S. title slot.

Pitching is stronger than ever because the kids are stronger than ever. Little League changed its age cutoff date this year, allowing kids who are now three-plus months past their 13th birthday to play in the international tournament.

The number of 13-year-olds has increased dramatically. This year there are 64 of them — an average of four on every team for a league officially limited to 11- and 12-year-olds. Twelve-year-olds still make up the bulk of the players — 133 in all. But the 11-year-olds have all but disappeared from the tournament (a total of six this year).

The kids are bigger and throw harder than ever before, and they're playing in a ballpark with outfield fences set back 20 feet. The fence move alone eliminates a dozen or more home runs in most games and gives the advantage to teams that can but athletic gazelles in the outfield.

Compare some stats from 2005 and 2006. In 2005, in the 24 games of pool play, eight out of 48 teams were shut out after regulation play of six innings. In 2006, 13 teams scored no runs through the first six innings. The number of sides scoring one run in regulation play jumped from three in 2005 to 11 in 2006.

I was hoping that the bigger field dimensions might prompt the pitchers to let the hitters put the ball in play. When batters hit and fielders field, pitchers throw fewer balls — and save their arms from undue strain. But no. Twenty-two pitchers struck out 10 or more batters in pool play in 2005. That's almost one per game.

Pitchers are not only throwing much harder, consistently, but they are breaking off some of the nastiest curveballs imaginable. Despite all the concern about the damage that throwing breaking balls does to young arms, the curves are coming in much harder and much more frequently this year.

Pitchers' dominance has translated into a slew of close games. The number of one-run games doubled from five to 10 from 2005 to 2006.

The closeness of the games has, in turn, ratcheted up the levels of tension and anxiety. In my three days in Williamsport, I saw much grimmer faces on the kids than in 2005. Many of the coaches — especially from New York, Illinois, and Georgia — seem positively combustible.

ESPN has captured the intensity on its broadcasts. ESPN mikes all of the managers to capture their good-natured, wise words to the teams in mound conferences and dugout huddles.

In one game, the New York manager told his players that they needed just one run to tie the game against Illinois. "One f---ing run!" shouted back one of his players — at which point, according to reports, the manager hit the kid. The New Yorkers just turned a double play and were getting ready to get their last licks in the sixth inning when the incident occurred. "Little League International was extremely disappointed in the behavior of the player and coach involved in the incident," Oz said in a statement.

Losing hurts. It always hurts, but I saw more kids crying — bawling, really — than I did last year. And those ESPN cameras are always there to record the moment.

The worst meltdown came when Staten Island ran itself out of a sixth-inning rally in its 1-0 loss to Illinois. No-hit for five and a third innings by David Hearne, Illinois started the rally when Peter Sciarillo walked to open the inning. When Frank Smith laced a sharp single to center field, Sciarillo was thrown out going to third base. Smith, thinking the game was over, started walking off the field — and got thrown out for a game-ending DP.

With the cameras humming, he cried and cried in the dugout. He was, after the game, inconsolable.

Part of the intensity of a game dominated by manchild pitchers and close games.

Guest Commentator

2006-08-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, a few words capture the essence of a big and complicated issue.

A few days ago I was a guest on The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio (now available online). We had a great discussion of Little League and the future of youth sports and childhood in America.

For me, the highlight came when Rehm read an email from a listener.

Earl Newman of Redford, Michigan, wrote the following:

"I am 70 years old. I learned to play ball from the other kids. Little League baseball did not really reach critical mass until the 1950s, too late for me. In my opinion, they ruined the game. They have taken it away from kids. They have robbed it of spontaneity. They have greatly inhibited young people's self-reliance, and I think (although I do not have the data) that fewer kids spend fewer hours actually playing the game than when I was a boy. This is not good for baseball. Uniforms, schedules, sponsorships, and adult domination are all outcomes of this movement. Perhaps it would be more fair for me to say it is [just] different from the game I knew as a kid. But in the process, although they might have added something new, they have obliterated something that was good."

This is not just a sentimental man looking back on his own carefree days. It's a strong and fair critique of what happens when we manage and control more and more aspects of children's lives.

Childhood, ideally, is about two things. It's about learning skills and it's about exploring the world.

Skills give kids the tools they need to negotiate the world. As they grow into adulthood, kids need the skills taught in schools -- reading and writing, math and science. But it's not just academic skills that matter. Sports and other extracurricular activities matter because they help kids round out their repertoire. Kids also need to learn how to get along with other people -- superiors, peers, and everyone else. They need to learn how to settle conflicts.

But skills alone cannot create a well-rounded person. Everyone also needs to embrace the spirit of exploration. And there's no time to do that like childhood, when everything is new. It's great for people to embrace goals and passions. But they can't really do it unless they've explored a whole range of possibilities.

Youth sports can be a great experience. But it's always got to be kept in perspective. Here are a few questions to ask to decide whether it's in fact kept in perspective:

-- Does the young athlete participate in a wide range of activitiies besides baseball?
-- Does s/he have lots of free time -- with only loose supervision by adults -- to explore a wide range of activities?
-- Does the child play games -- with made-up rules -- with other kids in school and in the neighborhood?
-- Does involvement in a sports team shut off other opportunities that s/he might otherwise consider?
-- Do the adults supervising the sports team show, by both word and deed, that playing is what matters -- not winning?
-- Are the lesser kids on the team embraced as enthusiastically as the stars?
-- Who are the kid's real, everfyday role models -- a sports star or someone in the circle of family and friends?

This is not intended to put down Little League or other organized sports. Sports can play a great role in the lives of children. But when it becomes something more than a game -- especially at the tender age of 11 or 12, or even the teenage years -- something basic is missing.

Honoring Lloyd McClendon

2006-08-24T04:17:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Little League will induct Lloyd McClendon into the Hall of Excellence at its museum. The organization has chosen wisely.

Before the 2005, the greatest Little League World Series took place in 1971. That's when McClendon, a strapping kid from Gary, Indiana, took on the the perrennial powerhouse team from Taiwan in the championship game.

The Gary all-stars were the only black team to advance to the championship game in Little League history. And they faced as tough a team as anyone ever has. Asian teams so dominated the LLWS that foreign teams were actally banned from the tournamenbt one year. Taiwan and Japan won eleven titles over a fifteen-year period from 1967 to 1981.

Gary and Taiwan fought to a draw for eight innings, two past regulation.

McClendon was 12 when he took the mound to face Taiwan on August 28, 1971. A pitcher/catcher for the Anderson Little League all-stars, McClendon stood 5-11 and dominated the tournament like no player before or since—until the last inning of the final game.

McClendon hit two home runs in Gary’s first two games. After that, the opposing pitcher walked him intentionally. Taiwan’s pitcher, Hsu Chin-Mu pitched to McClendon in the first inning, and McClendon hit a three-run home run. After that, Taiwan refused to let him hit. By the end of the series, McClendon had five homers in five at-bats and five intentional walks.

McClendon also pitched for Gary. At the end of the regulation six innings, Gary and Taiwan’s Chiaya Little League were tied, 3-3. McClendon stayed in the game and held Tawan’s scoreless for two more innings.

McClendon’s pitching form was almost perfect. He kicked his leg high, contained his body’s energy on his strong left leg, reared back and whipped the ball forward. Landing on the mound, he looked like the dominant pitchers of the day, Bob Gibson or Steve Carlton.

But in the top of the ninth inning, everything went wrong for McClendon and his Gary teammates. Taiwan scored nine runs to take a 12-3 lead. McClendon gave up seven of those runs before he asked to be removed.

Overall, fourteen Taiwan batters came to the plate in the inning and got six hits and four walks. But four fielding miscues and nine passed balls produced a merry-go-round that brought most of the baserunners home.

As the runs poured across the plate, McClendon stood on the mound in tears.

I called McClendon last summer when I was doing research for Little League, Big Dreams. At the time, McClendon was the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“That was a very profound thing,” he told me. “I felt so bad about what happened. But it was an important moment for me. It was important to understand that you’re just a boy and there’s only so much you can do. There were so many people there who thought I could do anything, that I was somehow a god. But I wasn’t.

“I was a kid, and crying was how I expressed my feelings. Losing the game like that was a defining moment for me. I was very blessed to have a great coach and my father on the sidelines. They told me they were proud of me and I had done the best I could and that was all that mattered. They told me to hold my head high, there was nothing to be ashamed of. I was very disappointed to see things fall apart. It was the first time I ever failed at baseball.

“It was the defining moment in my life at that point. I see so many parents put undue pressure on their kids to win at all costs these days. I find it shameful. That moment is something I could never forget. When I talk to young people at clinics, I make a point to tell them about the time I lost that game. I especially want the parents to hear it.”

Despite the breakdown on the mound, scouts and family members thought McClendon’s best skill in baseball was pitching. But he thought otherwise.

“I had a passion for playing every day so I wanted to be a position player, I wanted to bat,” he says. “It was always a much-debated topic in my family whether I should be a pitcher, but I never wanted to. My decision was absolutely clear and final. I have never regretted it over the years. I wanted to be an everyday ballplayer.”

When McClendon grew up, he played nine seasons in the major leagues with the Giants, Cubs, and Pirates. He also managed the Pirates for five years. Years later, McClendon remembers being devastated by the loss but retains a kaleidoscope of positive memories of the experience.

McClendon remember most the words on Mickey Mantle, ABC’s color commentator for the game.

“Today, I saw a young man become a boy again,” Mantle said.

LL Needs Bigger Fields

2006-08-24T03:56:00.000-07:00

This year's Little League World Series is off to a great start — but still carries all of the problems that plague youth sports.

The games have tended to be crisp matches between well-matched teams. Before it's over, we'll have more shutouts than ever. The kids playing the games and the fans watching on TV are getting a lesson in what makes baseball great — pitching and defense.

Loud home runs can be plenty exciting. Especially at this level — when kids swing at balls humming at a major-league equivalent of over 100 miles an hour, on occasion — even getting a bat on the ball is a wonder. But the kids do it. They see the ball tumbling out of the pitcher's hand and make a guess about what kind of pitch it is and where it's going.

But the 2-0 or 1-0 game is much more exciting. And Little League owes much of the excitement to its decision to extend the outfield fences 20 feet, from 205 to 225 feet from home plate.

As I write this, eight games have been shutouts, 15 games have held one of the teams to one run, and five games have held one of the teams to two runs.

In the games I saw — in person at Williamsport and on TV — those extended fences have kept a half dozen or more balls in the park every game.

In the game between Curacao and Russia, the very first two outs of the game came on long fly balls that went far beyond the old fence. On the first play, the left fielder ran like a deer across the grass before catching up with the ball. On the next play, the centerfielder ran almost as far and reached over the fence to pull the ball in.

As expected, Curacao went on to pound Russia. But that display of fielding — the pure joy of watching young athletes run hard over long distances in pursuit of the ball — gave the games an excitement that cheap home runs would not allow.

Another factor behind the low-scoring games: Little League's change in the cutoff date for eligibility. Until this year, if a kid turned 13 after April 30, he was ineligible to play in the summer of tournaments leading to the Little League World Series. Starting this year, July 31 is the date. That means not only lots more 13-year-olds, but also a lot fewer 11-year-olds.

Pitchers enjoy the biggest advantage as the game shifts to an older bunch of kids. The pitchers this year look a lot bigger and stronger than in years past. And to think that everyone in Williamsport was buzzing last year about ONE kid with facial hair!

But there's a problem here that Little League needs to address. The kids have simply outgrown the diamond. The dimensions of the Little League field were set in 1939, when a kindly clerk named Carl Stotz founded the organization. Stotz took a bunch of the kids from the neighborhood to a field to lay out a diamond suitable for little guys. In those early days, the league included much younger kids — 8 or 9 years old — as well as 10-, 11-, and 12-year-olds.

The PONY League, another community-based organization, gradually increases the size of the diamonds. Kids now playing in the Little League World Series play on 70-foot bases in the PONY tournaments.

Little League officials say that retrofitting Little League diamonds to adjust for the growth in kids would cost too much money. But something awful is waiting to happen. Either a hitter's going to get seriously hurt with a pitch or a pitcher's going to get seriously hurt with a line drive up the middle. Can you spell lawsuit?

Safety concerns should be the primary reason for changing the field size. But the overall game would improve with bigger diamonds. The pitchers would be more willing to let the hitters put the ball in play, which would reduce pitch counts and longterm injuries. Fielders would play a more important role. Baserunning would become more skilled and important.

Little League has to find a way to update its game. Moving the fences was a good first step. But updating the whole field is an essential next step.

Two Schools of Thought on Pitching

2006-08-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, I went to a vintage base ball game in Westfield, Connecticut. The Westfield Wheelmen played the Hartford Senators on Adonis Terry Day.

As many as 200 vintage teams have arisen in the last quarter century. Usually playing according to the rules of the 1860s and 1880s, the teams take you back to baseball's formative years. In the game I saw, players used leather the size of gardeners gloves. They swung big bats -- usually around 40 ounces -- and hit balls that didn't have the hard rubber core that makes today's hits go so far.

It was a refreshing game. Even though most players don't have extraordinary physical abilities, they have more physical toughness. When you catch a sizzling liner down the third base line, your hand stings for days. That's a lot harder to do than extending a basket-sized glove to swallow the ball.

The day's highlight was meeting Jim Bouton, the rebel who had as much effect on the culture of baseball than anyone else in our lifetime. Bouton's Ball Four was a seminal book that ripped the mask of heroism off the face of baseball.

Before the game, I took a couple of Little Leaguers up to Bouton and asked how young kids should approach pitching.

"What you have to do is find out your own style," he said. "Everyone has their own pitching style. You have do some things a certain way, but mostly you have to find your own motion. Coaches don't let pitchers do that any more. They think you have to [conform] to some mechanical way of doing things. But people are different, and kids are still growing. They can't be forced into doing something that doesn't feel right."

How do you figure out the right pitching motion, Jim?

"Easy! Long tossing. You stand as far as you can from a friend and throw the ball to hm. Play catch, that's all. You throw so it's nice and easy, so you can reach him and hit him in the belly-button. And then once you've done long tossing for a while, you start to come closer and closer. When you get 50 feet away, that's your pitching motion."

Jim Bouton, once baseball's great rebel, is not a traditionalist. Don't tell me about biomechanics, he says. Just learn how to throw in as natural a way as possible.

"Throw as much as you can," he says. What about throwing too much? What about arm injuries. "Look, you're going to have a sore arm 500 times, if you're lucky. You're going to hurt your arm. But that's how you learn how to deal with it. That's how you get stronger."

The Bouton way, in effect, is to learn how to throw rather than learn how to pitch. A lot of baseball gurus say it should be the other way around -- that instead of "just" throwing, a kid has to learn how to pitch. That means using a proper motion, painting the corners, developing a repertoire of pitches, and so on.

The scientists of the game are taking pitching in a different direction. Led by the American Sports Medicine Institute, coaches and doctors are learning about the intricate "kinetic chain" of a pitcher's motion. They want the pitcher to go through a specific sequence of movements -- lifting the front leg (to create energy), maintaining balance (to prevent the dissipation of energy and bad mechanics), raring back (to start to use the energy), rotating the hips and torso forward (to power the bodyt forward), whipping the ball forward (using the energy thrust the ball forward with as much force and as little damage to the joints as possible), landing on the front foot the right way (to absorb the shock of the motion).

(I discuss this kinetic chain in my book The Last Nine Innings. Order the book today!)

The ASMI has been working with Little League to study the impact of throwing on the young pitcher's arm -- most particularly, the shoulder and elbow. ASMI has found that the cumulative stress of throwing can cause serious injuries. ASMI does not make hard and fast claims about the effects of throwing curveballs, but its research tsar, Glenn Fleisig, says there's reason to suspect that curveballs can damage young arms.

That is the crux of today's debate about youth pitching. Traditionalists like Jim Bouton say kids should just throw, throw, throw. Play all day till you're tired, then stop. You might call that the Sandlot School of Pitching. Scientists like Glenn Fleisig say, wait a minute, kids play organized ball these days. And in leagues and tournaments, the strain of pitching -- not just throwing, but pitching -- can cause serious injuries with overuse and bad mechanics. So you need some rules and regulations to protect the kids. Call that the Scientific School of Pitching.

The debate is critical to the future of youth baseball. As an excellent article in Friday's USA Today notes, Little League Baseball seems poised to adopt a pitch-count rule for the 2007 or 2008 season and Little League's summer tournaments.

Note to coaches: What's your experience? Email me at euchner@gmail.com with your responses.

Who's Not Here and Why? One Story

2006-08-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

Before every Little League tournament game, players and parents walk on the field and recite the Little League Pledge. Kind of corny, I know, but not a bad sentiment if backed up by action. The pledge reads:

I trust in God
 I love my country
 And will respect its laws.
 I will play fair
 And strive to win
 But win or lose,
I will always do my best

Take special note of the "play fair" and "strive to win" parts, the casualties when the adults maneuver for angles to win without really winning.

Amy Wheelus, a coach with the Buckhead Little League wrote to me with a distressing tale about a game with the Warner Robins Little League in the Georgia state tournament. Buckhead carried 13 players—rather than 12, as many teams do—to give an extra kid the experience of tournament play. A technical violation in using that kid cost Buckhead a forfeit.

With an 0-0 score going into the bottom of the sixth inning, Buckhead tried to get something going with a bunt. But after falling behind in the count 0-2, the Warner Robins coaches held a meeting on the mound. What followed was along series of wild pitches. After that batter walked, Buckhead sent its 13th player to the plate for his mandatory at-bat. Then things got really screwy. Warner Robins started throwing wild pitches to get Buckhead’s baserunner home. The runner advanced to second and then third.

What was going on? The Buckhead folks guessed that Warner Robins might be trying to let Buckhead have the run, so the batter couldn't finish his turn at plate. If that batter did not complete his at-bat, Buckhead would be in violation of the must-play rule and forced to forfeit the game.

But the runner finally scored on ball four. With the walk, the last hitter completed his at-bat. Whew. Buckhead could go home a winner.

But Warner Robins protested—not that the 13th kid didn’t finish his at bat, but that another kid didn’t start a plate appearance with a fresh 0-0 count back in the fifth inning.

Here's what happened earlier in the game. After completing a triple play in the top of the fifth inning, the Buckhead guys were so excited that the coaches momentarily forgot to substitute one batter, who needed his mandatory turn at rthe plate, for another.

"As the first pitch came to the plate, I though, 'Uh oh, we forgot to send the other player in,'" Coach Amy told me. "I immediately went to the plate and put the new hitter up there."

The temporartily forgotten kid went to the plate with an 0-1 count. He finished the at-bat with a strikeout. No one protested the move at that point.

“We thought we had caught it in time and corrected the error," Wheelus says. "It was purely that a mistake by us, the coaching staff.”

But the Little League rule states that for an at-bat to count for mandatory play, it must start with a 0-0 count. So Warner Robins protested to the Little League poobahs in Williamsport. The poohbahs ruled that Buckhead violated the rule and so Warner Robins should get the victory by forfeit.

I called Mickey Lay, the president of the Warner Robins Little League, to see if he had any second thoughts about winning that way with a forfeit.

"Absolutely not," he said. "There should be no slack at all because the rule was clear. If the rule was vague, it would be something to look at. But because the rule was black and white, it was the right thing.

"I believe the mandatory play rule is very important and should be implemented. It's up to the manager to make sure that every child plays. If you know you're going to win in a shortened game, you have to get the players in early. To win this way [with a forfeit] is tough, but the rules are clear."

Even if the team makes a mistake and immediately tries to correct it?

"Absolutely," Lay responds.

Little League allows players who accidentally bat out of order to fix the situation on the spot. Seems to me that the organization ought to allow some slack in this situation as well.

Quick reminder: This is a game. A game for kids.

But there's something else smelly going on here. If Warner Robins had not taken a dive in the sixth inning, Buckhead probably would not have taken the lead. And so that kid who started his AB with an 0-1 count would have gotten to the plate again in the seventh inning.

Little League rules state that teams have to try to win. They cannot roll over for the sake of getting a better matchup in the later stages of a tournament -- or for any other reason. But the Little League potentates ruled for Warner Robins anyway. The word was that the technical violation of starting an at-bat with an 0-1 count is more compelling than a team trying to lose. Why? Because determining whether someone took a dive is a "judgment call."

Well, baseball is full of judgment calls that matter. Virtually every call an umpire makes is a judgment call. That's part of the game's beauty.

Wheelus was so passionate, I’d like to let her complete the story:

“I accept that we made a mistake – and by the ‘letter of the law’ we should be penalized. But what I can't accept is that the team from WR was allowed to intentionally shorten the game and potentially keep our player from getting that official at-bat. There was no reason to think that we were going to score in the bottom of the sixth and if we hadn't, the player would have been up in the seventh.”

“How can LL allow something like this to occur and be rewarded? How could that manager take that game out of his kids’ hands? They had played the best game of their lives and what did he tell them? I don't think you can win this on the field, so let’s ‘throw the game’ so that we can win it on protest?”

“Our players handled it with grace, but they felt cheated and betrayed. The kid that was the runner on base at the end of the game was mad several days later because he felt like the other team was mocking him by allowing him to advance and think that he won the game. We are now several weeks after the event and our players are still upset because they will never know what would have happened if the game had continued. Both teams advanced to semi-finals and we lost to Northern in the semis.

“We wrote a letter to LL asking them to evaluate the situation which goes against their published tournament policy but to our knowledge, they did not even investigate the situation. St. Pete and Williamsport would not even talk to our manager and get his side of the story. We provided the names of the umpire and several other managers who were in attendance and witnessed the situation, but none of them were contacted.

“LL has gotten to the point of being so bureaucratic in an attempt to protect the players that they have allowed a group of players to have the best game of their lives turned into a mockery by their coaches.”

That runner on the bases suffered more than his share of the dirty tricks. That player Rivers Patterson, was the batter who went to the plate in the fifth before getting pulled back. And then he scored the presumptive winning run in the sixth as a special pinch runner. Amy Wheelus emphasizes that he didn't make any mistake. The coaches forgot to pull him before he walked to the plate. Don;t blame him -- or any kid, for that matter.

One Buckhead mother put the matter into perspective.

"You know," she told Coach Amy, "this has given us a chance to talk to the kids about something that otherwise might not come up. It's an opportunity to teach about playing the game the right way."

Clip and Save

2006-08-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

Tom Verducci is probably the best pure baseball writer in the business these days.

His Sports Illustrated cover story on spring training with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2005—when he worked out with the team for a week—clinched the Best Baseball Writer title.

Verducci has an athlete’s understanding of the game’s physical and mental experiences. But he also has a fan’s enthusiasm and an analyst’s detachment and ability to find the game's hidden patterns.

And now he’s into coaching. Click on to SI.com for Verducci’s lessons from a summer of coaching Cal Ripken Baseball.

In 1,178 words, Verducci manages to convey everything you need to know about youth sports. Get the story, print it out, and refer to it when you’re watching this year’s Little League World Series—or any other sporting event, for that matter.

Images of the 2005 Little League World Series

2006-08-16T07:13:00.000-07:00

When I decided to write Little League, Big Dreams, I asked my friend Isabel Chenoweth to come along. Isabel is an award-winning photographer whose images provide documentary coverage of all kinds of issues and events.

A couple of years ago Isabel explored the design and conditions of Boston's neighborhood parks. She's working on a series of portraits of all of the women judges in the state of Connecticut. For years, she's been pulling together stories and images from a Tennessee town called Beersheba Springs, where her family has been going for generations. She also covers weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs. And she took some pictures for my book The Last Nine Innings.

So when Isabel agreed to join me in Williamsport for the 2005 Little League World Series, I was thrilled. Little League, Big Dreams includes 96 of her images.

What I like about these images is how different they are from a lot of sports photography. She went to Williamsport to cover the phenomenon of the Little League World Series, not just the games. As a result, she has captured a bigger story about childhood in America in the early 21st century.

Isabel's baseball photography -- not just the LLWS, but also shots from major leagues and from vintage base ball -- will be on display at the Loudoun County Public Library in Virginia for the months of September and October. If you're in the area, stop by and have a look. I will be speaking at the library on September 17.

Meanwhile, take a moment now to look at some of Isabel Chenoweth's coverage of youth baseball. And if you want to see more great work go to her web site, www.icportraits.com

Catch Me If You Can

2006-08-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

Every summer, Little League officialdom and countless Williamsport-hungry teams play the roles of Carl Hanratty and Frank Abagnale Jr. in the movie "Catch Me If You Can."

Hanratty was the FBI investigator, played by Tom Hanks, who chased down con artists who passed bad checks and made counterfeit money and documents. Abagnale was the precocious con man, played by Leonardo DeCaprio, who pretended to be a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer -- and, for his effort, raked in millions of dollars through counterfeit checks.

For years, Hanratty chased across the globe, often just missing his prey by minutes and clever slights of hand. However clever Hanratty was, Abagnale was much more clever.

Countless Little League all-star teams play the Abagnale role, slipping around the rules of eligibility in order to pursue the televised glory of playing in the Little League World Series. You know the most famous case of cheating. Danny Almonte, a kid who pitched a perfect game in the Little League World Series for a Bronx Little League team, only to be found a fraud by Sports Illustrated and other publications.

Almonte's fraud was manyfold. Not only was he two years older than Little League's official age limit of 12. (At the time, players had to be 12 on July 31 to be eligible for the Williamsport jamboree. Starting this year, kids have to be 12 on April 30 to be eligible.) He was also not a regular Participant in the paulino Little League that fielded the all-star team -- and he did not even live in the neighborhood where the league was based.

Last summer, the Altagracia Little League won the Venezuela national tournament and the latin America tournament -- and a trip to Williamsport -- before proof of a star player's age fraud. Seems that overage player was using his younger brother's birth records as proof of eligibility. For punishment, Little League Baseball disqualified Altagracia just before the teams gathered in Pennsylvania for the World Series. (For more details, read my Little League, Big Dreams.

But skirting the Little League rules -- or at least, the sprit of the rulkes -- requires a little more clever gambit these days.

The modern technique for bringing ringers to the Little League tournaments is to create an elite team outside Little League, play against the best teams anywhere, and then all sign up for Little League when all the kids are 12. Then you have a powerhouse that is capable of blowing out the leagues that play by the spirit of Little League -- in which any kid can play and leagues assemble all-star teams from their big cast of players.

One of many, many examples: The Maitland Little League's 2005 all-star team -- which made it to the Little League World Series -- was comprised exclusively of players from the Maitland Pride. The Pride was a travel team that Dante Bichette, a retired big-league star, formed a year before. The Pride played top-flight travel teams, going 24-7 to prepare for Little League competition.

Little Leagues and their coaches sometimes have a hard time figuring out what to do. Little League baseball forbids forming teams before June 15. That's so some teams don;t have an advantage playing and practicing together. The Paramus Patriots -- a travel team whose players also competed in the Paramus, N.J., Little League -- wanted to play in a prestigious Sports at the Beach tournament in Rehobeth, Delaware. But Little League officials balked when John Tenhove, the coach for both the Little League and travel teams, asked for the OK to go to Delaware before June 15.

Paramus Little League's all-star teams dropped out of the Little League tournaments so they could go to Delaware. Later they found out that one of their rivals from Newtown, Pennsylvania, competed in both. Since they kept their books separately, the two teams were not legally one and the same.

"The rule is full of loopholes," Little League CEO Steve keener told me. "It's how you beat the system."

The People Have Spoken

2006-08-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

In the New England regional tournament in Bristol, Connecticut, as punishment for not getting all of its players their minimum playing time, the team from Colchester, Vermont, forfeited a big game to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Portsmouth then won the New England regional tournament -- and a berth in the Little League World Series in Williamsport.

Colchester waited too long to get one of its kids up to the plate. Leading by 9-7 going into the top of the sixth inning, Colchester tried to get Portsmouth to score a couple runs to tie the score -- so that Colchester would bat in the bottom of the inning and the lost child could bat. Problem was, Portsmouth was on to the trick and refused to score more than one run. Colchester led 9-8 after five and a half innings, and so did not get a chance to bat again. Little League headquarters gave Portsmouth a 6-0 forfeit because Colchester couldn't get get its last kid to the plate.

This is, to say the least, perverse. Both sides were trying to fail, so that they would win.

I asked readers what the right approach to the problem would be. Here's a sampling of answers:

LET 'EM TIE THE GAME, THEN WIN: Personally, if I was coaching the NH team, I would let them give away the lead, then I would call my team together and say "Now, we're going to win this on the field." The punishment for not playing the kid was losing their lead. Now, my team would have a shot to win the game. I think the New Hampshire coach was just as bad for not allowing his kids to play ball. He should have been ejected as well for making a travesty of the game.

LET THE KIDS WORK IT OUT: I would have let the kids sovled this issued along with some direction or confirmation from the umpires and coaches. Your book really opened my eyes to these issues and I have noticed in all of the regionals that the adults and media are very much a part of the game and have a significant impact.

GET RID OF MINIMUM PLAY RULES: The problem is the LL rules. "Must play" rules are great for the regular season but should be dropped for the tournaments. Each team should be limited to a 12 man roster and leave it up to coaches who to play. Parents and players would know going in what the situation is. Presumably, all twelve players would have something to contribute and would see some playing time during any tournament. This is already the case in LL Seniors Tournaments. Why not make it universal and avoid these situations?

NO, KEEP THE MUST-PLAY RULE: That's a really unfortunate scenario, but the "everybody gets to play rule" should still be a cardinal rule for tournaments. As it is, the rule is relaxed somewhat for tournaments to one defensive inning rather than the regular season two innings. The principle is extremely important: everybody has a role to play in the team's success. This summer my 9-10 all-star team faced an opponent team that had a substitute/non-starting player hit a three-run homer over the fence. Tough experience for our team, but what a memory for that player and that team. Many great teams have superb depth throughout the line-up and don't just rely on a core set of dominant players.

On balance the fault here inevitably and overwhelmingly falls on the Vermont coaches. Especially with so much on the line in these regional games the coaches need to make substitutions early, even as early as the second or third inning if possible (no later than the fourth inning) to ensure that a scenario like this does not develop. With nine runs on the board, it seems unlikely to me that there weren't ample opportunities available to Vermont to make the appropriate substitutions earlier.

DON'T CUT THE VERMONT COACH SLACK: I don't accept the premise of your theory or question. Being a Little League president and coach for 13 years my guess is the reason he didn't get the kid in is not that he forgot. It probably was because it was a tight game and he didn't want to sub at that point. There's no reason a coach that made it to the region final should ever fall into this situation. I'd accept this happening in a district game were you have coaches who don't know or understand the rules. Why do you think it's happening so much in the regions? The coaches are holding back, gambling. When you gamble you lose sometimes. As someone who's coached 6 district teams, 4 advancing to state, I don't believe any of these coaches forgot.

CHARLIE EUCHNER'S RESPONSE: I like the idea of leaving it to the kids to sort things out. It's a travesty for both teams to try to fail, and it's an even further travesty for issues like this to be settled through bureaucratic fiat. Maybe the kids should come up with a solution to submit to the umpire for a final decision.

One approach familiar to kids in pickup games is to have a do-over. If Colchester took a two-run lead in the fifth, why not wipe it off the books and play the inning over? Of course, this option should not be available to a team losing in the game. You say it's too soft a response to a rule infraction? I say, remember this is a game for kids.

Then there's the hockey approach: A power play. When a player commits an infraction from an NHL game, the response is to give a very real advantage to the other side by removing the player from the ice. Why can't baseball handicap the team responsible for a SNAFU, innocent or not? This is radical, I know, but when a team like Vermont goofs and you need a do-over, maybe they should get only two outs in the inning or two strikes at the plate. (I've always thought that major-league teams arguing with umps should be undermanned after the player gets ejected. I don;t care about all the "tradition" claptrap. Screaming and kicking dirt is a stupid waste of time and an insult to everyone in the stadium.)

I don't agree with scotching the minimum-play rule for the summer tournaments. Little League has already been compromised enough by the do-anything-to-win mentality. Let all the kids play. Quite simply, does the game exist for all the kids or for the adults to mastermind victories?

I agree with the comment that managers have to work harder to get all their kids in the game. In two regional final games -- the Alaska-Oregon finale in Northwest region and the Louisiana-Mississippi finale in the Southwest -- the managers tempted fate by waiting until the last inning for minimum-play substitutions. Come on, guys. If all the kids were good enough to make the team, get them in the game. You send an ugly message to the kid when you are so reluctant to use him that you risk a forfeit.

Last year, a kid named Michael Mowatt was a reserve player for the whole summer of qualifying tournaments for Maine. So what did he do in the Little League World Series? He hit two homers and led all players in slugging percentage.

Cheers and Jeers

2006-08-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

As the regional tournaments draw to a close, some cheers and jeers for the winners and sinners of the Little League World Series qualifying competitions:

CHEER to Lloyd McClendon, the star of the 1971 Gary, Indiana, team. Thirty-five years ago, this young stud hit five home runs in five at bats and was the pitching star of the team as well. McClendon and his Gary teammates pushed the Taiwan dynasty to the first extra inning game in LLWS history before melting down in the ninth inning. McClendon went on to a good major league career as a player, coach, and manager. He's a good guy who will be honored this year when Little League inducts him into its Hall of Excellence.

JEER to the managers who wait until the last minute to use all their players. Two managers threatened their teams' chances by waiting until their last turns at the plate to use their reserve players. Teams that do not use all their players for one at-bat and one inning in the field automatically forfeit the game.

But the managers of the South Charles Lake (Louisiana) and Dimond-West (Alaska) tempted fate. South lake Charles was leading the team from D'lberville, Mississippi, 1-0, when it batted in the bottom of the fifth. Even though three players still had not batted, South Charles Lake still did not use the reserves right away -- and only got them all in the game when a batter reached base. If The Louisianans went down 1-2-3 in the inning and retired Mississippi in the top of the sixth, they would have ended the game with a 1-0 lead -- and then lost by a 6-0 forfeit. Alaska was also leading in the sixth inning without having played all of its reserves. Only Murrayhill, Oregon's comeback prevented a forfeit. We all know what happens when teams don't use all their players. Bureaucrats rule and controversy ensues.

CHEER to Little League Baseball, for its study of pitch counts. For years, Little League has limited the number of innings pitchers can throw. But this year, the Williamsport organization conducted a study of pitch counts. Some 500 leagues participated in the program. Many insiders believe that Little League will adopt the pitch-count rules for its tournaments as soon as next year.

To me, it's a no-brainer to limit pitches. The American Sports Medicine Institute has documented that throwing more than 75 pitches in a game imperils a pitcher's short- and long-term health. Last year, nine pitchers threw more than 100 pitches in the LLWS -- and one, Martin Cornieles of Venezuela, threw 137. That is abuse. The one potential SNAFU is if opposing teams run pitch counts deep to get top pitchers out of the game. But smart coaches and pitchers will respond to that by getting hitters to put the ball into play rather than going for strikeouts all game long.

JEER to broadcasters who shamelessly extol the virtues of corporate sponsors. Yeah, I know, they pay for their sponsorships. But there are limits. The ESPN broadcasters for the Oregon-Alaska Northwest regional championship game were drooling at Nike's sponsorship of the hometown Little Leaguers, zooming in on the swoosh on the players' uniforms.

CHEER to parents who draw a line to protect their kids' physical wellbeing. Coaches come under incredible pressure to abuse their pitchers by throwing too many many pitches or using the curveball. The only real recourse is for parents to draw a bold line. Joe Daugherty, the father of a player from Owensboro, Kentucky in 2004 and 2005, set firm rules for his kid Luke. Joe came under pressure from coaches and other parents, but he always said no to requests for pushing Luke beyond his limits. We need more Joe Daughertys in youth sports -- parents willing to take a stand whatever the pressures.

JEER to teams that don't bring all 14 eligible players to Little League World Series tournaments. Teams have the option of bringing 12, 13, or 14 players to the LLWS tournaments. Most American teams use 12, while most foreign teams use 14. Come on, America! use all the kids you can! You're always making excuses for overusing pitchers. If you had all 14 players on the team, you could spread out the pitching burden. More important, you could give the ultimate Little League experience to two more kids. People associated with the LLWS seem to think that it's OK to limit the number of players on the team. One ESPN announcer talked about how lucky one team was when one of its players broke an arm. Now they won't have to get 'em all in the game, he explained. Kind of sick, no?

000 000

2006-08-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

With only one berth in the Little League World Series left to be settled -- Staten Island, N.Y., plays Livingston, N.J., tonight for the Mid-Atlantic regional championship -- one fact stares out from the qualifying tournaments so far.

Pitchers have been dominant in the title games for the Little League regional championships.

In the seven title games in the U.S. so far, five teams have won with shutouts. Not just any old shutout, either. Dominant shutouts, with devastating pitching. Pitchers have regularly clocked near 80 miles and hour and displayed hard curveballs.

Remember, withy the smaller fields used for Little League -- the bases are 60 feet apart, compared with 90 feet for regulation fields; pitching mounds are 46 feet from the plate, compared with 60 feet, six inches on standard fields -- hitters have much less time to react. An 80-.m.p.h. pitch gives a Little League batter as much/little time to react as a 104-m.p.h. pitch gives a major league batter.

In his prime, Nolan Ryan occasionally hit over 100 m.p.h. Billy Wagner of the Mets sometimes hits 100, when he's really smoking.

Every year, a handful of power pitchers dominate the Little League World Series. Last year, the star of the Early Show was Kalen Pimentel, the California ace who struck out all 18 batters he faced in the team's opener against Kentucky. Other dominant pitchers included Alaka'i Aglipay and Vonn Fe'ao of Hawaii, Dante Bichette Jr., of Florida, Trae Santos of Guam, Takuya Sakamoto and Yusuke Taira of Japan, Jace Conrad (Louisiana), Sorick Liberia and Jurickson Profar of Curacao, and Keith Terry of Pennsylvania.

But this year, the pitchers might be even more dominant. Starting this year, Little League changed the cutoff date for eligibility in this tournament for 11- and 12-year-olds. From 1947 through 2005, players who were 12 on July 31 were eligible for LLWS competition. This year, players who were 12 on April 30 are eligible to play.

That means that there are going to be a lot more 13-year-olds in the tournament. Older pitchers probably have the advantage over older hitters.

Just by looking at the final regional championship games with shutouts, we can start to look for the dominant players in this year's Little League World Series.

Pitchers and hitters face a new challenge in the LLWS this year. Little League pushed the fences back 20 feet -- from 205 to 225. Balls hit for home runs last year could be fly balls this year. That creates an incentive for pitchers to let the hitters put the bat on the ball. If they can get hitters to put more balls in play, the best pitchers can keep their pitch counts low -- and be available to help their teams with a few extra innings.

The question is: Will the pitchers and their managers have the gumption to get away from the power game? Or will they want to keep smoking the ball past hitters?

A region-by-region rundown of the title game shootouts shows some of the pitchers to watch in the 60th Little League World Series:

SOUTHWEST -- South Lake Charles (Louisiana) 1, D'lberville (Mississippi) 0. Nick Zaunbrecher struck out eight batters to bring a Cajun team to Williamsport for the second straight year.

NEW ENGLAND -- Portsmouth (New Hampshire) 3, Glastonbury (Connecticut), 0. Jordan Bean struck out 13 batters and allowed only three hits en route to the win.

MIDWEST -- Columbia (Missouri) 2, Davis County (Iowa) 0. Ryan Phillips struck out 14 hitters, at one point fanning eight straight batters, in his second dominant game against Iowa. In their first meeting, Phillips pitched a five-inning no hitter.

SOUTHEAST -- Columbus (Georgia) 5, Dunedin (Florida) 0. Kyle Carter struck out 14 batters in his five-hit shutout.

GREAT LAKES -- Lemont (Illinois) 3, New Castle (Indiana) 0. David Hearne fanned 11 batters and allowed just two hits.

Who's a Great Coach? Two Profiles

2006-08-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

What makes a great coach?

As thousands of teams vie for the chance to play in the Little League World Series next month in Williamsport, that's the question that parents and kids are asking themselves.

When I covered youth baseball last summer when researching Little League, Big Dreams, I got to know a broad and diverse bunch. In their day jobs, they did everything imaginable. The 2006 Little League World Series included a banker, truck driver, teacher, electrician, phone company retiree, and pizzeria owner. The assistant coaches for the team from Maitland, Florida, had a couple former major leaguers, Dante Bichette and Mike Stanley.

Before anything else, a great coach is a great teacher. He's someone who finds a way to get a group of 12 to 14 pre-teens to focus on the job of becoming better baseball players.

A great coach teaches kids how to get around on fastballs with major-league equivalents of 90, 95, even 100 miles an hour. he teaches them how to pick up a pitch as it comes out of the pitcher's hand.

A great coach also teaches how to play in the field. He finds the right position for all the kids. He teaches kids how to play together. He develops a pitching staff at least five players deep. He teaches those pitchers to get the other side to put the ball in play, rather than gunning for strikeouts.

Before a coach can do any of this, he needs to get the attention of the palyers. Anyone who has worked with kids -- in the classroom, on the field, at camp -- knows that the first few days and weeks are critical. If the coach wants to be a pal, he risks losing the kids for the rest of the summer. But if he comes across like a colonel, barking orders and making sacrifices of kids, he creates an environemnt that drains all the fun out of the game.

Two coaches impressed me more than anyone else in the 2005 Little League World Series -- Layton Aliviado of the West Oahu Little League in Hawaii and Rich Knight of the Westbrook Little League in Maine.

Aliviado is a fortysomething truck driver, a lifelong Hawaiian who spent years buiilding his team. He worked his players hard, with practices six days a week, lasting four hours or more, all summer long. Aliviado developed a training regimen that started with building strength in the legs, moved toward field skill drills, and ended with situational training.

Aliviado's answer any time one of his players started goofing off was to have the whole team run . . and run and run and run. By the time the team started its summer of tournaments, the team was strong. The Hawaiians were the only team that did not wilt or break down during the World Series.

But don't think Aliviado's approach was all about hard work. The kids and their families socialized after virtually every practice and game. When one of the coaches had to undergo chemo for testicular cancer, everyone pitched in to help out. I spent a week in Hawaii with the team's players and families and was impressed at how tightknit they were.

But what I like the most about Aliviado was his simple decency. He's a quiet guy, not a speaker. But wherever he went, kids clustered around him for guidance. He worked them hard and then let them play. When things went wropng on the field, he told his kids to just have fun and play hard. They were loose all the way.

Jerome Williams, now a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, is Aliviado's most famous player. Williams played for Aliviado's PONY League team more than a decade ago. Williams, a black, struggled to deal with racist garbage from other teams. Aliviado told him, in his quiet way, to ignore the slurs and concentrate on his game. Sometimes only a coach can tell a kid something like that.

My other favorite coach, Rich Knight, was much different. Knight started coaching when his company, Verizon, offered time out to employees to do community work. He had no kids, but threw himself into coaching. He takes kids to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox. For years he took kids to Williamsport to watch the Little League World Series.

Knight's Westbrook all stars made it to Williamsport in 2005, defeating better-regarded teams from Toms River, N.J., and Farmington, Conn. Maine lost its first three teams at the New England regional tournament but survived pool play and got hot at the right time.

The Mainers were not as big and strong as other teams in Williamsport. But theyb played a sound game on defense and got good pitching most of the time. They could have won all of their games in Williamsport. They ended up going 1-2, but they impressed everyone.

One of Maine's bench players was a shy, homesick kid named Michael Mowatt. For the better partv of the summer, he sat on the bench. When the team arrived in Williamsport, Mowatt got sick. He kept throwing up. A nurse suggested he was homesick. Knight offered to drive him back to Maine. The idea that he could go home if he wanted relaxed him.

And he became the star of the team. In fact, his slugging percentage was the best of all players in Williamsport.

No U.S. Teams Return to LLWS

2006-08-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

The last American team vying to earm a berth in the Little League World Series -- the Owensboro Southern Little League of Kentucky -- bowed out of the action on Friday.

The Lemont, Illinolis, all stars beat Owensboro, 8-1, to earn a chance for the Great Lakes region's championship. The winner of the region gets one of the eight spots in the U.S. bracket of the 16-team LLWS.

Lemont's Josh Ferry pitched a four-hitter for the win against Owensboro, seeking its third straight trip to Williamsport under coach Rick Hale.

Ferry struck out 13 and walked two. He also contributed with his bat, with one hit and two runs.

Owensboro was in the game until the sixth inning. Trailing 2-1, Owensboro brought in fireballer Dalton West -- one of last year's heroes for Owensboro -- to keep the game close for a possible Owensboro rally in the bottom of the sixth inning. But West issued six walks that helped Lemont to a six-run inning.

Ironically or not, Owensboro also experienced a classic meltdown in last year's Great lakes regional tournament. With an 11-4 lead going into the bottom of the sixth inning against Kankakee, Illinois, Owensboro yielded six runs but held on for an 11-10 victory. Owensboro was winless in its 2004 and 2005 play in Williamsport, going a combined 0-6.

Even though no American teams will return to the LLWS this year, at least three international teams will do encores, including the teams from Willemstad, Curacao (Caribbean region); Dhahrin, Saudi Arabia (Trans-National region); Mosciow, Russia (Europe, Middle East, and Africa region). One other team in last year's tournament, from Surray, British Columbia, is still in the fight for the last region of Canada.

WWCD?

2006-08-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

Before the beginning of the Cal Ripken World Series last year in Aberdeen, Maryland, Cal Ripken Jr. gathered the coaches of the teams for a chat.

Congratulations, he told them. Have fun. Good luck.

Oh, and one other thing: Don't try to win the game with tricks and technicalities. If there's an ambiguous situation, create some slack. Remember that the game exists for the kids. Don't teach them to play every angle.

This comes to me from Lance Arakawa, the coach of the Hawaii team that won the 2005 Cal Ripken World Series at the same time another Hawaii team was winning the Little League World Series.

I bring it up because of the events yesterday in Bristol, Connecticut.

In the semifinal game of the New England regional tournament, the all stars from Colchester, Vermont, were leading the all stars from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 9-7, going into the sixth inning. A two-run home run from Nate Frieberg gave the Vermonters the edge.

Then Vermont's manager, Denis Place, realized something was seriously wrong. One of his players had not played the requisite one inning in the field and one turn at bat. He gathered his pitcher and infielders on the mound for a conference. Whereupon, the Vermonters started to throw wild pitches, with the purpose of giving New Hampshire a couple runs to tie the game -- and give Vermont one last chance to get their last kid in the game.

See, if you don't play all your kids, you lose by a 6-0 forfeit.

Before long, the New Hampshire team figured it out. Rather than advancing around the bases on wild pitches and bad throws to second base, they stubbornly played just as badly.

So the Vermonters who led the game were trying to give up runs, while the trailing New Hampshireites were trying to avoid scoring runs.

The Vermonters were trying to avoid having to forfeit because of a technicality -- which they wanted to fix before the six innings were over -- and the New Hampshireites were trying to win on that same technicality.

Ultimately, the game finished with Vermont on the winning side of a 9-8 score.

But Little League officials in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, two hours after the game, ruled that Hew Hampshire would be declared the 6-0 winners. And so New Hampshire will play in the regional championship game against the all stars from Peabody, Massachusetts, on Sunday at 1 p.m. on ESPN.

New Hampshire and Massachusetts get their shot at TV glory.

What would Cal do? Hard to say for sure.

But under the spirit of the rules -- and the spirit of Cal Ripken's pep talk before his World Series last summer -- the Vermonters would have had some opportunity to correct their mistake. Sure, they messed up. They waited for too long to get their last kid in the game.

But why not give them a chance to correct the mistake? Because they were winning -- silly boys! why did they have to rally for that two-run lead? -- they weren't going to get a chance to bat in the bottom of the sixth inning. Wouldn't the spirit of youth competition call for the managers to get together and work something out? Why did both sides feel the need to game the system?

Did those Colchester kids deserve to lose on a stupid technicality? Did the Portsmouth kids deserve to be caught in a war of wills over that technicality?

Yes, the Vermont manager knew the rules ahead of time. But he wanted to correct his mistake within the regulation six innings. Wasn't there a way for the teams to rise above the intensity of the competition to maker it to the ESPN-televised championship game?

Imagine the two managers huddled to deal with the issue. What a great lesson it would have been for both sides to deal with the problem without resorting to on-field shenanigans and post-game legalities.

How should this have been resolved? Tell me in an email (euchner@gmail.com) or in a comment to this blog entry.

Rick Reilly, the incomparable columnist for Sports Illustrated, explores the tensions between sport for fun and sport for winning in this week's column. Check it out.

August Madness

2006-08-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

A LITTLE LEAGUE REGIONAL TOURNAMENT VIEWER'S GUIDE

All eight U.S. regional championship games will be televised (see schedule below), as well as all of the games in the Little League World Series. That's a total of 40 games on TV featuring 11- to 13-year-olds.

Making 11- to 13-year-old ballplayers into media stars is still a strange concept to me. The Little Leaguers making the march to the Little League World Series in Williamsport are terrific players, all things considered. They pitch, hit, throw, and run very well. They know most game situations. They have been through a summer of testing. At the beginning of the summer, there were 7,000 American teams vying for eight slots in the LLWS; now we are winding down to the Sweet Sixteen.

Even though most of the players seem to forget the cameras once they cross onto the field, the impact of TV is enormous. It is, in fact, the driving force for almost everything almost everyone does. The logic is simple:

(1) In our instant celebrity culture, everyone would love a crack at being on TV.
(2) When recruiting players, Little League coaches snag a number of superior players -- in most age groups, the best players can be found in travel ball, not Little League or other community programs -- with the possibility of TV.
(3) In the summer of tournament play, coaches do "whatever it takes" to advance to the regional finals and the spotlight of TV. That's why the best pitchers throw with two days of rest -- half what fully developed professional athletes demand! It's always -- always -- about getting to the next level.
(4) That's why parents get even crazier than other athletes' parents. One LLWS coach told me that when he made game substitutions, his cellphone buzzed with angry parents: You showed up my kid on national television. Hoo boy.

There are so many games on TV that the broadcasters have to recycle their old material endlessly. Which reminds me of that old college drinking game of "Bob." Watching 'The Bob Newhart Show," players chug every time a character says "Hiya, Bob!" or "What out, Bob!" or "Are ya there, Bob?"

Here are some of the phrases you can expect to hear, over and over, during the course of the TV broadcasts. (Got more? Send 'em to me at euchner@gmail.com.)

"You know, the dedication that these volunteer coaches show is just astounding."

"How about those kids from ..."

"Brought to you by ... Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, the broadcast sponsor of the Little League World Series."

"Did you see him execute? That's a big-league play!"

"His mom and dad have been nervous his whole at-bat."

"Isn't he just the cutest thing?"

"The winners of this tournament can expect a lot of prizes..."

"Because of the different field dimensions, some of these kids throw fastballs that are the equivalent of 90 miles an hour on a major league field."

"These kids become fast friends with players from other teams..."

"I've never seen kids execute fundamentals quite like this!"

"You know, I think there are some future major leaguers here."

"President Bush, who was the first president to play Little League, hosts a tee-ball game on the White House lawn."

"You know, the discipline of the Japanese..."

"So on the tiny island of Curacao, they speak a language called Papiamentu."

And on and on. The same phrases loop over and over.

What else do you expect when they're going to televise 40 Little League games?

SCHEDULE

Southeast (St. Petersburg, Fla.), Friday, August 11, 7 p.m. on ESPN -- Columbus Northern (Georgia) versus Greater Dunedin (Florida)

Southwest (Waco, Texas), Friday, August 11, 8 p.m. -- D'lverville (Mississippi) versus South Lake Charles (Louisiana).

West (San Bernardino, Calif.), Saturday, August 12, 6 p.m., ESPN2 -- Ahwatukee American (Arizona) OR Waipio (Hawaii) versus River Park (Northern California) OR Lone Mountain (Nevada)

Midwest (Indianapolis), Saturday, August 12, 7 p.m., ESPN -- Davis County (Iowa) versus Daniel Boone National (Missouri) OR Grand Island National (Nebraska)

New England (Bristol, Conn.), Sunday, August 13, 1 p.m. -- Glastonbury (Connecticut) OR Peabody (Massachusetts) versus Portsmouth (New Hampshire) OR Colchester (Vermont).

Great Lakes (Indianapolis), Sunday, August 13, 3 p.m. -- Owensboro Southern (Kentucky) OR Third Place Team versus New Castle (Indiana) OR Fourth Place Team

Northwest (San Bernardino, Calif.), Sunday, August 13, 7 p.m. -- Kent (Washington) OR Dimond-West (Alaska) versus Murrayhill (Oregon) OR Missoula Southside (Montana)

Mid Atlantic (Bristol, Conn.), Monday, August 14, 8 p.m. -- Final four TBD.

Russia One of Three LLWS Repeaters So Far

2006-08-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Yet another team from the 2005 Little League World Series—the Brateevo Little League of Moscow—will return to the Little League World Series in Williamsport later this month.

Brateevo beat Baden-Wuerttemberg Little League, from Mannheim, Germany, 4-0, to win the hodge-podge EMEA championship game. EMEA stands for Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

Russia finished EMEA tournament with a perfect 8-0 record. Germany finished 6-1.

The Russians went 0-3 in the LLWS last summer but showed strong skills in pitching, fielding, and base running. Hitting—especially against the curveball—was the team’s greatest weakness.

The manager of the Russian all stars, a former hockey player named Alexey Erofeev, was aloe among Little League coaches in the 2005 LLWS in banning his players from throwing curveballs. At the end of the tournament, he said his top priority in preparing for 2006 would be to teach his kids to hit curves.

Erofeev was one of the most fascinating people I met in Williamsport last year. Even though Russia doesn’t have much of a baseball tradition, he insists that kids can learn the game quickly and well. He isolates different skills and works on them.

Unlike the hyperspecialized Americans—who tell promising athletes that they have to pick a sport to concentrate on before they’re teenagers—Erofeev says kids will learn baseball better if they play a wide range of sports. He clinches his case by asking whether it’s harder to his a baseball, standing still with complete concentration on the pitcher, or to hit a hockey puck while moving on skates with a goon from the other side barreling toward you.

I personally would rather be standing there with the bat, timing the pitcher.

Brateevo joins two other returning teams in the international bracket. The others are Curacao (Caribbean), Saudi Arabia (Trans-National). A final team from 2004, Whalley Little League of British Columbia, went 5-0 in pool play in the Canadian national tournament. Canada’s tournament final takes place on Saturday, August 12.

Russian teams have made it to Williamsport for five of the last six years. A Polish team played in the tournament in 2004.

One Americ an team -- Owensboro Southern Little League of Kentucky -- still has a chance to play in the LLWS this year. Owensboro, which played in the last two tournaments (going 0-6), is still alive in the Great Lakes regional tournament.

Comparing the MLB & LL World Series

2006-08-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

In the last year, I have published books on the Little League World Series and the Major League World Series.

I wrote about the big leaguers because I wanted to capture the game between the lines. So much of sports writing these days concerns scandal, salaries, and outrages. It's important to know some of the tabloid news -- for example, Barry Bonds's steroid habit -- but most of it has nothing to do with the game.

Do we really care that Johnny Damon got a haircut when he joined the New York Yankees? Does it really matter that Kenny Rogers is a jerk? Do I really care that Lastings Milledge had sex with another teenager when he was a teenager?

In The Last Nine Innings, I tried to bring baseball back to the game. I used an inning-by-inning narrative of the seventh game of the 2001 World Series -- when the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the New York Yankees on Luis Gonzalez's bloop hit against Mariano Rivera -- to explore the way the players approach the game on the field.

Doing research for that book gave me renewed appreciation for the game. These players might not separate the warring tribes of the Middle East or find a cure for cancer, but most of them are very smart in their own world of baseball. They understand their bodies and psyches, they understand complex strategy, they understand the connection between baseball and American life.

In The Last Nine Innings, I explored a different facet of baseball for each inning of the game. In Inning 1, I looked at the calculated gambles of hardnosed players like Paul O'Neill. Inning 2 explores fielding through the glove work of Steve Finley and others. Inning 3 looks at the competing schools of hitting. Inning 4 breaks down the science and philosophy of pitching through Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling. Inning 5 looks at trench warfare, Inning 6 the growing sophistication of statistics, Inning 7 examines the virtues of veterans, Inning 8 globalization, and Inning 9 the way funny breaks affect games.

I tried to make The Last Nine Innings as pure a baseball book as possible.

Then I asked myself: What could be more pure than Little League?

So I set out to understand the strange phenomenon that is the Little League World Series.

After following teams across the world as they played in qualifying tournaments for the late-August Series, I got an apartment in Williamsport and lived inside the bubble of the event for two-plus weeks.

I have mixed feelings about the whole experience.

On the one hand, for the lucky few teams that advance that far, the LLWS can be a great experience. What kid would not want to play baseball in professional-caliber stadiums in front of adoring crowds? What kid wouldn’t want to be on TV? What kid wouldn't want to extend the summer and miss the first two or three weeks of school?

Most important, what kid would not want to be part of such an intense bonding experience? Nothing else compares with the LLWS for bringing kids and their families together over several months. Summer stock? Camp? Concerts? That's all great, but there's something amazing about the unscripted drama of sports -- and surviving the long run that foils 99.9 percent of all teams.

On the other hand, the pressure of the event sometimes took it away from the kids. Parents screamed at umpires, maneuvered for more playing time, squabbled in hotel rooms, complained to the coach via cellphone. Cliché but true, too often the Little League World Series is more about the parents than the kids.

In that respect, the major leagues' World Series sometimes seems more pure than the Little League World Series. As messed up as some major leaguers can be, they are at least in charge of their destiny. They play for money, yes. But they also connect with their game more completely.

Here’s the kicker:

At the end of Little League, Big Dreams, I make a radical proposal -- that we give the game of baseball back to the kids.

Adults have important roles to play organizing and teaching. So let 'em book the fields, organize the rosters, ferry the kids hither and thither. And let 'em teach the basic skills -- how to throw the ball, how to get the butt down and stay in front of a grounder, how to step into a pitch at the plate. The older the kids get, the more you can teach them.

But once the game starts, have the coaches and parents get off the field -- completely. Let the kids write the lineup card, make substitutions, make pitching changes, the works.

You say that's impossible? It isn't. Some of the best children's programs create a great context for learning and play, and then back off. The best way for kids to learn, the literature on "effective schools" tells us, is for kids to teach and get along with other kids. One Little League coach told me that he already gives extra responsibilities to his older players -- and that those responsibilities could be expanded under the right circumstances.

Ultimately, the responsibility of the adult is to prepare kids to do things on their own. Nothing is quite as tragic as a kid who cannot do the basic things because his parents and teachers wouldn't let go.

I know this idea is a long shot. Little League officials pretty much like things the way they are.

But for some organization out there -- Little League? PONY? Cal Ripken Baseball? Dixie? other community leagues? club teams? -- the road to success might be found by just letting go and letting the kids have their game back.

Curacao, Language, and Baseball

2006-08-08T14:54:00.000-07:00

For the fourth straight year, the Pabao Little League of Willemstad, Cueracao, will play in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Curacao won the championship in 2004 and took a 6-3 lead into the final inning of the championship game before Hawaii rallied to tie the game and win it in extra innings.

My book Little League, Big Dreams details how the baseball establishment in Curacao—an island belonging to the Netherlands—has worked to develop a Caribbean dynasty in baseball. But Curacao also provides a fascinating view into how language, culture, and sports interact.

Vernon Isabella, the manager of the Willemstad teams that went to the Little League World Series in 2004 and 2005, says he was able to steal signals from the other teams and tell his players openly what pitch to expect at the plate.

“I can just tell my players what’s coming rather than having to give signals,” he says with a smile. “I can tell them in Papiamentu because no one else understands it. Against a team like Venezuela, I’m afraid they’ll understand Papiamentu. They can pick it up from their understanding of Spanish. So I use Dutch instead. Against most teams, though, I use Papiamentu. Against the Asians, I can use whatever I want.”

Language offers a telling glimpse into the smarts of other teams. Even though the team from outside Tokyo had no knowledge of Papiamentu, Isabella said the coaches and players were attentive enough to pick up certain key phrases. American teams were oblivious to those same phrases. “The team from Japan is intelligent,” he says. “They hear the sounds and the remember and recognize what pitch is coming. You have to be careful what you say around them.”

The only college in the United States to teach Papiamentu is Earlham College, in Richmond, Indiana. That class originated when Kathy Taylor, a professor of Spanish and linguistics, collaborated on a linguistic textbook six years ago. She became curious about the Creole language that brought together so many traditions.

“Creole languages in general develop out of a Pidgin, which come from the contact between two languages and two cultures—those of the colonizers and those of the indigenous people. At first, Creole is a simplified language that develops its own language. Creole is the first generation of the language that speaks on its own terms. Creole has flexibility about it. It tends to absorb other languages and adapt really quickly to the culture they’re part of.

What makes Papiamentu so fascinating is it has so many languages in it. And it’s charming. It makes you chuckle to see how they bring in different words. A good example is baidewei, which means ‘by the way.’ Then there is a practice called reduplication, which means repeating words, usually for emphasis. Slow is pocopoco.”

Since she first started learning Papiamentu from an outdated book she found on the Internet, Taylor has brought two classes to Willemstad for month-long classes. The students stay at the homes of locals and visit museums, schools, music halls, churches and synagogues.

Colleagues and friends ask her what value can be learned speaking Papiamentu, since so few people in the world speak it. She has two answers. First, simply getting inside the logic of an evolving language teaches important lessons about linguistics and culture. Since languages are living organisms, there is great value in seeing how a small language adapts and evolves in a turbulent age.

More important, she says, is that Curacao and Papiamentu teach the essential lessons of the global age.

“There is such diversity and toleration on Curacao, that you don’t even know what those words mean without seeing it there,” she says. “This island is a microcosm of what the world will have to be. In Curacao, you don’t have to act or think the way everybody else does. But you need to be comfortable with differences. Different languages and conditions can be familiar because they’re your neighbors, but you can still be who you are.”

“It’s such a small place and such a large world at the same time. There are areas that are integrated and areas that aren’t. I’ve met people and become friends with people on all different levels. Sometime you see amazing integration, wealthy people living near poor people and working-class people, but sometimes you don’t. It’s a matter of how you draw the line. Someone explained to me how people live in the community with the question ‘Yu di korsou?’—‘Are you a child of Curacao?’ Curacao is an identity, which accepts and brings together so many other identities.”

Taylor is not a baseball fan herself but has been impressed with the impact of the Little League championship on the local culture. When she goes to schools, the students want to know what team she roots for. “The Atlanta Braves, of course,” she says.

“There is this incredible mystique about baseball. You see billboards everywhere with big pictures of Andruw Jones, saying, ‘With hard work and determination, you too can be successful.’ All these boys, he’s they’re hero. When Curacao won the Little League World Series… it gives the island a kind of exposure it couldn’t get in any other way.”

Taylor frets about the island’s latest economic move toward tourism.

“This is not just a sleepy place with palm trees,” she says. “This is a culture of its own that has wonderful complexities. Everyone and his brother has a cellphone but it’s still very traditional. I love the fact that it’s a complex little world. It challenges students’ preconceptions and notion of what it is to be modern.

“I’m really torn about tourism. I’m contacted all the time by developers of some sort. It’s not my business, but I don’t want it for the island. I don’t want to turn the island into a bunch of Hiltons. On the other hand I get stuff from missionaries and they want to learn Papiamentu so they can do their work, and I don’t want to be part of that either. I want what’s best for the island and I don’t want it to be spoiled. But it’s not for me to say what people should do. It should be up to the people there.”

The Library

2006-08-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

With the advent of the regional tournaments, which qualify teams for the Little League World Series in Williamsport, a look at some of the major books on Little League and youth sports . . .

(Got other books you'd like to add to the list? Email me at euchner@gmail.com and I'll update the list.)

Charles Euchner, Little League, Big Dreams: Last summer I traveled all over the country trying to understand how Little League works -- how it engages kids and their parents and coaches, what lessons it teaches, the looming threat posed by rival leagues and tournaments, and what might be done to restore the soul of youth baseball. This book is the result. Hope you enjoy it.

Lance and Robin Van Auken, Play Ball: A history of Little League from the current PR honcho at the Williamsport organization and his wife, a sociologist. The book explores Little League's problems as well as its triumphs, including the civil war between Little League's founder and the corporate honchoes that took over the league, scandals over violations of eligibility, race and gender bias. Great historic photos make the book a useful introduction.

Lewis Yablonsky, The Little League Game: A good overview of Little League, its operations and culture.

Destiny's Darlings: An affecting Boys of Summer-style portrait of the 1956 Little League World Series champions from Schenectdady, New York. The author, who grew up with the champions, visits them 20 years later to find out how the experience shaped their lives. As you can imagine, some did well, others struggled. The most poignant passages for me concern the player who got bitter when he did not make a Babe Ruth team the year after the championhsiop that he never played baseball again.

Bill Geist, Little League Confidential: A wry suburban father;'s account of coaching a Little League team.

Gary Alan Fine, With the Boys: In this brilliant portrait of the culture of Little League, Gary Fine explores the inner worlds of both the kids who play and the adults who guide them. Fine understands that the character of the peer culture determines the quality of the experience. Unfortunately, he finds, the coaches and parents turn a playful activity into a rule-bound activity where kids feel they have to perform to get the approval of adults. Too often, Fine says, the coach "doesn't respond to baseball plays but to the meanings of those plays for him." Even though the kids have ways of making the games their own, the adults' rules, routines, and lecturing can such the oxygen out of the experience.

Other youth sports

Joan Ryan, Pretty Girls in Little Boxes: If any young athletes are forced to perform at an early agem it's the girls in gynmastics. Ryan senstitively watches the girls get whipped into shape by

H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A classic account of a season in the life of the Permian High School football team in Odessa, Texas. Bissinger lived with the team all season and captured the intensity and poignance of a game that's too important for the town and the people who live there.

Wayne Coffey, Winning Sounds Like This: A poignant take about a season with the Gallaudet College women's basketball team. Coffey, a reporter for the New York Daily News, not only shows the drama of sports at the college level, but delves deeply into the world of the deaf. Without getting sentimental or treakley, Coffey explores the often heroic tales of the women who are doing everyuthing they can to succeed in a hearing world while also embracing their deafness.

The Fickle Finger of Fate

2006-08-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

The other day I clicked on The Unpage for the latest news from state and regional tournaments, and found this item:

"Tournament action was limited to just one location worldwide today, but we nonetheless passed a milestone of sorts. When Baden-Wuerttemberg Little League from Mannheim, Germany, defeated Kirovograd-Center from the Ukraine by a 3-0 score this afternoon at the EMEA Region tournament in Poland, the total number of games remaining through the Little League World Series championship game fell below 200. By the end of the day, there were just 196 games remaining in the 2006 international tournament.

"Think about that for a moment: we started with over 7,000 teams and have seen in excess of 15,000 games played. (We brought you results from 1,640 games in California alone this year -- 705 in the North and 935 in the South.) After little more than a month of non-stop action, 99 percent of the games have been played, and 99 percent of the leagues that looked toward South Williamsport as the tournament began have been eliminated. And the drama has only begun."

To me, that's what is most amazing about the long march to Williamsport. I can't think of any tournament that poses longer odds of making it to the championship round of play.

What that means is that lots of great teams get left behind. In regions like the West, Soutwest, and Southeast, some of the best youth baseball teams anywhere get knocked off -- while in regions like the Midwest and Great Lakes, lesser teams advance. It's just a fact of life. The Sunbelt regions are packed with teams that play baseball throughout the year on travel teams, off-season Cal Ripken teams, and more.

It's not just that good teams knock olff other good teams in the Sunbelt regions.

There's also this thing called luck.

Everyone knows that baseball games often get decided when one team gets the lucky breaks and another team doesn't. For some teams, injuries or illnesses come at the wrong time. For another, the luck of the draw comes with matchups in the tournament brackets. And of course, stuff happens on the field -- tough umpire calls, tricky bounces, bleeders getting through the infield, and on and on.

Turns out there's a growing academic literature on luck. Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in England has written a fascinating book on the topic called The Luck Factor. The book is more self help than academic analysis, detailing what steps people can take to enhance their chances for the bounce to go the right way.

When my local team from Hamden, Connecticut, lost in the championship game of the state tournament, the New Haven Register published one photo of a kid throwing down his glove in disgust and another photo of a pitcher crouched in dejection on the mound after an opposing player hit a home run. "It's very emotional to lose this," said Bill Rhone, Hamden's manager. "Especially [at] the end of their Little League career. It's a tough time."

True, true. But coach, you and your kids went pretty far. If you had advanced to the New England tournament in Briston, Conn., you would have had to thank your lucky stars for the many breaks you got along the way.

Now it's time not only to praise the talent and hard work that carried the Hamden all stars so far but also acknowledge the good luck that guided Handem and other teams all summer.

The Answer Man (Part I)

2006-08-04T06:15:00.000-07:00

Taking a few questions from the peanut gallery . . .

Question: Everything I have been reading tells me that the Little League field is too small. Why are the bases only 60 feet apart (compared to the standard field size of 90 feet)? Why is the pitching rubber just 46 feet from the plate? Isn't Little League afraid that some kid's going to get killed?

Answer: The basic dimensions of the Little League field were determined by the founder, Carl Stotz, back in 1938. There was nothing scientific about Stotz's approach -- just a few afternoons of trial and error with the kids in his neighborhood in Williamsport.

The problem is that kids have gotten bigger and stronger in the nearly seven decades since then. The mound, originally 44 feet from the plate, is now 46 feet back. But that's not very far. With bigger and bigger kids smashing the ball off aluminum bats, it's only a matter of time until a serious accident occurs.

Little League officials say retrofitting the fields would take too much money. But maybe the organization should consider allowing local organizations to make their own decisions about whether to expand their field sizes. PONY League gradually increases its field sizes as kids get older. Why not at least get the process going for Little League?

Ultimately, it might be best for Little League to create two brackets for the traditional 11- and 12-year-old age bracket (which now, because of the change in age regulations, also includes a lot of 13-year-olds). Maybe the bigger kids should play on 70-foot bases and the smaller kids should play on 60-foot bases. Other sports -- like wrestling and football -- break up age brackets by the size of the kids. Kids' sizes vary so much in Little League these days, it's worrth having a debate.

Question: Is there any way to prevent young pitchers from hurting their arms?

Answer: The short answer is: Don't throw too many pitches in a game or a week, and avoid throwing the curveball altogether.

Pitchers usually hurt their arms by overusing their arms. It's fine to throw 50 or 60 pitches. The arm can recover from the small tears in the shoulders and elbows, and the grinding and pubbling of bones and tendons. But once the pitcher throws 70, 80, 90, or more pitches, the ability to recover declines.

But it's not just the collective trauma of throwing that's damaging. As a pitcher gets tired, his body's mechanics develop flaws. When a pitcher is tired, he his pitching motion suffers. He might not lift his leg high enough. He might lose his balance. He might bring his arm back too far -- or not far enough. He might release the ball too soon or too late. He might land in the wrong way. Any of these mechanical flaws can wreak havoc on the arms, back, abs, legs.

Little League Baseball adopted a voluntary pitch count rule this year. But there are no pitch counts in any of the summer tournaments, including the Little League World Series. With older kids playing in the Series this year, look for some high pitch counts as coaches push their horses to the limit.

Question: If I had rosters for all the teams in the regional tournaments, how can I handicap the action?

Answer: Look for the kids with the age and experience. Little League changed its age rule this year to allow older kids into the tournaments. From Little League's founding through last year, kids were eligible if they were still 12 years old on April 30; starting this year, they're eligible if they were 12 on July 31. The result is bound to be lots of bigger kids -- and lots of kids with previous tournament experience.

The strongest regions are usually in the West, Southwest, and Southeast. The Mid-Atlantic and New England regions have a number of good programs, but don't play baseball year round. Frost Belt regions -- Great Lakes and Midwest -- don't do very well in Williamsport.

Question: I saw that Hawaii was playing in the West regional tournament this year. Last year's team from Hawaii played in the Northwest tournament. What gives?

Answer: Hawaii's place in the Northwest region was a curiosity. Hawaii is, after all, the southernmost state in the U.S. Other states in the Northwest -- a region that includes Idaho, Alaska, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming -- complained that they didn't have a chance against Hawaii, which can play ball 12 months a year.

The big loser in this switch is, of course, Hawaii. This year's state champion from Waipio went 6-0 with two no hitters in the state competition. Waipio has always been a strong program. If it played in the Northwest, it would be the strong favorite to advance to Williamsport. Now it has to play teams from northern and southern California, Nevada, Arizona.

When you think of it, last year's Little League World Series champions, the West Oahu Little League all stars, caught every break. First, because the league was young (a breakoff from Ewa Beach Little League), the manager could shape the league to his liking. Second, the West Oahu all stars played in the weak Northwest bracket. Only when they got to Williamsport did they need to sweat. But by that time, most other teams were exhausted and broken down.

(Update from The Unpage on Sunday, August 6: Hawaii's Waipio Little League [scored] five times in the top of the sixth inning to topple Southern California champion Northridge City Little League, 6-5, before 9,500 onlookers in West Region tournament action in San Bernardino, California. Hawaii capitalized on four walks in the sixth, and scored the tying and winning runs on a double down the right field line. Both clubs remain in the hunt for semifinal round berths with 1-1 records; Waipio takes today off before tangling with Utah's Snow Canyon Little League on Monday, while Northridge City is idle for two days before entertaining Ahwatukee American (Arizona) Little League Tuesday evening.)

Question: Everyone says that travel ball teams are better than the best teams in the Little League World Series. What can you say to indicate the level of skill in the best travel teams?

Answer: The best indicator, in my mind, is the skills competitions that Cooperstown Dreams Park holds before its weekly tournaments.

Delino DeShields, Jr., the son of a major leaguer and the star for Alabama’s Boys of Baseball National Travel Team, ran the bases in 12.39 seconds, the best time in 2005. (That’s about the time it takes to read the previous sentence aloud.)

The Corona Dodgers, a California travel team, had the best time for the “Around the Horn Plus” event—21.85 seconds—in which players make twelve throws around the field. The game of blitzball starts with the pitcher throwing to the catcher, when the clock starts. Then the ball travels from the catcher to the third basemen, the second baseman, the first baseman, the catcher (again), the shortstop, the right fielder, the second baseman (again), the center fielder, the third baseman (again), the left fielder, and finally back to the catcher (again). (That’s about the time it takes to read the previous two sentences aloud.) Oh, yes. Every player has to touch the nearest base or a designated spot in the outfield.

Question: Everybody debates the impact of TV on the kids who play ball in the Little League World Series. What's your take?

Answer: TV is usually fun for the kids, so it's hard to be too much of a cynic. But TV corrupts the larger context of the games. Getting on TV is the point to many coaches and parents. That's where their years of sacrifice will be acknowledged to the whole wide world. And so they often create an intense environment and demands too much of their kids, sometimes leading to pitching injuries. Because of TV, everyone in their hometowns is pressuring them to do whatever it takes to win. That's not to say the adults wouldn't be intense without TV, but those broadcasts magnify everything.

That's all for now. Keep the questions and comments coming. Write to me at euchner@gmail.com. Thanks!

The Regionals: A Cautionary Tale

2006-08-03T05:04:00.000-07:00

THE LITTLE LEAGUE WORLD SERIES IS SWEET
. . . BUT FIRST YOU HAVE TO GET THERE

“Do you believe? Do you believe?”

John Engelman, the coach of the Kankakee Little League all stars, is hollering himself hoarse. The goateed Engelman hops around the coaching box by third base, shouting endless encouragement and reminders and criticisms to his players as they bat in the bottom of the sixth inning. His soft belly jiggles under his gray golf shirt as he paces around the box.

Kankakee has sent three teams to the Little League World Series in Williamsport. Now, in the championship game of the 2005 Great Lakes tournament in Indianapolis, the team from Illinois is trying to stage a historic rally to defeat Owensboro, Kentucky. Owensboro, meanwhile, is trying to make it to Williamsport foir the second straight year.

Most people don't pay much attention to Little League World Series until the 16 teams from around the world arrive in Williamsport for the World Series. But for most players, coaches, and parents, it's getting to the World Series that matters. Once you're there, you're in elite company and pampered like a pro -- and you are suddenly TV celebrities. So sometimes the most intense action takes place in the regional tournaments.

Like that Great Lakes tournament final between Kentucky and Illinois.

In the early going, Kankakee was flat when it had the opportunity to score runs. In the fourth inning, Jeff Brewer and Spike Engelman chased pitches off the plate with two runners on base, killing their own rally. Owensboro’s starter, Luke Daugherty, held Kankakee hitless for the first three innings but struggled with his control, walking five batters and allowing two runs. So Owensboro’s manager, Rick Hale, brought in Nolan Miller to finish the game. He gave up a run in both the fourth and fifth innings. But Kankakee also stranded six runners in five innings.

Fans watched the game from pickup trucks and SUV’s parked on the grass behind the outfield fence at Stokely Field.

The Bluegrass Boys have had their way scoring runs. They collected thirteen hits, including three home runs, to take an 11-4 lead going into the bottom of the sixth, the last inning of regulation play.

But John Engelman could not give up. He was still telling his players that they still had a chance to advance to Williamsport.

Leading off, roly-poly Max Hanna gives Kankakee’s fans—wearing rally caps, face paint smearing in the mugginess, and holding signs that beseech all to “believe”—something to cheer about when he hits a home run over the center field fence.

Then the hits come in rapid succession. Jeff Bruer hits a line drive single to center field. Spike Engelman grounds a hit under the glove of the second baseman. After a wild pitch advances the runners, Tyler Evans works a walk to load the bases.

Miller, a thin boy with his pale face reddened and glazed by exertion in a muggy Midwestern night, falls off the mound. He starts to overthrow the ball. He throws the ball more and more with his arm, less and less with his lower body. As he delivers the ball, he resembles a dart thrower as he keeps his hand still, for a moment, after the release.

Manager Rick Hale comes out to the mound after the walk to encourage his players. He beseeches them to just “Give me an out”—and not to worry about the baserunners with a six-run lead.

“Just relax, take a deep breath. You OK? OK?” he tells Miller, but doesn’t get much of a response. “I believe in you, baby.”

Justin Ruckman, a lanky shortstop with sinewy power, lines a 2-0 pitch over the middle of the plate to third base. Luke Daugherty catches the smash and then dives to the bag for a double play, but Bruer beats him by a split second.

Engelman, coaching third base, is unhappy that he almost got doubled off. “Where we going? I told you, we are not in a hurry! Come on! Think!”

Twin Jordan Ruckman then lines an 0-1 pitch into left field for two more runs, making the score 11-7. Matthew Webber singles to left field for another run. It’s now 11-8.

With every hit, the Illinois team gets looser. They wiggle their fingers, stretch their mounts, flex their legs, roll their hands as they make imaginary swings with their bats.

After Artie Kirkpatrick grounds out, scoring another run, Wes Sproul slices a liner just inside the right field line and he hustles to second. Now, with two outs and a runner on second base, Max Hanna steps to the plate for the second time in the inning. Owensboro’s lead is now 11-10.

Rick Hale, the Kentucky manager, starts to come to the mound but stops when he sees the players gather on the mound.

“I was getting ready to call a second time out. But they’re smart kids. The infielders are already gathering. I trust ’em. I try to put in the pitcher’s head that when you see me coming across the foul line, you tell me, ‘Coach, I’ve got this game under control.’ Everyone has told me, ‘Yeah, I’m tired, coach, but I can get more outs.’”

The other coaches begged Hale to make a pitching change, but he thought Miller could survive whatever pounding Illinois administered.

“I did not think I had one single pitcher who could have withstand the punishment. Nolan Miller was going to give the game away. When they started their move, I said, how is it going to be easier to love yourself if you lose this thing? My assistant coach was begging me to make a move. That’s only game I’ve watched on tape and its painful for me. It was a calculated move, it’s not like I was in a coma. Nolan’s the only kid I got. Nolan pitched every last inning for us like that.”

Hanna then swings through 2-2 pitch, a fastball high in the strike zone—reaching and swinging up on the pitch with late action–for to end the game.

Postscript: As Kentucky's Ricky Hale told me later, the desperate rush to win the regional tournament caused him -- and virtually every coach -- to overuse his pitchers. By the time the summer of baseball was over, three Kentucky pitchers were down with injuries.

Boys In the Bubble

2006-08-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

Trinity on the Green, one of New Haven's oldest churches, has an elite boys choir that performs at the White House, Radio City Music Hall, and other major venues. Week after week, the choir of 10- to 13-year-olds produces some of the most moving music imaginable. But to me, the choir's greatest gift is the way it teaches a couple dozen boys how to do something well.

The choirmaster is a gentle man named Walden Moore. In the choir's thrice-weekly meetings, Walden demands real commitment from kids who otherwise might be distracted by XBox, skateboarding, or The Simpsons. Besides showing up on time, knowing the week's music, and following the directions of the "lead boys," the boys are expected to spend a week at camp bonding and learning the toughest music for the upcoming year.

Parents are not allowed to be part of the camp in any way. They can't be chaparones and they can't write or phone their kids during the week. The reason is simple. If parents insinuated themselves into the camp, they would interfere with their kids' time together. And when parents call their kids with questions -- "You getting enough food?" "Need a care package?" "You like their bunkmates?" "Are you homesick?" -- the kids get anxious. To get anything done, you have to put a big DO NOT DISTURB sign at the camp gates.

As Little League's state champions get ready for eight regional tournaments, players and coaches will experience the same kind of isolation. Little League's regional complexes provide barracks where all teams are expected to stay. Even if they live nearby, everyone is expected to stay at the little Olympic villages. And at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, it's more of the same.

Little League officials want to shield players from overanxious parents, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, and media. Sealed off from the outside frenzy, the players can get to know kids from other teams, go swimming, play video games, watch ESPN, and otherwise hang out.

Life in the bubble is mostly a good idea. One of the greatest benefits of an intense experience like this is bonding with teammates and coaches. Years later, players will remember the days and nights behind the gates.

But the bubble has its down side. Some coaches are so intense that they don't allow their kids to do anything but prepare for games. Many coaches don't let kids swim, for fear of stubbing a toe (shades of Dizzy Dean) or tiring their arms. Some coaches discourage interaction with other teams. Lots of kids get cabin fever in the compound. They love the camp food that gets slopped on their plates, but start to get sick of it too.

Everyone in The Bubble forgets that an outside world even exists. Baseball is a 24-hour obsession.

After a while, some kids start to bicker. Think of these compounds as a 10-day cross-country car ride. Ever been on a long-distance trip when the kids didn't pick and bicker with each other? Me either.

Parents sometimes get resentful when they can't shadow their kids all the time. They often get sick of each other in the hotels and pine for the opportunity to take their kids to a restaurant, amusement park, or mall. One coach from the 2005 LLWS told me of a couple of mothers who were best pals throughout the summer, then turned on each other in Williamsport.

Back to the Trinity choir. What makes the experience so special is that it's just one week of the year. The kids are off in the country, in an environment that teaches them how to get away from the pressures and expectations of childhood. It's a refuge, not a pressure-cooker.

One more thing: At that camp, the experienced singers start to assume their new roles as "lead boys." The choir encourages the older kids to take leadership roles -- and restricts the adults' roles to teaching and logistics. I'll have more to say about that in a future essay. But suffice it to say now that Little League does not do enough to get adults to back off and kids to take ownership of their own games.

Threepeat for Owensboro?

2006-08-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

When I met Rick Hale last summer at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, I knew I found a real baseball man.

We sat at a picnic table talking about every conceivable issue in baseball. Training kids to win. The best ways to teach fundamentals. The superiority of competition in the Sun Belt. The rise of travel teams. The problem of pitching injuries. Dealing with parents over a long summer of tournament play. Keeping the bench loose during the game.

And we kept talking -- about major-league legends like Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver, current stars like Curt Schilling and Manny Ramirez, the burgeoning steroids scandal, and the internationalization of the game.

Hale was managing the Owensboro Southern team in Williamsport for the second straight year. In 2004, his team went 0-3 in pool play. He was determined to win a game, to answer the critics back home and give the locals something to smile about. But Owensboro Southern went 0-3 again in 2005.

When the games were over for the champions of the Great Lakes region, Hale said he had no regrets. His team played well but ran into much more mature players from California and Louisiana. After losing to Maine in the final game, Hale said he would retire from coaching. Enough is enough, he said. Time to spend more time with the family, which includes a girl named for one of his past Little League stars.

But Rick Hale could not stay "retired," and now his all stars from Owensboro have the chance to make history with a third consecutive appearance in Williamsport. No other American team from the 2005 LLWS has a chance to return to Williamsport in 2006.

Owensboro begins play in the Great Lakes regional tournament in Indianapolis Saturday night against the all stars from Lemont, Illinois.

(Last year, Owensboro advanced to Williamsport by surviving a late rally by another team from Illinois. Owensboro led Kankakee 11-4 going into the sixth inning, the last inning in Little League. Kankakee rallied to come within a run. Nolan Miller took the beating -- and the win -- but he and the other Kentucky pitchers were wasted by the time the Little League World Series started. In my new book Little League, Big Dreams, Hale is an outspoken critic of the abuse of pitchers in amateur baseball, acknowledging his own role in overusing the best two or three pitchers for the sake of advancing to the next level of play.)

This year, Owensboro Southern won the Kentucky state tournament with a victory over Louisville. It was a rematch of last year's state finalists, and Owensboro Southern won easily. Dalton West, one of last year's stars, struck out 13 batters en route to a 6-0 win.

The run to the state title was easy, for the most part. The team hit 40 home runs in 14 games. Three pitchers from last year's team -- West, Nolan Miller, and Matthew Johnson -- have played big roles. A fourth pitcher from last year's team, Luke Daugherty, was eligible to play for the third straight year but opted to move up to full-field baseball.

Owensboro was never more dominant than in the first game of the state tournament. After getting shut down for three innings, Owensboro's bats came alive. In the second cycle through the batting order, five straight homers gave Owensboro a 6-0 lead. Meanwhile, Nolan Miller pitched a perfect game, striking out 14 of 15 batters in the 10-0, five-inning game.

Hale is "cautiously optimistic" about his team's chances to return to Williamsport.

His one concern? He said he is "looking for the next Pimentel" -- a reference to the manchild Kalen Pimentel, the California pitcher who overwhelmed Owensboro in the first game of the Little League World Series, getting strikeouts for all 18 outs.

You can practice all day long. You can have a roster full of strong arms, a lineup full of good bats, and a tight defense. You can take advantage of years of experience in the Early Show in Williamsport.

But when a kid like Pimentel comes along, most kid athletes get overwhelmed. That's what Hale's looking for. It's what everyone else in the tournament should watch too.

International Bracket Filling Up

2006-07-31T08:36:00.000-07:00

As American teams get ready to start the regional tournaments that will qualify eight teams to play in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, the field of eight international teams has already started to get filled.

Already, teams from Curacao, Mexico, Venezuela, Japan, CNMI (shorthand for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), and Saudi Arabia have earned slots in the LLWS.

The open international bracket spots are EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), which concludes its tournament in Kutno, Poland, on August 9, and Canada, which concludes its tournament in Vancouver on August 12.

Because of their long travel distances -- and the less extensive schedule of qualifying tournaments -- the international teams have more time to practice for the World Series.

(To follow the American teams' march through the final state tournaments and the regional tournaments -- as well as the rest of international play -- see www.unpage.com, the only comprehensive results site for the Little League World Series and its qualifying tournaments.)

CURACAOAN DYNASTY CONTINUES RUN: Curacao Pabao Little League defeated the Elrod Hendricks Little League from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, 14-3, to win the Caribbean Region. Pabao -- which won the LLWS in 2004 and the international title in 2005 -- finished with a 6-0 record in the 10-team tournament.

As I detail in my new book Little League, Big Dreams, Curacao has assembled a dynasty in one of the world's greatest baseball regions. Curacao has won the last five Caribbean championships, despite the presence of the Dominican Republic in the region. Curacao's dominance is a testament to the longterm training of figures like Frank Curiel and Vernon Isabella, who work with kids from tee ball through the teen years to produce Little League champions.

Curacao, an island about 50 miles north of Venezuela, is one of the most interesting places anywhere for baseball. Until recently, baseball was just one of many sports that kids played. But with Andruw Jones's emergence as a major league superstar -- and with Curacao's 2004 LLWS title -- kids have flocked to the dusty fields of the island.

Curacao is not as poor as other Caribbean nations, but it's not soaked with privilege like many American and Japanese communities. Kids eat well, attend good schools, and have access to an amazingly diverse culture. But most are not rich. The true wealth of the island comes from its exposure to true cultural diversity. The island -- made up of people from Europe, Latin America, and Africa -- is part of the Netherlands. People there speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Papiamento.

JAPAN REPRESENTS ASIA AGAIN: Japan qualified for the LLWS despite having the same records as their major opponents because they compiled the best composite score in the tournament.

CNMI EDGES GUAM, REPRESENTS PACIFIC: The championship game between CNMI and Guam was rained out, so the teams' overall records determined the title. CNMI went 4-0, with a runs differential of 43-6. Guam went 3-1.

VENEZUELA SENDS TEAM TO LLWS SECOND STRAIGHT YEAR: The Cardenales Little League of Barquesimeto, Lara, in Venezuela, beat the Liga Pequena De Beisbol Little League, from Guatemala City, Guatemala, 8-2, to advance to Williamsport. Cardenales had a 7-1 record in the seven-team tournament.

Last year's Latin America tournament was marred by charges of fraud, as the winner from Altagracia, Venezuela, was eliminated for using an overage player. Altagracia was replaced by another Venezuelan team, from Valencia, which went 1-2 in the 2005 Williamsport tournament.

Two teams from Venezuela have won the Little League World Series. The most recent champion came from Sierra Maestra, Maracaibo, in 2000.

In addition to becoming a Little League dynasty, Venezuela has become a major source of talent for the major leagues. Major league franchises have begun to establish baseball academies in Venezuela to scout and train players. That could detract from future Little League success in Venezuela, if the best young players get taken out of community programs at an early age.

MEXICO CROWNS CHAMPION: After falling into the losers’ bracket of the Mexican regional tournament, the Matamoros Little League of Taumalipas beat Santa Catarina Little League, from Neuvo Leon, 10-0, to advance to Williamsport.

Matamoros went 14-1 over the course of the 12-team, three-round tournament. In a quirk of the national tournament, Matamoros and Santa Catarina played each other five times.

Mexican teams have won the LLWS three times. The most recent title came in 1997 when Linda Vista Little League in Guadalupe beat Mission Viejo, California, 5-4. In two of the most famous tournaments ever, a team from Monterrey, Mexico, won titles in 1957 and 1958.

SAUDIS WIN ANOTHER TRANS-ATLANTIC TITLE: One of the more curious presence in the Little League World Series is the team from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The team is made up of expats from the U.S. and other western nations who live and work in the desert kingdom. Even as they breeze through the tournament against other expat teams, they traditionally struggle in Williamsport. The Saudis were 0-3 in the LLWS in 2005.

The biggest news from the Saudi team was a curiosity named Aaron Durling. At 6-5, 226 pounds, Durling made history as the biggest kid ever to play in the tournament. He was more than three times heavier than the littlest player in the series.

Just Play

2006-07-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

The best thing parents can do for their kids, a new international study says, is to show them the door.

As in: Scoot. G'wan. Play ball. Play tag or kick the can. Anything, It doesn't matter what. Just get out of the house and do something physical.

The study followed 1,732 9- and 15-year-olds from Denmark, Estonia, and Portugal. Rather than relying on the reporting of those kids and their families -- the stadard survey technique, but very flawed since people often overestate their good habits and understate their bad ones -- the researchers strapped devices to the kids' hips to monitor their activities.

"Just making sure children play outside will double the amount of physical activity they get," says Lars Bo Andersen, one of the authors of the study recently published in Lancet.

Double. What social program has that kind of success?

t's as simple as that. You don't need expensive camps and leagues. You don't need to groom your kid to be a big leaguer. You don't need legions of coaches and parents to instruct kids what to do. You need to get the kids out of the house and away from the Four Appliances of the Apocalypse -- the TV, computer, stereo, and refrigerator.

As I investigated Little League and other youth sports programs for my new book Little League, Big Dreams, I found myself troubled by the supercharged environment of kidball.

Kids start specializing in sports before they become teenagers. Their families spend thousands of dollars on private coaches, memberships in athletic clubs, travel teams, even psychological counseling. Many of the kids get very good at their sport of choice -- much better than their parents and grandparents. But they lose out on the well-rounded experiences of exploring different activities.

And as the uberkinder athletes get propelled forward in big-time tournaments, the lesser athletes tend to drop out. Experts estimate that as many as two-thirds of all kids in organized sports leagues stop playing in their early teen years.

The usual response to social problems in America is to start programs. No matter what the issue -- literacy, obesity, violence, you name it -- the impulse of repormers is to start a program or get more funding for government programs.

But programs don't always work -- or they work in ways that can worsen the problem.

That's the beauty of this study. It sends the clear message that kids just need to get out of the house, playing ball in the street or park, swimming in the pool or lake, running around in fields and woods. Don't supervise the kids. Don;t organize them. Don't tell them the rules of the games. Just get the out of the house to play.

Sometimes physical fitness is less about training than knocking around.

"We don't need to be getting kids running in the gym on treadmills," Nick Cavill, a reseacher at Oxford University, told the Associated Press. "We need to encourage kids to play."

Even short bursts of activity can have beneficial effects -- both physically and psychologically. Play should be playful, not grinding work to get better at competition. If play is fun -- if it's really play -- kids will grow up loving physical activity. And they'll be open to trying new things.

"There's a value to five and ten-minute bouts of activity, where kids will run for a little while and then stop," Cavill told AP.

That's the point that almost always gets lost in youth sports today. The adults can be so domineering -- in positive ways as well as negative -- that kids don't have much say over what they do and when. I happen to think coaches have lots to teach kids, and that organized leagues and other programs can give the kids all kinds of new ways to enjoy sports.

But kids don't get enough opportunity to say no mas in organized leagues and tournaments. Coaches set rules for all aspects of their lives -- not only how hard to practice for games, but also whether they can play other sports, take vacations with families, mess around in the pool.

Many coaches in the Little League World Series last year acknowledged pressuring their kids to play beyond their physical capacity because they were so intent on winning. Even when the kids and their parents pleaded for a break, the coaches pushed them. many went home with fractures in their shoulders and elbows from overuse. One parent told me he was taking his son out of the local competition -- the boy is now playing ball in a nearby town -- to get away from the pressures of friends and neighbors.

Most people realize that Little League tournaments -- not to mention travel teams -- can push kids too hard. The flip side is true, too. Some parents are too lax and allow their kids to slink around the house watching TV and plinking away at the computer.

In both cases the answer is simple: Just send the kids outside -- and tell them not to come back until lunchtime.

Susquehanna Fever

2006-07-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

One of the most unshakable of all diseases in Washington is known as Potomac Fever. Sufferers of this incurable malady want to be president so badly that they will foresake all other pursuits to beg for money, speak at rubber-chicken dinners, study arcane policy, suffer fools gladly, and genuflect toward the inalienable right of New Hampshire to hold the first primary. The greatest victim of Potomac Fever was Harold Stassen, the onetime Minnesota governor who ran for president nine times.

Sufferers of Potomac Fever can be seen buttonholing perfect strangers, muttering in a trancelike way: "This time I think I have a shot ... The polls look good ... What I need to do is perform better than expected ... We could surprise some people ... If we get some breaks, we can win ... Hey, crazier things have happened."

I was thinking about Potomac Fever because a similar condition sometimes consumes the coaches of youth sports teams. These coaches convince themselves that they can win the Little League World Series, say, and then build their lives around that goal. They scout kids in the local leagues. They build year-round training programs. They plot how to advance through the long hit summers of qualifying tournaments. They get reports on potential opponents.

Call it Susquehanna Fever, after the river the winds through the Allegheny Mountains and by Williamsport, Pennsylvania, site of the Little League World Series.

The chances of reaching Williamsport for the World Series are slim for everyone. More than 7,000 American teams compete for eight slots in the 10-day tournament. But no matter. The eternal optimism that grips pols with Potomac Fever also grip the coaches of 11- to 13-year-old boys.

I've met all kinds of coaches who work for years to get a shot at Williamsport. They range from the kind and relaxed to the calculating and intense. You hear plenty about the ones with veins bulging from the neck. I want to tell you about a kinder, gentler one -- Emmett Lee, the coach of the Tracy Little League all stars, about 100 miles from San Francisco.

Lee is a 70-year-old grandfather who started coaching Little League 10 years ago when his grandsons started playing ball. He spent 25 years coaching high school football and gold at Tracy High School. He played baseball and football at Santa Fe State.

Last year, Lee took the Tracy all stars to the championship game of the West regional tournament in San Bernardino. Rancho Buena Vista, from just outside San Diego, defeated Tracy, 7-2, in a nationally televised game to advance to Williamsport.

This year, Lee and his Tracy Little Leaguers are back at it. After winning the district championship, Tracy begins play tonight (July 21) in the Section 3 tournament. The winner of that tournament goes to a Northern California tournament, and the winner of that competition goes to the West regionals.

Lee knows that Tracy's chances of advancing as far as the regionals again this year are slim. He looks at the other teams in the tournament and is impressed at their size and skills. The kids are bigger than ever, thanks to a new age cutoff date that allows more 13-year-olds to play a tournament traditionally dominated by 12-year-olds. And the skills? "Let's just say that some of these kids do nothing but play baseball. It's like breathing for them," Lee told me today.

"We would have a chance to go a long way if one of our kids from last year, Casey Wickman, stayed with us, but he elected to go to Junior League," Lee says. "But that's OK. We'll go as far as we can."

Lee plans to coach this year and next and then call it quits. Last year's team featured his grandson Josh Wesley. This year, his 11-year-old grandson Jonah Wesley is the team's star pitcher. "I want to see him through Little League and then I'll call it quits," he says.

Lee laughs easily and talks honestly about the intensity and pressure of Little League tournament play. He wants to win -- and in fact, last year hge was willing to lose in order to win -- but gets dismayed when coaches and parents begin to treat the games like millennial warfare.

We talked about one one of the more intense coaches from last year's West regional tournament. I told him that I thought he was a pretty good guy, even though his intensity could be overwhelming.

"Youth sports brings out the worst in people," he said. "There are some pretty good guys who become tyrants. But you know, losing is not the end of the world."

Lee found himself in the middle of a controversy last year when, after going 2-1 in the first three games of pool play in the West regional tournament, he used his his lesser pitcher and lineup in a game against the all-stars from Chandler, Arizona -- a game which Tracy lost, 16-15. That was so Tracy would match up against Chandler -- and not the powerhouses from Vista or Nevada -- in the semifinal round of the tournament. In the semis, Tracy trounced Chandler, 10-0, to advance to the finals against Vista.

"That's how things work with pool play," Lee told me. "It was an advantage for us to lose. It doesn;t make any sense when you don't have to win a game to use your best pitchers.

Other teams criticized Tracy for purposely losing to dodge a tough opponent, but what's Lee supposed to do? Wear out an already exhausted pitching staff so that he can fight against a better team and blow his team's chancs to make it to the title game?

Lee made his decision and just chuckled when other teams got those bulging veins and threatened to protest with league officials.

What makes Lee's nonchalance so remarkable is that he's a guy who really, really cares about the game. If you want to see how much, visit him at his eight-acre spread in Tracy.

At that spread, where he lives with his wife in one house and his daughter and her family live in another house, you will see two Little League fields, two batting cages, and three pitching mounds. Kids play there all summer. The little kids play on the 60-foot bases, and the bigger kids extend the bases to the regulation 90 feet. On the larger field, a grove of trees about 300 feet from home plate define the outfield.

Before you point to Lee's field of dreams as signs of Little League intensity, think again.

Lee originally built a field in the back yard of the house where he and his wife used to live -- to provide play space for his wife's day care business. And when his daughter decided to move home, they bought athe eight-acre property and went all out with the baseball fields.

"Really, there's so much competition for field space, kids don't have anyplace to play, so we decided to build these fields," Lee says, laughing. "That's all. It's just a place for kids to play."

Bats Too Powerful, Fields Too Small

2006-07-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

When Carl Stotz decided to start a new summer baseball program for boys, almost seven decades ago, his vision was a league that provided all of the amenities of the big-league game on a miniature scale. Uniforms, umpires, scorekeepers, manicured fields, scoreboards -- whatever the big leaguers got, Little Leaguers would get on a smaller scale.

Stotz and a bunch of neighborhood boys from the town of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, determined the size of the fields after several days of playing on fields with different diamond sizes. Stotz knew from the start that the field could not be regulation size -- 90 feet between the bases and 60 feet, 60 inches from the mound to the plate. For tykes as young as 8 years old, it was just too much. So he and the neighborhood kids experimented. Eventually, the settled on a diamond two-thirds the size of a regulation field -- 60 feet between the bases and 44 feet from mound to plate. (The pitching distance was later increased to 46 feet.)

I thought about Carl Stotz's unscientific approach to designing the Little League field when I read an article in The New York Times (Sunday, July 16, 2005) about the battle over aluminum bats.

Ira Berkow, the terrific columnist for The Times, reports on three lines drives that have threatened the lives of kids in youth baseball leagues. In 2003, a line drive killed an 18-year-old pitcher in an American Legion game in Miles City, Montana. In April 2005, a line drive almost killed a 16-year-old high school pitcher in Oak Lawn, Ill.; after being in a coma for two weeks, he has begun a long march back to health. Right now, he's learning to do simple tasks like bruising his teeth and tying his shoes. And in a Police Athletic League game in Wayne, N.J., last month, a line drive put a 12-year-old into a coma, where he remains today.

These incidents -- and other scares -- have prompted many coaches and parents to ban aluminum bats from youth baseball leagues, including Little League. The logic is simple: Balls fly off aluminum bats 20 miles per hour faster than wooden bats. That extra zip virtually eliminates a pitcher's reaction time on well-hit balls.

The wood-bat movement's most vocal advocates are Duane and Deb Patch, the parents of Brandon Patch, the Montana boy who lost his life in the Legion game. It's a battle that has been going on for years. Amhert College head coach Bill Thurston has been leading the charge for years. It might seem like a simple battle -- who could argue against something to protect the safety of kids? -- but it's complicated by the vested interests of bat manufacturers and bitter disagreements about research methodology.

Companies like Easton have fought not only the wood-bat movement but an effort in the NCAA to regullate the design of aluminum bats so that batted balls would jump off metal no fater than they would jump off wood.

Researchers say that the "balance point" -- the bat's center of gravity -- plays a critical role in the speed of the ball off the bat. Manufacturers make bats with different balance points, with weight distributed at different points along the bat from the knob to the barrel.

Little League CEO Steve Keener is a believer that design can make aluminum bats safe. Little League sets clear standards for the ratio of a bat's weight to length taht produce the same ball movement as wooden bats. Since aluminum bats are more durable, Keener opposes replacing them with timber.

Ultimately, the question is not whether bats are wood, aluminum, or some kind of ceramic compound. Design can insure that bats produce different speeds on batted balls.

The bigger questions for Little League -- and other youth sports -- concerns the size of the field and the sizes of the kids playing on them.

Little League still uses the same 60-foot-base field that Carl Stotz marked out back in 1939, even though the average size of kids has grown dramatically and the size of the star players has grown even more.

When Stotz laid out the Little League diamond, the game was for a wide range of kids, from age 8 to 13. That range includes the tiniest tots and adult-sized athletes. Over the years, Little League has created a number of different divisions for its leagues. The organization has five basic programs -- tee ball (a program for kids aged 5-8), Little League (11-13), Junior League (13-14), Senior League (14-16), and Big League (16-18) -- which help to sort out kids appropriately. (Most Little League programs also provide a "minor" league for 9 and 10-year-olds.)

Still, each of these age groupings includes a mix of big and small players. The biggest player in thye 2006 World Series had three times as much heft as the smallest. Unlike youth football, baseball does not create weight limits for its different leagues. So you have the spectacle of some very big kids overwhelming very little kids.

The problem goes further than the size of the kids. To accommodate a diverse array of player sizes, Little League uses only two field sizes. You play on 60-foot bases through Little League and then make the leap to 90-foot bases in Junior League. PONY League, by contrast, creates slightly bigger fields for kids as they move from one age group to another. The movement to bigger fields is slow and gradual.

Why does field size matter?

The best Little League players throw the ball 70 miles an hour or more. Some pitchers have been measured at over 80 miles an hour. The problem is that at on Little League fields, there's almost no reaction time for batters or pitchers. A Little League pitch coming in a 70 m.p.h. allows the batter as much reaction time as a major leaguer getting a 91-m.p.h. pitch. An 80-m.p.h. Little League pitch is the equivalent of a 104-m.p.h. pitch.

Likewise, the speed of batted balls can be blistering on smaller diamonds. Even taking Steve Keener at his word -- that Little League bats have the same basic properties as wooden bats -- there's a real danger of kids getting hurt because the reaction times are too short on the small diamonds.

Last winter, Little League made its first change in field dimensions in years. The organization increased the distance to the outfield fences 20 feet, from 205 to 225 feet at the two stadiums in Williamsport that host the Little League World Series. That extra distance will make it harder to muscle balls out of the park and more room for outfielders to chase fly balls.

It will help reduce the spectacle of powerball that has overcome Little League's big show in recent years. Pitchers will have a little more incentive to let the batters put balls into play, rather than blowing them away with strikeouts. Baseball is always better when it's a balanced game -- not just a game of homers and strikeouts, but also a game of doubles and triples, outfield assists and daring first-to-third runs.

But Little League needs one more reform for the sake of both safety and a balanced game. Little League needs to follow the lead of the PONY League and provide a gradual increase in field sizes. Right now, too many big kids are playing on miniature fields.

The bigger the kids, the bigger the field. Make sense?

The Unpage Is The Source

2006-07-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

People who want to follow the long march to Williamsport -- players and their families, coaches, reporters for newspapers covering local teams, broadcasters, even Little League officials -- turn to a spare-looking but fact-filled web page called unpage.com.

The site, run by a 38-year-old business consultant who got interested in Little League when he followed the all-star teams in his home town of Kankakee, Illinois, provides updates on games from the district tournaments to the Little League World Series.

John Welk collects information from newspaper accounts, Little League web sites, and a “loose little koretzu” of 150 stringers. In July, he spends as much as 40 hours a week gathering and verifying game results and writing brief summaries of the top games and player performances.

Welk played for the Kankakee Lions Little League all-star team a quarter century ago. But he got interested in tracking the tournament during hours at the public library. He pulled Champions of the Little League off the shelf one day and was amazed to see his hometown recorded for posterity in the book. “That kind of blew my mind at that age,” he says.

He started to collect newspaper clippings of Little League tournaments. In 1995, he started the web site as an experiment in “open source” data gathering. In addition to surfing the web and taking calls and emails from stringers, he travels to libraries and tournaments to get information. He has been to the Little League World Series ten times. Married with no kids, he started to go to tournaments and travel to distant libraries to gather information.

Even though travel teams play better baseball, Welk has no interest in anything but Little League. “I played Little League, so I have an identification with it,” he says. “the brand quality is so much stronger for Little League, for better or for worse. The experience is so strong for so many people. I got a note from someone in New Jersey who said, ‘You’re missing a piece of information.’ He came back a couple days later with the information and then he started talking about his Little League days.”

Welk keeps his web reports straight. He gives everyone equal treatment and stays away from controversy. Welk wants to do is serve as Little League Nation's newsletter of record, period. But he cares when bad news gets squelched. Last year, when I was working on Little League, Big Dreams, he sent me a bunch of articles from a Venezuela newspaper about an age scandal that disqualified the winner of the Latin America regional tournament.

What attracts Welk to Little League tournaments is not the level of play but the clear sense of mission. He compares the long journey to Williamsport to the many stages of the National Spelling Bee, which is also broadcast on ESPN.

“The parallels are strong,” he says. “There’s really nothing different about working hard to get ready for a spelling bee, studying a dictionary for hours on end, and working hard to become a better baseball player by building a batting cage in the basement. It’s about wanting to do something and wanting to do it well.”

So what if there are better spellers someplace else? So what if there are better baseball players somewhere else?

As he gets his reports from stringers and newspaper accounts, Welk feels the growing drama as some teams advance and others get eliminated. The game scores and summaries, tournament brackets, tell a story.

Names that return to the winner’s brackets year after year—Davenport, Owensboro, Kankakee, Louisville, Trumbull, Cranston, Marietta, and Toms River—take on a sense of destiny.

Amazingly, Little League officialdom once tried to shut down this unabashed celebration of The House That Carl Stotz Built.

Soon after the site went up, League officials sent him a lawyerly letter telling him, in essence, to cease and desist. Stay off our proppity.

Welk told the Little League bigs that his site clearly states independence from Little League. Eventually, he got another letter saying that he could keep the site up as long as he really, really, really makes it clear he's not part of the Little League empire. His web site states up front: "This site is not affiliated with Little League Baseball Incorporated, its international headquarters, or any individual league. Little League Baseball has not in any way endorsed this site or its content. 'Little League Baseball' and 'Little League' are registered trademarks of Little League Baseball, Inc., Williamsport, PA 17701, and are used here for identification purposes only."

Kind of crazy. For all he's done to bring together the thousands of people who want to learn about the long summer of tournaments, Little League should pay John Welk, give him a lifetime VIP pass, honor him on the field. Little League officials often rave about their volunteers, which is great. But people like John Welk are just as important as unpaid groundskeepers or ushers.

Oh, well. John Welk at least knows that his site is the go-to place for results all summer long. And that's reward enough for him.

The Ultimate Blog for Youth Sports

2006-06-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

Williamsport is a little Pennsylvania town on the Susquehanna River that history would have forgotten if a man named Carl Stotz didn't scratch himself on a lilac bush almost seven decades ago.

Stotz was playing catch with his nephews on Isabella Street, a few blocks from historic Bowman Field, when a ball got away. He gave chase but scratched his leg and needed to sit down a few minutes to nurse his injury. And then, like a thunderbolt, he had an inspiration that led to the creation of Little League baseball the following year.

And growing up in America has never been the same.

From a league of three teams in 1939, Little League has grown into a global enterprise that has occupied the lives of some 40 million boys and girls across the U.S. and more than a hundred other nations.

And now the all-star teams from 7,000 American Little League organizations, and hundreds more from overseas, are beginning the long march to the most famous kids tournament anywhere -- the Little League World Series.

Memories of Little League

Most everyone in the U.S. has some kind of Little League memory. For me, it was keeping company with the dandelions in deep right field in Muscatine, Iowa. It was in the scruffy little town on the Mississippi River where I started playing Little League at the age of 9. At first, I hated baseball. My parents had to force me to go to practices and games. But around the midpoint of the season, something clicked. Baseball became my game. Even though I was never much good as a player, I've always loved playing and watching.
Every year, thanks for a multi-million-dollar broadcasting contract with the Disney Company, the memories of Little League return to millions of living rooms around the world. Starting with eight regional tournaments in the U.S., and continuing through a 16-team international Little League World Series in Williamsport, ESPN and ABC televise more three dozen Little League games.

It's more than a little strange that a major media empire would televise the games of a bunch of 11- and 12-year-old kids. The kids playing in the Little League World Series are gifted young athletes. But they are still just prepubescent kids who have not developed physically. You'd think older kids -- like high school players or college players -- would get more attention. But ESPN and ABC serve up three weeks of kidball, and get ratings on par with some major-league and NHL games.

Little Leaguers playing in Williamsport are not even the best of their age bracket. The best pre-teen players compete on travel teams in tournaments across the country all summer. The true stars of the fuzzy-faced set play at tournaments like Cooperstown Dreams Park and the Elite World Series at Disney World in Orlando.

Last summer, intrigued by the oddity of the Little League World Series, I decided to explore the world of youth baseball in the U.S. I thought the long summer of baseball would reveal something important not only about the evolution of youth sports, but also about the state of childhood in America. The result is a book to be published in July by Sourcebooks called Little League, Big Dreams.

This blog

Over the next several weeks, as teams compete in qualifying tournaments for the right to play in the Little League World Series, I'll write a daily blog about the phenomenon of the event. And when the LLWS kicks from August 18 to 27, I'll talk about the games and the festival atmosphere in Williamsport.

It's only a game, but like other phenomena that "don't really matter," I think the Little League World Series does say something about American culture.

Reader participation

I invite readers to contribute their comments along the way. Talk about whatever topics grab you -- players and coaches, parents, TV, how kids train, the "professionalization of childhood," the corporate presence, the quality of play, memories of your own experiences as a player or parent. You name it, we'll talk about it.

Mike and Dante

2006-06-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

Last year's Little League World Series featured two coaches who had long and productive careers in the major leagues. Dante Bichette was a home run machine for the Colorado Rockies and three other teams, while Mike Stanley was one olf the best defensive catchers for the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and three other teams.

Last year they were just a couple of dads helping out the all stars from Maitland, Florida. Bichette's son Dante Junior was the team's big bopper, providing power pitching and hitting. Stanley's son Tanner was the team's sure-handed first baseman, providing the on-field leadershgip that kept the team focused and loose.

Looking over my notes from 2005, I found this rundown of my conversation with the two former big leaguers. Some excerpts:

Bichette on teaching kids: The learning curve is just unbelievable. A lot of kids think they can’t hit a 70- or 72-mile-an-hour fastball. So you go to a pitching machine and put in balls at 70 miles an hour and at first they’re five feet behind, so they adjust, and they’re three feet behind and the adjust and eventually they get around on it. They can get an image in their mind about when to swing.

Stanley on the success of his son: People ask me all the time how this compares with other achievements in my career and I tell them this isn’t my career. I’m a dad and I’m trying to coach my son and spend time with him and experience what being a dad is.

Bichette on the experience of the Little League World Series: This is much more exciting than anything in my major league career because of single-elimination. You have to win game after game and anything can happen and make you win or lose. ... In the major leagues, the World Series winner only has to beat 29 other teams. It’s the most exciting thing to happen in my life except the birth of my son.

Bichette on the importance of size: Over the years, it’s said that the winner has to have a manchild on the team. But we don’t have that manchild. We just have a bunch of kids who play hard and learn as they go. Still, if you have a physically dominant pitcher, that’s what to look for.

Stanley on teaching kids: The best time to teach is in the [scrimmage] when you can stop the game and say, "OK, what went wrong here?" Lids usually know how to break it down, figure it out. Everyone can get together and look at the play and learn from it and maybe you won’t do it again. We told them at the beginning that we had some really good players but we had to get a lot better to do well.

Bichette on the little things that win games: It’s often going to be a mistake that loses a game. [In] the Virginia game in the Southeast [regional tournament], there were three throws to the plate that were late and off-line. We try to prepare the kids for everything and teach that that we all make mistakes.

Stanley on pointing out mistakes to kids: Some of the experts say that parents shouldn’t tell kids what they did wrong right after the game. But you have to teach kinds when it’s fresh in their mind. Kids need to remember everything that was going on when the mistake happened—a bad throw, missed tag, bad baserunning, whatever.

Bichette on hios career in baseball: I just had a hard time getting baseball out of my system. I retired five years ago to spend more time with my family and then came back for 45 games and last year played for an independent league team and this year I was going to play in the independent league again but this thing kept going.

And going and going. Maitland won two of three games in pool play and then lost to California in the first game of single-elimination play.

Little League's Toughest Rival -- Cal Ripken

2006-06-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

In August 2005, just as the Little League World Series was starting play in Williamsport, a new baseball stadium opened its turnstiles for a baseball tournament involving twelve-year-old players from around the world.

The stadium was modeled after Camden Yards, the retro park of the Baltimore Orioles that brought about a revolution in stadium design. With brick walls forming the base for the stands behind home plate, the stadium evokes the urban parks of yesteryear that took odd shapes to fit the contours of the urban streetscape. The amenities found at major-league parks—a modern scoreboard, a press box, in-ground dugouts, bullpens, and lighting—the stadium is the anchor of a longterm strategy to change the world of youth baseball.

Cal Senior’s Yard in Aberdeen, Maryland, was designed to pull on the emotions of young baseball players and their families and coaches, just as much as Howard J. Lamade Stadium in Williamsport reaches the emotions of Little Leaguers. Built in honor of Cal Ripken Sr., the only man to manage two sons on the same team in major league history. The oldest of those sons, Cal Ripken Jr., became one of the greatest shortstops in modern times and the most durable player in the game’s history. From 1982 to 1998, he set an all-time record by playing in 2,632 consecutive games without a day off.

The stadium is just one of four planned for the Ripken Baseball Center in the town where Cal grew up as the son of a career minor-league coach. Other stadiums are modeled after Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and Memorial Stadium (the Orioles’ park before moving to Camden Yards in 1991). The Ripken complex—planned to rise on a 110-acre site—will also include practice fields, training facilities, a baseball museum, and hotel, office, and shopping areas. Nearby, the Aberdeen IronBirds of the Class A New York-Penn League play at Ripken Stadium, one of the most celebrated minor-league parks in America.

In a very deliberate way, Ripken is leveraging the value of his name—made famous by his “iron man” consecutive games streak and the baseball family values embodied in his father Cal Sr. and mother Val. His book Play Baseball the Ripken Way, has become the standard operating manual for many coaches. Ripken also has produced instructional videos. The Ripken complex is home to summer baseball camps and tournaments—all of which will grow as the complex fills out in the coming years. And Ripken heads a consulting firm that offers guidance on stadium design and marketing strategy. Ripken also endorses a number of products and hosts a weekly talk show on XM Satellite Radio.

With the opening of Cal Senior’s Yard, Little League would have a rival with the same sense of drama and public appeal as Little League has nurtured for almost seven decades.

As the all stars from Ewa Beach advanced through the district, state, and regional tournaments and the Little League World Series, another Hawaii team was advancing to the championship of the Cal Ripken World Series.

On August 21, three pitchers from the Oahu team in Aberdeen combined for a one-hitter and a 1-0 victory over defending champion Mexico City to win the sixth annual CRWS. That Mexican team had gone three years without a loss.

The first five years of the tournament took place across the street at Ripken Stadium. The 2005 series was the inaugural of Cal Senior’s Yard.

The Ripken series was played in relative obscurity, compared with the Little League World Series. A Baltimore-area cable television station broadcast the game, but most of the country had no access to the game. Friends and families of the Oahu team had to arrange a special feed of the game in a local bar to watch their “other” local stars play for a championship.

But the Ripken series might be the wave of the future. About 1 million youngsters play in the babe Ruth League, which feeds teams into the Cal Ripken tournaments. And as the Ripken complex takes shape—and as awareness grows of the many brands of youth baseball—Ripken figures to become a major competitor for brand dominance.

The best way to understand the shape of youth baseball today is to consider the evolution of the soft drink market. Coca-Cola has always dominated the field, with Pepsi-Cola a constant runnerup. Coke’s brand appeal is so powerful that while taste tests regularly favor Pepsi, Coke wins when testers know the brand. But even as Coke and Pepsi have continued to dominate the soft-drink industry, more and more players have entered the market—not only other fizzy sodas with different flavors, but also energy drinks and fruit drinks and bottled water and more.

Little League remains the Coke of youth baseball—a recognizable brand name that evokes emotional attachments—but now has to compete with a broad range of organizations that offer brands that have become attractive to a growing majority of kids and their families. Pony League, Cal Ripken, Dixie, and AAU have become major players in different parts of the country, often eclipsing Little League. And tournaments across the country—from Cooperstown to Disney—have become the major events to showcase the best talent in the nation.

One of the “taste tests” for youth baseball in Hawaii took place at an invitational tournament in Wai-Kahala in June 2005.
The Cal Ripken team, known as the Oahu Stars, played the Little League stars, known as the Paina Boyz, just before the all-star teams were formall selected on June 15. Because of limited field space, the tournament set a time limit of one and a half hours for each game. At the end of that period, the Ripken team led the Little League team by a score of 3-2.

The umpire decided to keep the game going, and the Little Leaguers rallied in the seventh inning for two runs and a 4-3 victory. Layson Aliviado doubled, Kini Enos singled, Alaka’i Aglipay singled, Sheyne Baniaga popped out, and Vonn Fe’ao singled.

Gerald Oda, the manager of the Ripken squad, considered the loss to be one of the most positive events in the year for his players.

“We always stress to the kids that you can’t control a lot of things,” he says. “In baseball, you always deal with a lot of failure. So you need to focus on the things that you can control.

“The umpire decided to extend the game on his own judgment. The umpire said we were stalling. It was a heartbreaking game. We told our kids, ‘Look, there are some things that you just can’t control.’ We told them that [the Little Leaguers] earned it, that all we had to do was get the last three outs. But it’s tough. We had a closer getting whacked, but we didn’t want to takle him out because then we’d be accused of stalling. That game was a turning point. Anything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. It was a good experience because it taught the kids that there’s only one game they can control, and that’s the game they play.”

To win the Cal Ripken World Series, Oda’s team won seven games in Aberdeen. Five victories were close—over Willamette, Oregon (3-1); Calvert, Maryland (8-5); the Bronx, New York (6-3); Lexington, Kentucky (1-0); and Mexico City (1-0). Two games were blowouts—against Marblehead, Massachusetts (21-3) and Meridian, Mississippi (12-0).

The U.S. championship game against Lexington and Mexico City put the Cal Ripken game’s style on display. Two close, low-scoring games were decided by pitching and defense.

Cal Senior’s Yard has broader dimensions that Howard Lamade Stadium in Williamsport. The Yard measures 210 feet to the left-field wall, 260 feet to center field, and 205 feet to right field. Most Little League parks extend 205 feet to all fields.

The result is a more athletic brand of baseball. Hitters put the ball into play more often, and outfielders need to track down the ball and make good relays to the infield. And because hitting is less of a power game, so is pitching. So batters put the ball into play more often, putting greater demands on both fielders and baserunners.

In the U.S. final against Lexington, Kalani hit a home run in the top of the seventh to win the game for Hawaii, 1-0. Kewby Meyer pitched five innings of shutout ball—the first four innings and then the sixth inning—to get the win. But superior defense kept the game within reach. The Hawaiians threw one baserunner out at the plate and another at third base, squelching rallies by the team that won the Ripken championship in 2003.

In the title game against Mexico City, Kalani Lagoc-Crawford—whose mother sveres with the U.S. forces in Iraq—hit a double to win the game.

Gerald Oda’s attitude about winning and losing comes from his upbringing as a Buddhist. Economically, the Oda family always struggled. His father was a firefighter and his mother was a sales clerk. The family attended services at Soka Gakkai International, a branch of Buddhism devoted to the belief that all people have the capacity to attain enlightenment. That enlightenment comes from overcoming an inherent human toward hatred and violence.

If Buddhism provided a faith community for the Odas, baseball provided the social community. He played Little League and once dreamed of playing in Williamsport.

Oda remains a dedicated Buddhist. When he rises in the morning, he prays at an altar in his home. Now thirty-seven years old, Oda makes his living investigating fraudulent injury claims for Geico, a national insurance company. As a student at the University of Hawaii, he studied political science. But baseball remains his passion. He has been coaching since he was a teenager.

Oda once coached older kids, but decided that the twelve-and-under group was best for him. “It’s good for the soul,” he says.

A lifelong bachelor, Oda has something of a slimmed-down Buddha’s appearance. His face is round and open. As his hairline rises, he has not taken on the usually signs of tension—deep lines in the face, tightness near the eyes and mouth. He gives off an aura of calm and acceptance.

“I don’t do ever say anything about Buddhism to the kids,” he says. “That’s not my role. But I am always thinking about how to use my understanding of Buddhism to teach the kids better, to give them perspective. They need direction, and sometimes a coach can team them things that a father can’t teach them.”

He is asked what pieces of wisdom he applies to his own life, on and off the field. He repeats a few examples.

“Winter always turns into spring.”

“You can change poison into medicine.”

“At a crucial moment, the foolish will often forget what they have promised.”

What Oda promises—and works to redeem—is to teach his players to work hard, work together, try to win, but accept everything that they cannot control.

He teaches his kids not to argue with umpires.

He teaches them that fame passes quickly, and that the effort put into the game is more valuable anyway.

He teaches them that other teams’ success is not to be envied.

When the Little League all stars returned to Hawaii to heroes welcomes—with parades, TV commercials, gifts, autograph parties, and free outings at amusement parks and resorts—Oda holds no envy.

In fact, Hawaii had six youth baseball teams advance to World Series tournaments in 2005. Beside the Cal Ripken and Little League twelve-and-under teams, the success stories included the Mililani PONY thirteen-and-under team, the Pearl City Little League Juniors Division (age thirteen and fourteen), the Oahu Babe Ruth Leaguers (age thirtheen through fifteen), and the Pearl City Little League Seniors (age fifteen and sixteen).

“Layton winning the Little League was the best thing that happened to Little League on the islands,” he says of Layton Aliviado, the manager of the West Oahu Little League all stars. “And it’s because of Layton’s team that we got any exposure at all for what we did. If we were on ABC, people would be just as proud of our kids. I wish people in the state knew how good our kids are. But we just tell them that fame is a fleeting thing. The fact that we played and won is what matters, not the fame.”