http://www.littleleague.org/series/2006divisions/llbb/teams/transatlantic/aarondurley.htm
Meet Aaron Durley, Little League age 12, 6-8 and 256 pound first baseman for Arabian American Little League Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
This young man fares well in a Tale of the Tape with Prince Fielder. In fact, my money is on Aaron if he goes up against Cecil Fielder.
This is why when Dr. Mike Marshall rants about this type of tournament, and in some respects youth baseball in general, being mainly about "accelerated maturers" vs. "delayed maturers", we need to take notice and at least understand what is going on and gain some perspective.
In some respects, I have a love-hate relationship with all the hoopla surrounding the LLWS. Mainly because of the nostalgia, the light that is shined on the critical issues surrounding youth sports. You get to see, if you care to look, both the best and worst of what youth sports is all about. And amazingly, it is not all about steroid use.
We had the recent case of the coach in Utah, who intentionally walked a team's best hitter in the champioship game to get at the next hitter, who was a recent cancer survivor. And there was a split in the reaction to the event ranging from why was a no-competetive league holding a championship game, if the kid was handicapped why was he hitting behind the best hitter on the team, wouldn't you want to treat the kid equally, etc.
Watching the LL Southern Regional final between Columbus, Georgia and Dunedin, Florida, we got to see a polished, 12-year old lefthander throwing 80+ MPH fastballs.
No, Danny Almonte is not making a comeback.
But you do have to wonder about the accuracy of the radar readings when the Florida pitcher was throwing 64 MPH knuckle-curves. I don't think I had any High School Freshman throwing 80+ and thats 14 and 15 year olds. He did look as polished mechanically as some 14 and 15 year olds I've seen, it's just that I had the same queasy feeling I had when I saw Amonte pitch and that's a) 12 year olds don't throw that hard and b) 12 year old LH pitchers generally aren't that polished on the mound.
I hope for the sake of Little League Baseball that I'm just being overly cynical. Or that the radar readings are as inflated as a Major League Slugger. I'm not sure they could take another Almonte-like scandal.
Especially with the Outdoor Life Network showing the Cal Ripken World Series at the same time. Good to see some of these other organizations get some play. Especially Ripken's, they do an outstanding job and have a fantastic approach to youth sports overall. I saw Billy Ripken on air explaining rule changes for next year: 50 foot pitching distance to help the hitters a little bit and 70 foot basepaths to help infielders learn better mechanics. His explanation was that at the shorter distances IF's "panic" too easily and don't learn properly how to relax and just field the baseball and throw. They just don't hav enought time with 60 foot basepaths, or in most cases they don't feel like they have enough time. Good explanation for why they were making the change and I would expect both changes will facilitate a better overall game played by kids at that age.
Competition is good, it's what made America great. It's good to see some of that philosophy filter down to the youth baseball level.
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