OK, I promised myself that this year I would not say anything negative about the Little League World Series. But I lied. I love the event, it still represents a slice of Americana, but there are some things I cannot watch much longer without venting.
First, the obligatory messages that you see EVERY broadcast, bar none. This wasn't quite so annoying when there was only ONE broadcast per year, but now that the LLWS looks more like March Madness, these messages have got to be scaled back somewhat.
1) The umpires are volunteers, they pay their own way here.
This message is usually delivered immediately after a retched safe/out call or a ball/strike call that Ray Charles would not miss. I'd pay some of these guys one-way ticket back home. Listen, these guys are supposed to be the creme de la creme of Little League umpires. It's not too much to ask that they appear to know what they are doing. Do your Leslie Nielsen, strikeout looking, punch out dance on the THIRD strike fellas. And this is after repeatedly looking at the indicator to check the count. It's not that hard to keep track in your head guys.
And if the field is 2/3 the size of a major league field, why do we need the same amount of umpires to cover it? Seems like four would be plenty. Most of these guys have probably rarely worked with ONE partner, much less FIVE others. And a one week or two week crash course is not going to get these guys up to speed in time.
2) The major leaguers are watching the LLWS in clubhouses across the country.
This is a bit of a tip of the cap and some needed good PR for ESPN's other corporate partner--Major League Baseball. I doubt too many guys are watching too strenuously when 75% of the time, they are playing at the same time. Oh, exception noted for the Cubs and White Sox, who are mandated by their coaches to watch the games in order to pick up base-running tips to improve their game.
3) The must play rule is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
No, it's not. It gives an advantage to the teams/leagues that carry less players on the roster. Unless they are mandating and enforcing that everyone actually has the same roster size coming into the game, there is an inequity that is being ignored.
4) The pitch count is the second greatest thing since sliced bread.
No, it's not. Unless you are also going to mandate that these kids do not throw curve-ball after curve-ball--ad nauseum--to say nothing of the slop-slider these kids twist off. I can't get through a single game without severe pain and inflammation in my elbow. And I'm just watching these kids throw.
To have the pitch count rule in place without doing anything to address breaking balls--I don't think you've made the world a much safer place for youth pitchers nationwide. And the continually mounting pitching injury statistics bear that out.
5) Which dovetails rather nicely into my next rant. Pitcher safety.
Having pitch counts will not be a salve to the wound that Little League Baseball and youth baseball in general will suffer when one of these pitchers takes a come backer to the face or head on national TV. To say nothing of the damage done if one of these calendar year 13 year-olds delivers a pitch to a late 11-early 12 year old batter.
The CA team's lineup last night went back-to-back with the 6-foot, 170 pound "Little" Leaguer and another good sized kid with a "Major" League swing. If he connected he could easily take out the 3B or pitcher with a rocket line drive.
One of the CA batters, after swinging at a third strike in the dirt that got past the catcher, TOOK OFF FOR FIRST BASE!! Do you know why he might have done that??? My guess is because he plays in a league or a travel team where they are ALLOWED to take off on a dropped third strike by rule. Granted, PONY does that and some 12 year-old travel leagues do, but my guess is that a lot of these 13 year-olds have played on the bigger field before.
We all marveled at Danny Almonte a couple of years ago until we learned that he was too good (too old) to be true. But was he such a phenom that LL or ESPN figured that people enjoyed watching the level of competence a 13-14 year old could provide and tried to increase the numbers by backing up the birth date eligibility to allow for it to happen more frequently?
We used to joke about kids who were big enough to have driven the team bus, but some of these kids look like they could actually LIFT the team bus.
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt guys.
There is a lot of chatter about birth dates and it's effect on advancement and development throughout the major sports as well as other important elements of kids lives, such as education. And while the data is difficult to dismiss outright, I think a larger factor I see at work in these games is what Dr. Mike Marshall used to refer to as the LLWS being a Tournament of Accelerated Maturers.
If I remember right, we vacated a world championship won by the Philippines some years back after it was discovered that the team was stacked with 15-16 year-old kids. While that team was advanced physically, they were not that much bigger than a "normal" 12 year-old. And granted, there is a great range of size at this level, but the 14-15 year-olds would have more repetitions and greater overall skill development which that would deliver. It's a game of repetition and as a former colleague used to tell me "Charlie, you cannot teach BIG."
I hope these guys don't have such a party on the ratings bonanza (read money) that has accrued to both LL and ESPN from this expansion. Expanding the number of teams that play to promote the game is one thing, but expanding the talent pool to shoehorn borderline HS players into a kiddie pool is not pretty. To say nothing about how it endangers the safety of the players on the "short" end of the gene pool.
And I hope some poor kid never sacrifices his health and safety before the adults realize they have pushed the envelope too far.
P.S. - One more suggestion guys. The teams from "Saudi Arabia" and "Germany" that are in reality U.S. military base teams probably do nothing to promote the game internationally. The Middle East team should truly represent the Middle East, not the U.S. Same with the European representative.
If Little League isn't big enough in these countries that they are not able to field a team capable of getting out of their local pool maybe they should be handicapped as in golf and bowling and allowed to pull players from a wider radius than in the U.S. Maybe base it on population density or something and adjust it annually until these guys catch up.
And if you miss one year on the formula and one of these teams actually wins the title one year, so what. I MEAN, SO WHAT!!! Wouldn't that do more to promote the sport internationally at this level than almost anything else Little League can do? I mean some of these countries must be growing weary of being cannon fodder for the U.S.A. to trample over all the time.
Or throw all the team in the Final Four or Final Eight or whatever into one pool and play single-elimination from there. It's not really a "level playing field" when the International field is stacked with two or three championship caliber talent and only one team gets through to play a U.S. team that had to stretch to maybe win one game to get to the finale. The American team year after year seems to be able to set up it's pitching to win the tournament, while the World teams have to play hard every game just to get to the Final.
I would still watch a Japan-Curacao WS final.
Just a thought.
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