The Chris Moeller Archives

Little League Showcase

Central Iowa is in the news these days for reasons other than the daily, merciless battering of its citizens by the United States presidential race. You guessed the topic correctly: youth softball.

Our fit and fighting 12-year-old girls’ softball area all-stars traveled to the Little League World Series in Portland, Oregon, and had to deal with a competitor from South Snohomish, Washington intentionally losing a game with the goal of preventing the strong Iowa team from advancing against them in the tournament. The collaborative effort at purposeful defeat was apparently less than subtle, as one executed by children is likely to be-- intentional misses at the plate, bunting with two strikes, probably some giggling, et cetera. After a formal complaint was submitted, Little League Softball ordered a head-to-head game between the offending team and the aggrieved, and, in a story straight from Hollywood, the Iowa team prevailed by a single run, 3-2, Tuesday morning.

There are a lot of hypocrites out in the local media this week. It's like shooting pike in a barrel in Des Moines when the local team also gets to play the role of good guy in this provocative human-interest story. Was this event only the fault of the Washington coach? Should his players really be punished for the actions he ordered? Where were the parents when the team was witnessed to be clearly losing on purpose? Why was a head-to-head competition ordered when a tournament forfeit was clearly warranted for the Washington squad? Is Lady Liberty crying in New York harbor because of the wounded sanctity of youth sports?

Am I in the wrong because my first reaction to this story was “hate the game, not the player”? This isn’t the Black Sox scandal. The Washington team was losing for the larger purpose of winning. The structure of the tournament seems to have at least encouraged this somewhat. The outcome of Tuesday's game confirms that the coach knew the side upon which his bread was buttered. I can appreciate the argument that “they’re only 12 years old,” but I think there’s more than a little insincerity in play here, and I also get a little whiff of sexism also.

To the latter first: I’m not sure you can dismiss the reaction to this as being gender-biased. Would some of these protectors of our innocence be less concerned about this if the participants were boys? To deny that is to deny the existence of sexism. Girls are more fragile. Girls' feelings can be more easily hurt. Nobody’s going to publicly own this stance in 2015, but trust me, it’s in play here.

And that hypocrisy... Every year on television, ESPN/ABC networks broadcast-- to the entire nation-- both the Little League Softball and Little League Baseball World Series. Yet to come this summer, pre-teen boys take to the diamond in a bucolic section of Pennsylvania and entertain millions of home viewers with their opportunistic play. Only on ABC. Lucrative advertising spots are sold. The national Little League organization never has to schedule a bake sale to keep itself financially solvent. Last year, a girl that competed with the boys-- and dominated them-- had companies lining up at her front door with suitcases filled with money attempting to buy her endorsement of their product. Every element of American life gets monetized, and children's sports have come to mean big dollars. Look here quick, Martha, it's little kids acting like big leaguers on the TV. And almost never do you hear somebody say about all this: “they’re only 12 years old.”

This softball tournament in Oregon wasn’t a backyard picnic. It was squads of regional all-stars competing, in some cases, thousands of miles from home. If it’s all fun and games, then there’s a surprisingly large amount that's at stake, not the least of which is the exposure brought by television. These kids, their parents, and their coaches, don’t take a week off from work and all other activities to travel that far away and then lose. I’d seriously like to know how many of the people that have a problem with what this coach did-- and, to be clear, I do-- also have a problem with the Little League World Series being televised.

This very week, NFL linebacker James Harrison made headlines when a report came out that he forces his own children to give back “participation” awards they’re given for their youth endeavors-- his point being the popular one today that too many youth organizations have an “everybody gets a ribbon” mentality, and that fact is causing America to rot from the inside, and welfare state yada yada yada. Harrison's parenting strategy certainly was garnering a lot of online support from readers in the stories about it that I read, probably from some of the same observers who think a Little League coach went too far.

A savvy comment-maker on the radio drew a parallel specifically between the Washington coach and today’s investment bankers and tax professionals. In our culture, we expect adult individuals such as these to exploit each and every loophole they come across in their jobs. To this comparison, one of the radio hosts volleyed with the “but they’re only 12 years old” response. Okay, so he's suggesting that decisions made on the job by investment bankers, such as those that recently crippled a global economy, don't affect 12-year-olds? If forced to choose, I would take the nation’s investment bankers embracing a notion of fair play over the nation’s Little League coaches doing the same, and then we could utter a line instead like “it’s only sports.”

I’m calling dishonesty if you’re not willing to acknowledge the larger pattern at play. Sports is big business like so many other things and you can’t have a system of ultra-competition at the top without expecting some ultra-competition to seep in at the bottom. Though his statement is often incorrectly attributed to others, college football coach Red Sanders once declared that “winning isn’t everything... it’s the only thing,” and what element of American life has not taken that preposterous statement to heart? It’s fruitless to try to keep your children away from it. Better to turn a story like this into a teachable moment: Junior, did you see what that coach did in Oregon? Purposely losing so that he could win even more? Everybody voiced their outrage, but had refused to acknowledge, before the fact, that such an event was an inevitability. Then, afterwards, the deformed mindset that precipitated the scandal continued to dominate? That's also how Wall Street works.

posted by CM @ 7:34 PM