OT: Little League Baseball

[PhilipNelsonFan]

This doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with any of what we usually discuss, but bear with me.

The town I live in has supported a Little League structure for 30+ years, which would appear to be pretty damn good. Not many people in my town really leave upon graduation, so a lot of sons play in the Little League that their fathers played in, even mothers and daughters. The Little League structure has helped to cultivate my hometown's athletically inclined youth for my HS (the only one in town), which has produced a state baseball championship team back in the '70s but is far from a powerhouse even today, when our baseball and softball teams were mortal locks for state playoffs for a period of about a decade.

I haven't played Little League since I was 12 years old. And I SUCKED. My biggest asset was a decent OF arm (because you always stuck the worst kids in the OF, even though that's probably a huge hindrance most of the time) and the ability to walk more times than I struck out (both numbers were high in comparison to my peers). And, naturally, a lot of my friends, for I knew everyone as everyone does in my town, were better than I am and played at high levels of Little League baseball. They also would do the All-Star teams (those teams that play in the LLWS IIRC).

Now, as I was playing Little League baseball, the parents of my friends became enamored with the idea of travel teams--essentially, All-Star teams that represented the town that would play in tournaments in our state and other states (although I'm 90% sure each poster on this board knows where I'm from). My friends' parents and my brother's friends' parents (again, everyone knows everyone) who served on our Little League's board of directors decided that this was a fine idea. So they got a bunch of parents to chip in their money (and it's a LOT of money) to buy new uniforms, gear, etc. so they can travel to tournaments across the West Coast to play other kids their age. They get new gear usually every year, while some Little League teams are left waiting for a lot longer, and they get customized warm-up jackets and other equally pretentious s**t. There are about eight to twelve of these teams, including a couple for hardcore softball parents/kids (hippie, for the love of God, please don't do this to your daughter). They've added teams since I've played, but for the most part they are a big draw.

The Little League complex in town is really nice. It consists of a dozen well-kept fields that all have good-as-new backstops, fencing, "dugouts", bleachers, etc....the whole nine yards. There's also a concession stand operated by volunteers that keeps hundreds fed on the busiest days. The catch is, obviously, that all this costs a lot of money and time. Volunteer hours are not a huge issue, as the community really takes pride in it. Popularity is huge (I'll touch on this in a bit), but for all the kids that Little League signs up, the cost of signing kids up increases steadily almost every year. And that's just the main Little League structure; the travel teams (who call the Little League complex home base) also have a lot of money change hands so that they're outfitted with the necessary trimmings.

My town has a population of 35,000 (not really a town, but if you lived here you'd understand why I don't say "city") and it's one of the fastest-growing "cities" in the state. Kids usually play from about age six up to high school. It's a place stuck in transition; the residents of the past 30 years never anticipated any sort of growth and wanted to keep the town "small", binding it to the point where a map of neighborhoods looks like a sick, twisted jigsaw puzzle. Ethnically, the town is about 70% Caucasian and 25% Latino/Hispanic, with a random assortment of other peoples mixed in. Socioeconomic lines are pretty transparent: the majority of the Hispanic population lives below the average income, whereas the majority of the Caucasian population enjoys life at or above the average income, and these are clear majorities. Old neighborhoods and new neighborhoods are easily distinguished, as are "dividing" lines: Latinos/Hispanics mostly live in the southern part of town, whites mostly in the north and west, based off the one main road in town (you read that right). What this means to the Little League Board of Directors is that a significant portion of their income will come from white families, who can afford Little League baseball; a bunch of Latino families' kids will also play but for the most part baseball is difficult to afford for a lot of these kids. (It sounds almost blatantly racist. Maybe it is.) And there are a lot of white kids who live in poorer sections of town that still can't pay for it. The area is decidedly middle-class and there are very few truly wealthy individuals; those who live in the upper echelons of income are not very hard to spot. Between 800 and 900 kids play Little League baseball every year in my town; travel teams serve roughly 200.

The budget crunch is hitting the Little League really hard this year, and the board of directors (the parents of the kids who play on both Little League and travel teams) are hard-pressed to solve the problem before the organization goes into the red. So, what are they planning on doing? Increasing the cost of playing Little League? Cutting down on the number of teams? Cut down on travel team expenses? W*ore out whatever land is left to local business for advertising to make ends meet? Charge for parking??

They're cutting out the Little League program and focusing on the travel teams.

Or, in more infuriating terms, they're sacrificing the baseball dreams of 900 kids (most of whom they wouldn't know until they got to the ballpark) for the 150 in the inner circle whom they do.

And they're likely to get away with it. This upcoming season is, in all likelihood, canceled because of ongoing legal battles related to shutting down a Little League. Little League Baseball, Inc. is reportedly seeking out lawyers to fight this and someone (I think the city) has issued an order to fire every member of the board of directors (who refuse to step down from their posts on what essentially amounts to illegal termination). Among the concerns cited in the local newspapers that affected this decision were a) the condition and poor drainage of the fields and the costs needed to solve these problems and b) the safety of spectators due to kids' penchant for hitting foul balls (I'm not making that up).

To these morons, I say bravo. Little League is a huge asset to our community and they are willing to forsake the many for the benefit of the few. As my mom so eloquently put it, they're "living vicariously through their children", which is pretty much correct considering the fact that a lot of these adults are not far removed from their childhood memories. Meanwhile, my high school is going to be f**ked athletically because, should there be a shortage of competitive talent, there aren't many people left in the pipeline because they've eliminated all opportunities for development. In a town where youth athletics matter a great deal, that just can't sit well, but people are willing to go forward with it anyway. In the meantime, organized athletics below high school are increasingly expensive and more and more inaccessible, withholding the fact that the facilities necessary are expensive and often difficult to obtain.

In a more general sense, score another one for baseball. As if America's pastime wasn't thoroughly f**ked over enough, this continues to happen in communities such as mine. Racial tensions aside, the American talent pool in general would appear to be shrinking in the long term, while Latin America will continue to dominate baseball in a manner that will disturb Bud Selig's baseball utopia and the money it's based upon. Baseball is not dying but it is under siege, and we are the only ones who can do something about it. It is not difficult to look for incompetence if you only try, and it runs rampant at the professional and youth levels. College baseball is the saving grace right now, and we'll see how long before the market is saturated. I imagine there's quite a lot of room to grow, and MLB should take notes.

The more the public sees, hears, and reads about the idiocy from MLB and the MLBPA (steroids being the tip of a big iceberg), the more disillusioned I've become towards the corporate structure of baseball, and what starts at the top inevitably trickles down. To know that people are willing to deprive a town of a community asset to serve the wants (f**k the needs) of a privileged few (read: upper-middle-class suburbanites with kids) is encouraging on a level akin to the sweetness of the fiddle's music serving as the backdrop of a burning Rome.

[Sweezo]

It just falls in step with the general trend started in the education system of focusing solely on grades and doing away with other projects that foster creativity, like arts and music, and classes like physical education.

Programs which would make a child well-rounded seem to be killed for the sake of efficiency and money. And it's a shame. It's not hard to figure out why our society is turning into the hub of fatass consumer culture.

35K city in Oregon? Ummm...go Volcanoes?

[PhilipNelsonFan]

It just falls in step with the general trend started in the education system of focusing solely on grades and doing away with other projects that foster creativity, like arts and music, and classes like physical education.

Programs which would make a child well-rounded seem to be killed for the sake of efficiency and money. And it's a shame. It's not hard to figure out why our society is turning into the hub of fatass consumer culture.

I agree. And I hate it. And I think it's bulls**t. This may just be me ranting on the state of the world, but I think you understand.

35K city in Oregon? Ummm...go Volcanoes?

I swear I've mentioned my hometown ad nauseum on these boards.

[Ex-hippie]

35K city in Oregon? Ummm...go Volcanoes?

Gee, how did you guess that?

[Sweezo]

Ha ha ha...I didn't even make that obvious connection.