"Little things are big." ~ Yogi Berra

February 11, 2015 11:25 AM

Jackie Robinson West Stripped of Its National Little League Title [New York Times]

An investigation revealed that the Chicago team, which captured the attention of the country last summer, had falsified boundaries to field ineligible players.

Little League CEO Stephen D. Keener [espn.go.com] On Jackie Robinson West Punishment.

How the Jackie Robinson West Saga Unfolded[Chicago Tribune]

From the Chicago Tribune live blog:

“I do not respect the decision of Little League International because the officials have not respected the ethical and emotional well-being of the children involved in this matter. The young men of Jackie Robinson West brought their talent, skills, smarts and hearts to the playing field and captivated a nation by securing a national championship for themselves and our city. That adult Little League officials failed to thoroughly investigate allegations in a timely manner, and therefore allowed these boys to play throughout the season, even as they continued to advance to the World Series, is reprehensible."

--Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis

"We don’t know the extent of the parents’ knowledge or involvement, but one would imagine that at least some of them knew something fishy was going on. If so, it’s another sad moral failing on the part of the adults who are supposed to models for these kids. I hope the lesson the kids learn is that it’s always best to abide by the rules of the game and that honorable victory depends on playing by the rules. I hope their memories and experiences of their great run aren’t too diminished by the poor decisions of these adults."

-- sports ethicist Shawn Klein, professor at the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship of Rockford University

Previously.

posted by Fizz (117 comments total)

That adult Little League officials failed to thoroughly investigate allegations in a timely manner, and therefore allowed these boys to play throughout the season, even as they continued to advance to the World Series, is reprehensible.

STOP ME BEFORE I CHEAT AGAIN.
posted by Etrigan at 11:33 AM on February 11, 2015 [18 favorites]

I've been hearing about this all over facebook for the past few days from people who live in or near the area covered by Jackie Robinson West. The general consensus (from them) is that nobody cared about any possible violations until they won, and even then, they probably wouldn't have cared at all if it weren't an all black team from a poor urban area.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:33 AM on February 11, 2015 [11 favorites]

Silly kids. All you needed to do was redraw the boundaries.
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:33 AM on February 11, 2015

Problem was they went outside of the city into neighboring suburbs for recruitment:

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20141216/morgan-park/jackie-robinson-west-broke-residency-rules-suburban-league-claims
posted by Tullyogallaghan at 11:38 AM on February 11, 2015

Tullyogallaghan, I fixed that link for you:

Jackie Robinson West Broke Residency Rules, Suburban League Claims
posted by Fizz at 11:40 AM on February 11, 2015

There seems to be a lot of people saying 'it's the adults fault not the kids, so don't punish the kids for what the adults did' --- the problem with that is, a) at 12 years old, these kids had to know the rules, and they were old enough to know if they lived outside the team boundaries.... after all, they had to travel from those suburban homes to where the team practiced; plus b) not punishing cheating teams would tell non-cheaters that the league might say cheating is wrong, but they won't do anything to stop it, so all their talk of sportsmanship and fairplay is pure bull.
posted by easily confused at 11:42 AM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I guess 12 year olds might know Little League boundary rules, but I wouldn't assume that at all.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:43 AM on February 11, 2015 [26 favorites]

Mo'Ne was robbed, yo.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:44 AM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Breaking rules is wrong.
If you agree to play a game, you need to play by the rules of that game.
It was unfair to the other kids playing that Jackie Robinson West broke the rules.

But...fuck. You couldn't let these kids have this one? Some old white dad just had to make sure that he protected the "integrity of Little League" by going after these kids until their wins got taken away? It's about ethics in Little League-ing, I get it.
posted by sallybrown at 11:45 AM on February 11, 2015 [20 favorites]

The reason adults have to carry the ethical load is because it might affect kids if they don't. As should be obvious, the people who are responsible for the kids "being punished" are the cheating adults.
posted by OmieWise at 11:45 AM on February 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

nobody cared about any possible violations until they won, and even then, they probably wouldn't have cared at all if it weren't an all black team from a poor urban area.

Oh give me a break. That's preposterous. Anyone who cheats to win is going to get called on it by a team that lost to the cheaters.
posted by resurrexit at 11:47 AM on February 11, 2015 [19 favorites]

Oh give me a break. That's preposterous.

Well, it's not preposterous. I respectfully submit that there are some perceived racial overtones in this story, perhaps having something to do with the neighborhoods involved. I'm from Chicago and seeing a lot of people feeling this way on Facebook. I'm honestly a little surprised, but it doesn't make other peoples' comments invalid.
posted by phaedon at 11:51 AM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

(Yeah, no joke here, this was a team they beat along the way. A majority black team from Philly with a an all-star sensation black girl as their best pitcher. It's far from as simple as 'We don't want the black kids to win!')
posted by Drinky Die at 11:51 AM on February 11, 2015 [27 favorites]

This Calvin and Hobbes strip feels appropriate.
posted by Fizz at 11:54 AM on February 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

FREE DANNY ALMONTE
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:54 AM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

So they problem was that some of the players lived outside the designated area? If that's against the rules, fine, but who could possibly think that the kids would know about this kind of violation? Would you, at that age, have sat down with a map to make sure all your teammates lived in the right place?

And what would have happened if one of the kids did think something was amiss?
"But Coach? Doesn't Timmy live over in North Haverbrook?"
"Don't worry about it; it's fine."
"Oh, okay."

The kids aren't to blame for this.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:54 AM on February 11, 2015 [15 favorites]

Problem was they went outside of the city into neighboring suburbs for recruitment:

I've been trying to get more information of about the exact locations they're talking about - the suburbs that are neighboring the area covered by Jackie Robinson West aren't exactly flowing with money. Most of them are pretty poor with the possible exception of Oak Lawn and, imagine this, Evergreen Park. And there's a pretty stark racial divide there, too. It's gotten better in the past few decades, but it's definitely still there.

I don't know if it's actually the case, and I don't know what the right answer is. I also don't know if I'm being overly cynical by thinking that other teams are probably doing the exact same thing. But that's the general consensus I'm seeing from people who live in the area.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:55 AM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Problem was they went outside of the city into neighboring suburbs for recruitment.

I guess 12 year olds might know Little League boundary rules, but I wouldn't assume that at all.

Jackie Robinson Park is very close, geographically, to the southern edge of Chicago. It makes sense, to me, that parents from nearby might be interested in having their kids participate in a local athletic program. The intent of the rules, I assume, is to prevent recruitment, and it sounds to me that this situation consists of people fulfilling the intent of the rules (not recruiting star kids) while violating the letter (not having kids from outside the geographic area).

To the kids, it's just them going to a local park to play baseball. To the parents, heck, it's probably the same.
posted by LSK at 11:56 AM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ay, what's happening, what's happening my man
Are they still gettin' down where we used to go and dance
Will our ball club win the pennant,
Do you think they have a chance
And tell me friend, how in the world have you been
Tell me what's out and I want to know what's in
What's the deal man, what's happening
What's happening brother
What's happening brother
Ah what's happening brother

posted by resurrexit at 11:56 AM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Would you, at that age, have sat down with a map to make sure all your teammates lived in the right place?

No, but it's possible that some of the players on the team new that they, themselves, did not live in the right district to play on that team.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:56 AM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also, when this happened with school districts (the south suburbs are poor enough that getting into the Chicago Public School system seems like a great idea), it’s not just parents driving them over every day from the suburbs. It’s more that they’ll put a relative’s address down as their main address, and sometimes the kid would go to live with the relative during the week. I don’t know if they’d be doing the same thing for a little league team, but it’s always as simple as asking the kid where they live.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:04 PM on February 11, 2015

I'm pretty sure other Little League teams have had their title rescinded for the same violation. With no notable uproar.
posted by umberto at 12:04 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

I do not respect the decision of Little League International because the officials have not respected the ethical and emotional well-being of the children involved in this matter.

Neither did the officials of Jackie Robinson West. In fact, by cheating, they disrespected not only the ethical and emotional well-being of the children on their own team but also the ones who may have played by the rules yet lost to a team that cheated. Feh.
posted by Gelatin at 12:05 PM on February 11, 2015 [18 favorites]

No, but it's possible that some of the players on the team new that they, themselves, did not live in the right district to play on that team.

Little League district boundaries don't necessarily conform to anything else (e.g., school districts or cities), so it's not like they would think, Wait, he doesn't go to my school...
posted by Etrigan at 12:06 PM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

If you're not reading DNAinfo Chicago's coverage of this, stretching back to August of last year, you're not reading all of the information. This article in particular, which has responses from some of the parents.

To me it sounds like it's a little bit of understandable stuff (broken homes, divorced parents, live with grandparents, etc., so yeah maybe you pick the JRW team when your mother's house is in their boundaries even if you go to school in dad's neighborhood) and other possibly more questionable stuff.

The intersection of travel ball and Little League is interesting too... Little League can't keep the more high-stakes travel ball players out, and is that starting to change the tenor of the true Little League ethos: everyone plays, you don't have to try out, etc.? How does the TV stuff and ESPN coverage contribute to that pressure?

And whether or not this investigation has a tinge of racism to it, certainly your heart has to break for kids who really truly come from troubled neighborhoods (a lot of those south side inner-ring suburbs aren't any better off than in the city) and by all accounts demonstrated hard work and dedication to their sport and had an opportunity to do great things. And now it's tainted. My heart just weeps for those kids.
posted by misskaz at 12:09 PM on February 11, 2015 [18 favorites]

The rules state you have to have a bona-fide residence within the boundary, or attend a school within the boundary. What's a bona-fide residence? Got me. If you own an house and pay the bills inside the boundary, does that count, and how do you prove it doesn't?

It's perfectly fine to live outside the boundary so long as you attend a school within it. It is also perfectly legal to attend a school outside your boundary and play if you live within the boundary as well. So, attending a suburban elementary school is not complete evidence that the player is ineligible.

Little League, which has become big money-making corporation thanks to selling LLWS rights to EPSN, says they broke the rules. So, well, there you go.

To the kids, it's just them going to a local park to play baseball. To the parents, heck, it's probably the same.

Oh, no. To the parents, your kid on a superstar title winning team is a big deal. You can bet that the parents were enabling this, probably by establishing "residency" within the area. No, the didn't live there, they just had property and claimed that as a residence.

The question becomes "Is that, in fact, wrong?" In the terms of LLWS, yes, because the entire point of the recruiting boundaries is to prevent you from recruiting like this.

Oh: one exception. If you used to live in the boundary, and move, your child can keep playing with a team that they played with before you move. I suspect that tricks in play as well -- rent an apartment for 90 days, sign the kid up with that address, show things like utility bills, then "move" back to the Suburbs and cite the exception. Because we don't want to break up teams, right?

I'm sorry the kids are paying the price here. But if the adults did enable this, the only thing that LLWS can do is to enforce the previous standard for titleholders with recruiting violations, which is to forfeit the title. I feel bad for the kids, and anger for the parents and coaches who put those kids in that position.

Because we can't accept "well it's not fair to the kids", otherwise, anybody can cheat and cite that. It's *not* fair to the kids, but life isn't fair.

Save your anger for the adults that did this.
posted by eriko at 12:11 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

No, but it's possible that some of the players on the team new that they, themselves, did not live in the right district to play on that team.

12 years old? I'm betting they all knew. But maybe they were recruited, maybe they were told not to worry about it, etc.

Coached youth baseball for 8 years, our league is **very anal** about this. If you're looking to play for a team outside the "home" team where you live, you need a waiver from that team, the idea being - otherwise clubs can stack their teams with ringers, crush everyone else and win championships while the home team is trying to win games with the kids who happen to live in the neighborhood.
posted by kgasmart at 12:11 PM on February 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

The kids got screwed. The kids who played against JRW, the kids on the JRW team who played their hardest, the kids who got cut from the JRW team because they were recruiting from the 'burbs.

Assholes who think winning is the only thing in youth sports need to get the fuck out of youth sports.
posted by cmfletcher at 12:13 PM on February 11, 2015 [25 favorites]

I'm pretty sure other Little League teams have had their title rescinded for the same violation. With no notable uproar.

Nope. This is an exceedingly rare thing.
posted by kmz at 12:13 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

How does the TV stuff and ESPN coverage contribute to that pressure?

It's a huge factor, because Little League, the corporation, went from just the guys who set the rules to a multi-million dollar corporation. One of the reasons they're coming down on this like they are is they don't want the stigma to attach to them, and risk that juicy TV contract.

Nope. This is an exceedingly rare thing.

In fact, the actual World title, not the US title, was forfeited to Long Beach, after the winners, from Zamboanga City in the Philippines, was judged to have broken both age and residency requirements. In 2001, the American Little League of State College, PA was judged as the winner of the Mid-Atlantic regional when the team from the Bronx was found to have a 14 year old pitcher.

So, there's clear history that violations of residency result in forfeiture of the title.
posted by eriko at 12:20 PM on February 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

“It’s amazing how they could try to take this achievement and tear it down to say someone cheated,” parent Tammy King said. “To me it’s a waste of time. It’s the boys’ talent that got them there. At this point, don’t take fame from the kids.”

Yes, because fame is the true goal and reward. Poor kids.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:22 PM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Proving once and for all that Little League is able to act more decisively when confronted with cheating that the NCAA, MLB, NBA, the NFL, etc.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:27 PM on February 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

I don't think putting any responsibility or blame on the kids is a good idea here. The kids didn't cheat. They played baseball really well. The adults used the kids to cheat.

Even going into suppositions about what 12 year olds might have possibly known is an ugly direction for speculation to take. These are children in the care and management of adults, and the adults took advantage of those children.

Not sure what to do about stripping the title. If it were me I would let the kids keep their trophies and title, but officially strip it from any of the adults involved and suspend them. Probably not an option, but better than the alternative, I think.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:27 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

The kids aren't to blame for this.

But they will be. Yesterday they were heroes now, for the rest of their lives, they will be seen as criminals because they were the face of the crime. No one will remember the parents or the coaches responsible, just the kids. Watch this documentary about Danny Almonte and see how it shadowed the rest of his life. He was probably more complicit in the deception than any of these kids but he still was a child listening to an adult tell him everything was going to be alright. Guaranteed to this day no one ever points a finger at his uncle saying "that's the guy who fraudulently put Danny Almonte on the Harlem All-Star team." It just doesn't sit right to me for adults (at every level) to cheat and the kids have to pay the price, all they wanted to do was play baseball.
posted by any major dude at 12:27 PM on February 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also, I realize this is no excuse for cheating, but damn if I don't think about all the things that these kids are "cheated" out of in life due to their race and the neighborhoods they come from. They're cheated out of decent schools, of making mistakes as kids that don't lead to jail time, of being able to walk down the street with their friends without cops harassing them, of being able to walk to school without worrying about getting shot... Claiming your mom's house as your residence when you actually don't spend a whole lot of time there so you can play on a winning team and feel good about yourself, well, I can kinda understand that in context.

Yes, yes, two wrongs don't make a right. And it's a shame that the adults involved didn't put a stop to this before it got so far out of hand. But idk, I just can't get mad at the players.
posted by misskaz at 12:27 PM on February 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

There is a fundamental difference between 1) breaking the rules of the game on the field, and 2) league contract violations.
posted by MrJM at 12:30 PM on February 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

Also with the district jumping – my experience as a twelve year-old with people district jumping to attend a better school is that it was an open secret. People knew. Sometimes kids would disappear and later you’d find out that they were reported. But the general feeling was that it tacitly allowed, because the Alsip public school system wasn’t something you’d wish on anyone, and because of the idea that a lot of people had a lot of privileges that the kids in question wouldn’t have – money, race, what have you, that they should be allowed to take what they could get.

I’m not saying this is right, or that any of this was fair. But I’d be surprised if this wasn’t influencing the adult’s thinking in this, just a little.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:31 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

So. In the early 80s, my dad was registrar for the local little league. We had just merged two different little leagues into a single league (because on their own, there would have been maybe 3-4 teams at each level, now there were 8 teams per level).

This was pre-internet, so you had to show up to register. At the registration desk were copies of the local Rand McNally maps for the area, with the league boundaries starkly delineated.

Not a lot, but some families were turned away because they didn't live within the boundaries. They'd get a referral to the correct league for where they lived, and sometimes a followup phone call to make sure they could register.

So for my known memory, LL has always cared about and enforced the boundaries. Why ? No idea, but they did.

Further, my league had an all-star ballot, where each team had at least one kid selected to, and it was the all-star team that went to the local LLWS feeder tournament, not the team that won the local league championship.

But, as pointed out, the intersection of travel ball and LL means things are changing.
posted by k5.user at 12:31 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

The history (and present) of segregation, sundown towns, destruction of parks and leagues, etc in Chicagoland is inseparable from things like this.

"If you don't understand why Black parents in the Evergreen Park Little League district would choose JRW? You don't understand Chicago."
posted by kmz at 12:31 PM on February 11, 2015 [17 favorites]

resurrexit: "nobody cared about any possible violations until they won, and even then, they probably wouldn't have cared at all if it weren't an all black team from a poor urban area.

Oh give me a break. That's preposterous. Anyone who cheats to win is going to get called on it by a team that lost to the cheaters."

There's a lot more eligibility-policing that goes on of talented black children in high school athletics than of talented white children, in Illinois at least. To me, the complaints often sound resentful and suspicious of success, like, "Why is that poor black kid doing so much better than other kids in the league? Someone must be helping him cheat!" Wealthy students (especially but not exclusively white students) are more likely to have people say, "Oh, yeah, he's doing so well because his parents can pay trainer and send him to great camps and have worked hard to nuture his talent!" You get a really talented black kid from a South Side of Chicago high school and suddenly people are like, "I wonder if he even GOES there." (Like ... where would he be going if not there? A different South Side high school?)

dinty_moore: "I also don't know if I'm being overly cynical by thinking that other teams are probably doing the exact same thing."

Oh, totally. High-level youth athletics is FULL of boundary rules (thick, thick, complicated documents) and FULL of boundary violations and boundary policing. Like, grown-ass adults camping outside some high school student's home for days on end to see if he REALLY lives with his father four day a week and is eligible to play for North High or if he's lying and ACTUALLY only lives with his father on weekends and therefore should be playing at SOUTH High where his mom lives. GROWN. ASS. ADULTS. WITH. JOBS. seriously staking out teenagers. Or, two high school coaches at different schools but in the SAME school district repeatedly reporting each other to the state for boundary violations, trying to poach each other's recruits and get each other fired while both engaging in the same "recruiting" behavior.

I don't have an opinion on the Jackie Robinson situation and I don't know Little League boundary rules beyond "they exist," but these boundary rules for eligibility can be very complicated, and when children are in violation of them it is quite often not their fault. A lot of boundary violations come from well-meaning parents and administrators trying to accommodate a child whose housing situation is fluid (they're homeless, or they camp out with neighbors or relatives, or they rent and therefore move frequently), or whose family situation is difficult (divorce, parent in prison, custody shuffling around among relatives, etc.), and the adults in the situation are trying to provide the child stability by giving them waivers to stay enrolled at a particular school despite their address changing. The thing is -- that waiver may not satisfy state sports authorities, since in the past they have been abused to allow particular schools to "recruit." So a student who's great at basketball and just happens to have a screwed-up family and a fluctuating address may end up unwittingly in violation of the rules for sports eligibility because his teachers are trying hard to keep him in a stable school situation, which everyone praises UNTIL the team goes to the state tournament, at which point the poor kid finds himself being punished for being good at basketball and -- this is the saddest part -- can lose some NCAA eligibility for play time and scholarships. There are people whose full-time job is helping athletically-talented students ensure they never step outside the (frequently silly) boundaries of the gazillion rules designed to prevent ADULTS from cheating, so that students don't lose college scholarships.

(My experience of the intricacies of school and youth athletics was largely much more positive than I would have predicted and I have written on metafilter before about how school athletics are probably a net positive, but every corner of the culture has some serious lunatics.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:34 PM on February 11, 2015 [33 favorites]

Aren't all these international-level Little League teams basically local all-star teams?

It's not like the team cherry picked kids from New York, LA, Miami, etc.
posted by mullacc at 12:35 PM on February 11, 2015

FYI: youth baseball is split into two types of players: travelling and everybody else. Travelling teams are generally very serious operations and require considerable parental resources and usually above average baseball skills. Little League is the best of the non-travelling. The kids in little league are supposed to be from the same place, and the league is notably anti- "travel ball" and criticizes travel, noting that teams do NOT have to pay to participate in the Little League Baseball World Series, it only costs 150$.

Most of the kids that broke the residency rules were on travel teams, which was where they were likely recruited from. Those kids were ringers, plain and simple.
posted by zenon at 12:37 PM on February 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

As this broke on the morning news today, I thought "oh great. Another reason for people to crack jokes about Chicago as the home of cheating and corruption." Ugh.
posted by dnash at 12:38 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

At least the team roster didn't have players who were already dead
posted by Renoroc at 12:39 PM on February 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'm from Chicago. I went to a certain north side high school that had quite a few students falsifying addresses and commuting from the south side. One of them wrestled with me. He didn't lie for the sports. He lied about his address for the education. And as far as I'm concerned, The Wire got it right:

"You know what the problem is? We used to make shit in this country. BUILD shit."

These kids mostly have grandparents or great grandparents who piled into town to make shit. Build shit. But then we decided to gut the city of Chicago, sprawl out the jobs, and write off that part of the city and everyone who lives in it. Now the only way kids from there expect to improve their lot is to be that one-in-a-hundred who do something in sports or the performing arts, and do it well enough to call attention to themselves and win themselves a patron out of a Horatio Alger novel. And those who don't, get what they deserve: 3 shit sandwiches a day for life.

The problem isn't that they're losing the title. The problem is that for their entire lives, they weren't given anything better to invest their efforts into.
posted by ocschwar at 12:41 PM on February 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

When I was in school and they recruited for sports they had this long list of benefits like it builds character and it teaches sportsmanship and teamwork and (this is a direct quote) it does not matter if you win or lose but how you play the game. I don't have this kind of proof but I always suspected the people telling me that stuff were largely hypocrites. His last year at Texas A&M Johnny Manziel never even went to one class.
posted by bukvich at 12:43 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't think there's a tangible difference between lying for an education and lying for sport. For many of these kids, a way out is a way out.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:43 PM on February 11, 2015

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Illinois, the Mooseheart team has been cleared to play with their new Sudanese team members (who, by extreme coincidence, happen to be insanely tall).
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:45 PM on February 11, 2015

> There seems to be a lot of people saying 'it's the adults fault not the kids, so don't punish the kids for what the adults did' --- the problem with that is, a) at 12 years old, these kids had to know the rules, and they were old enough to know if they lived outside the team boundaries.... after all, they had to travel from those suburban homes to where the team practiced

I'm furious at the adults for putting the kids on the team in the position to lose their title. I don't blame the kids at all. We're talking about the administrative regulations of the league here -- responsibility for compliance is on the adults. These aren't gameplay rules on the field that the kids broke, and it's not as if ringers were imported from out of state and plopped on the team, they're Chicago-area kids.

What, twelve year olds are going to challenge the adults on the technical details of their teammates' school addresses, current home address(es), the definition of "residence" as "a place of bona fide continuous habitation," whether a former address qualifies them for a waiver, and whether proper documentation for each kid had been filed and verified?

The link that Fizz provided above goes into a little more detail about how residency rules aren't as straightforward as the kids noticing that some of their teammates get driven in from the suburbs.
posted by desuetude at 12:45 PM on February 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

I don't have this kind of proof but I always suspected the people telling me that stuff were largely hypocrites.

I think sports does build character - but it may warp the character of the superstars, the kids who are obviously head and shoulders above the rest and who, as a result, get catered to every step of the way.
posted by kgasmart at 12:47 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

misskaz: "To me it sounds like it's a little bit of understandable stuff (broken homes, divorced parents, live with grandparents, etc., so yeah maybe you pick the JRW team when your mother's house is in their boundaries even if you go to school in dad's neighborhood) "

Another thing that's getting more complicated since divorce and all-parents-working families have gotten more common is a kid will live and sleep at his mom's, but dad works the swing shift and is responsible for taking care of the kids after school so the parents don't have to pay for care every day or have the kids unsupervised, so the kid does extracurriculars near dad's house even though he lives with mom. Again, everyone finds this laudatory support of a family with a complicated situation until the kids start winning championships.

There are also any number of children whose families, because their parents work various rotating and on-call shifts, live different nights of the week with different family members, and whose residency is extremely complicated to ascertain under the "traditional" rules. The sports eligibility rules basically operate under the assumption of "one parent works 9-to-5, one stays home watching kids at a stable address" and treat other families as variations or deviations from that norm for sports eligibility purposes. They're almost totally unable to contemplate kids with both parents working night shifts who spend all afternoon with their parents but sleep at grandma's, for example, or kids who spend the night at overnight "daycare," or kids whose parents' shifts change weekly, or any of the other wonderful variations that 24/7 capitalism has brought us ... and that's before we get to complicated and volatile family relationships.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:48 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Zenon, Little League vs Travel is very similar to public schools vs Charter schools debate. Charters, much like Travel teams, cherry pick students from the public program and throw back those that will bring back their scores down, then tout themselves as a more successful alternative to the current system. It's bullshit. Travel baseball lures kids away from Little League with seductive stories about being feeder programs to high school and professional showcase tournaments populated by major league scouts. They also drop subtle hints that you might be blackballed by the high school program if you aren't part of the right travel team. LLI has been caving in to Travel demands more and more each year instead of taking the firm stand they have in the past. Now they are trying to play it both ways by sanctioning a single travel program that aligns its schedule with Little league in order to maintain enrollment of top players. It's borderline extortion. The truth is that a fraction of 1% of players will even sniff a D1 program and a fraction of those will get scholarships yet parents are willing to pay upward of 30k over the career of their child toward these pipe dreams.
posted by any major dude at 12:49 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

So that was Brandon Green out there on the mound. And I guess that was your accomplice in the dugout. And those three kids in the suburbs. And for what? For Little League. There's more to life than Little League, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:50 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you think the kids had a choice in the matter you've never met a Little League All-Star team parent.
posted by Metafilter Username at 12:50 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Eyebrows McGee: "You get a really talented black kid from a South Side of Chicago high school and suddenly people are like, "I wonder if he even GOES there." (Like ... where would he be going if not there? A different South Side high school?)"

On reflection I have just realized these people are implying the kid is a dropout only showing up for sports. I always assumed they thought kids were going to school at one school and playing sports at another, to no discernable end.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:51 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: No, but it's possible that some of the players on the team new that they, themselves, did not live in the right district to play on that team.

That's weak sauce, considering that the goalpost started at

easily confused: at 12 years old, these kids had to know the rules, and they were old enough to know if they lived outside the team boundaries

posted by IAmBroom at 12:53 PM on February 11, 2015

Yesterday they were heroes now, for the rest of their lives, they will be seen as criminals because they were the face of the crime.

I don't think any actual crimes have been committed here...
posted by crank at 12:57 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

> “It’s amazing how they could try to take this achievement and tear it down to say someone cheated,” parent Tammy King said. “To me it’s a waste of time. It’s the boys’ talent that got them there. At this point, don’t take fame from the kids.”

Yes, because fame is the true goal and reward. Poor kids.

Yeah, ugh, not a great moment in parental commenting. Besides, it's not even true -- our Taney Dragons here in Philly got to meet President Obama, and Mo'ne Davis was on the cover of SI despite getting knocked out of the championship.

(And it's the talent of the boys AND GIRLS THANK YOU that got them there.)
posted by desuetude at 12:57 PM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Hell, my dad did this when I played little league, but there was no way I was ever going to make the league all-star team so it wasn't a big deal. My parents divorced when I was 6 and had joint custody (I switched houses every week). I went to a school out of either of my parents' districts as a transfer student so I could go to a day care center across the street from school in the afternoon. We used the address of a friend who didn't play baseball as my address just so I could play baseball with my friends from school and day care instead of random kids from the neighborhoods I lived in but had never met. Something similar may have happened here, or maybe the neighboring LLs aren't as functional. You certainly want to prevent a team of ringers and the rule exists for a good reason, but ringers aren't the only explanation.
posted by LionIndex at 1:06 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

> Meanwhile, elsewhere in Illinois, the Mooseheart team has been cleared to play with their new Sudanese team members (who, by extreme coincidence, happen to be insanely tall).

Unless this article is missing a whole lot of context, this seems totally legit to me and the Illinois High School Association bylaw ridiculously discriminatory. The kids want to play basketball for the school that they attend. It's not as if their high school recruited ringers directly from refugee camps in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Moose International runs the Batavia institution, a 1,000-acre residential community and school for children from unstable backgrounds."

"Motivated in part by the perception that Mooseheart unfairly exploited IHSA rules by playing the South Sudanese students, the IHSA in late 2013 imposed the bylaw to restrict international students' eligibility for athletics. Makindu, who fled war-ravaged Congo and arrived at Mooseheart in October 2012, challenged the bylaw in court."

posted by desuetude at 1:09 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

A few things that might add perspective:

1. Evergreen Park is 74% white and while in "suburban" Cook county, is surrounded on three sides by the City of Chicago.

2. Morgan Park is 66% black. The neighborhood limits are about four blocks from Evergreen Park. When I saw the picture of the guy here who made the complaint, it was the least surprising thing in the world.

3. I coached Little League/Babe Ruth for 12 years in a couple of towns in the west suburbs. There were places where when the kids did not make the travel team, parents bought land and started their own club. There are a lot of class issues in youth sports to say the least.

4. Mooseheart is an old-school residential orphanage and "child city" in the far west suburbs. I work nearby and don't get the impression that they are dynasty building.
posted by cgk at 1:21 PM on February 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

New rule: it should be illegal to transport a minor across state lines in order to participate in an athletic event.
posted by mullacc at 1:24 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Claiming your mom's house as your residence when you actually don't spend a whole lot of time there so you can play on a winning team and feel good about yourself, well, I can kinda understand that in context.


I dunno, that DNAinfo article sounded a lot more like "claiming your dad's second house that he never lived at as your residence". Quote from that dad:

“I’ll speak the truth. It’s no different than when Michael Jordan’s son was playing at Whitney Young and people were complaining. What did he go do? He went and bought a condo Downtown so his son could play for Whitney Young,” he said. “You’re paying for the gas and the lights and the mortgage. … Now whether or not someone is sleeping there we don’t know. But at the end of the day you have the documentation.”

posted by the agents of KAOS at 1:25 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

’s no different than when Michael Jordan’s son was playing at Whitney Young

Whitney Young is top notch for academics. MJ's kid wasn't just playing there.
posted by ocschwar at 1:30 PM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

a lot more like "claiming your dad's second house that he never lived at as your residence".

the agents of KAOS, while certainly this is a potential avenue for cheating, I think it's important we don't suggest it's the kids "claiming" this.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:32 PM on February 11, 2015

Yeah, if anybody remembers the film Cheaters, Whitney Young was the school that always won the academic decathlon that nobody had any hope of beating. Their sports aren't bad, but their sports aren't really their main pull.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:35 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports sums up better than I could why this decision stinks to high hell.
posted by dry white toast at 1:35 PM on February 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

BlackLeotardFront: "If it were me I would let the kids keep their trophies and title, but officially strip it from any of the adults involved and suspend them."

So what do you do with the runner up team who hasn't been caught cheating? Tell them so sad or issue them trophies and a title too?
posted by Mitheral at 1:36 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I hope the lesson the kids learn is that it’s always best to abide by the rules of the game and that honorable victory depends on playing by the rules.

Oh man, how quaint is that going to sound to a group of 12 year olds in 2015?
posted by spaltavian at 1:36 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, if anybody remembers the film Cheaters, Whitney Young was the school that always won the academic decathlon that nobody had any hope of beating.

Been there. Done that. So many Saturdays spent being bussed somewhere to fill scantron sheets, eat brownies, and learn that nobody scantrons better than the Whitney Youngers.
posted by ocschwar at 1:38 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I saw the picture of the guy here who made the complaint, it was the least surprising thing in the world.

What's the implication here? I'd like to hear it stated.

Also, are you from the South Side?
posted by phaedon at 1:53 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Could they have just penalized the adults in charge of the team. Ban them from little league.
That would have sent more of a message to adults considering the same in the future.

I can tell you the "victory" awarded to the second place team was a hollow one.
posted by notreally at 2:00 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you think you maintain integrity by taking a championship away from 12-year-olds I don't even know what to tell you. Why punish the kids that worked hard and won? This is one of those times you be more careful in the future and don't try to rewrite the past. What kind of scrutiny is a little league team supposed to put kids addresses under, anyway?
posted by Hoopo at 2:19 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you think you maintain integrity by taking a championship away from 12-year-olds I don't even know what to tell you.

12 year olds are having championships taken away from them no matter what you do here. They didn't win against imaginary opponents. The only message the 12 year olds get from this is that cheating pays off.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:22 PM on February 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

Also, I realize this is no excuse for cheating, but damn if I don't think about all the things that these kids are "cheated" out of in life due to their race and the neighborhoods they come from.

If these allegations are true, then this team also cheated other teams comprising disadvantaged minority players. This would not have been a sneaky victory for the underdogs.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:23 PM on February 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

What kind of scrutiny is a little league team supposed to put kids addresses under, anyway?

This appears to go beyond parents faking addresses to get their kids onto a good team, to league officials actively trying to claim their district boundaries included neighborhoods in other districts. There's malfeasance all the way up.
posted by Etrigan at 2:24 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

So what do you do with the runner up team who hasn't been caught cheating? Tell them so sad or issue them trophies and a title too?

I actually kinda like this. Give the runner-ups an award for "Best Performance By A Team Whose Parents Didn't Fuck Up And Embarass Their Kids".
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:34 PM on February 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

The only message the 12 year olds get from this is that cheating pays off.

The message they get is that they tried out for the best team, made the team, and then won a championship. I would highly doubt any of the kids were aware of boundary restrictions. People obviously didn't think it was a big deal, they were publicizing what schools the kids went to and where they hail from right after the win. Also, 12-year-olds know that cheating pays off if you get away with it. But the kids didn't cheat. The kids played baseball. Some adults apparently fucked around here. The message the kids will get is that a bunch of adults stole the result of their hard work away.

12 year olds are having championships taken away from them no matter what you do here.

Not really. The ones that lost due to JRW breaking boundary rules didn't win the game at the time. They already experienced the loss. They will know that even if you award them the championship retroactively. And you can't just undo what was done. It sucks for the team that lost the championship knowing now that JRW broke boundaries rules, but it sucked already even without this knowledge. We also have no idea who their opponents would have been had JRW respected the boundaries rules, or whether they would have won that game. Some of the kids that played for JRW probably would have played for different teams, and then God knows... Would another team from Chicago have moved on? Would JRW have made it anyway? Would some other team along the way have won the right games to get to the final? I just can't see what is being made right here. It's bad all around.
posted by Hoopo at 3:11 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Hey , I'm a former Scantron-crushing Whitney Young dolphin! And Chris Janes from Evergreen Park is a whiny pissbaby chump!

I'm hearing allegations of scouting and recruiting from people in the thread, but haven't seen any evidence of it in the articles I've read on DNA Info and the Tribune... anybody got any links?
posted by elr at 3:11 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I actually kinda like this. Give the runner-ups an award for "Best Performance By A Team Whose Parents Didn't Fuck Up And Embarass Their Kids".

I wonder if we put the other team's parents under a microscope if they'd actually hold up.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 3:17 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

There was an article in the paper yesterday about how a local high school doesn't have any players originally from the US on its soccer team (or any money). It's all kids from "Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Palestine," which sounded pretty cool.
posted by Corinth at 3:18 PM on February 11, 2015

A comment about two parents / two homes above, a very common "non-traditional" setup, reminded me that my local school system has a single address line for kids.

I suspect 10% or more kids here do not just have one home, but the school requires the fiction that they have only one home, and this fiction is used to determine important things, like whether the kid can take the bus, or attend the same school as their friends.

Schools, and maybe sports leagues as well, haven't figured out post-1950s parenting arrangements around here.
posted by zippy at 3:38 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

The obvious, and apparently overlooked, appropriate punishment for this case is to suspend the coach or whomever was responsible for this for a season or two.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:38 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

They did suspend the coach.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:46 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

No, you make the coach coach at least three teams of 4-5 year olds for two years.

Wait, you can't do that. Stupid 8th Amendment!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:15 PM on February 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Given that JRW is right on the border of Chicago and the Southwest Suburbs, I feel like this is little more than a witch hunt.
posted by bgal81 at 5:21 PM on February 11, 2015

As someone who, at something like 8 years old, was on an AYSO soccer team that got stomped into ground by guys who already had 5 o'clock shadows, I have no mercy for cheater parents and cheater teams.

To the kids, it's just them going to a local park to play baseball. To the parents, heck, it's probably the same.

HAHAHA, you have never been around competitive youth sports in your life.

My mother was a "Player's Agent" during my time in LL, so she dealt with all the coaches and their stupid shit they tried to do with their players.

One case that stands out was a couch driving by pickup ballgames at city parks and signing up kids who were playing well. I can't remember what level of play (farm?), but it was the first one in which they kept score, so years younger than these Chicago kids. Also, there was no playoffs, or all stars, or even official standings. He just wanted to have a team of 7 year old ringers to stomp the competition.
..
posted by sideshow at 6:37 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

I kind of doubt any of the kids care about what the record books say now. They got to experience playing in the big game. JRW got to experience the thrill of victory. The other kids experienced what it felt like to lose in the big game, which is still a unique and proud experience they won't ever forget.

Changing the record doesn't change any of that. It's all parents' bragging rights at stake, and little else.
posted by ctmf at 7:18 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

For those of you talking about living one place schooling in another--starting last year, attending school within a given Little League's boundary made you eligible for that league. Little League International does adapt, albeit slowly.
posted by stevis23 at 8:10 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Politics and sports. Add money and it turns to garbage.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:30 AM on February 12, 2015

South Side woman alleges that Evergreen Park Little League forged her son's residency.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:26 AM on February 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

The complaint of Evergreen Park Little League vice president Chris Janes put the wheels in motion in this controversy, and his suspicions were raised when he saw a marquee in Lynwood Village calling one of the players on Jackie Robinson West their own. Lynwood Village is outside Jackie Robinson West’s boundaries. Source.

Lynwood is about 12 miles south of JRW's boundary.

From my reading of the maps, JRW was using players from South Holland, Lansing, and Lynwood, which weren't just 'the next district over', but were two and three districts over.
posted by The Giant Squid at 6:51 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Never in my entire Little League career did the question of boundaries or neighborhoods ever arise amongst myself or my teammates, but this was in a college town. Incidentally, my first exposure to the big deal people make over the things was the movie, The Mighty Ducks, cause gosh, Banks was actually a Duck!

Also, almost all the reporting on the television has been using "urban" as a euphemism for African-American in the context,"It may hurt the game's popularity amongst urban youth." Can't they just say African-American or Black?
posted by Atreides at 8:08 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

If they say urban they can pretend they're not talking about race.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:15 AM on February 12, 2015 [7 favorites]

Stomp on the cheaters, and stomp hard, or else Little League will become just another way for the greedy to game the system to make sure their special little snowturd has yet another special advantage over everyone else. Stomp on them so that the other players, the ones who didn't cheat, can see that cheaters are caught, punished, and banned for life from playing in a game they enjoy. Or don't, and watch parents keep their kids out in droves, find something else to buff the kid's college application with.
posted by Blackanvil at 9:28 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

So what do you do with the runner up team who hasn't been caught cheating? Tell them so sad or issue them trophies and a title too?

Why not give them trophies and a title too, while not revoking it from JRW? Take a page from the 2002 Winter Olympics: Salé and Pelletier ended up with a gold given the evidence that the judging was fixed, but Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze got to keep their gold too, since there was no evidence they had cheated.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:40 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Rex Huppke totally nails it.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:28 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Why not give them trophies and a title too, while not revoking it from JRW?

Probably because the rules and precedent requires them to. And I would say this is different from your 2002 Winter Olympics example because, even if none of the children knowingly cheated, by playing certain players that were ineligible to play for the team, the team did cheat.

I mean, it sucks for the kids, but they still got to experience playing in the LLWS championship game, a ticker tape parade in downtown Chicago, and going to the White House to meet the President and the First Lady. These are memories they will have for the rest of their lives and nobody will be able to take that away from them, no matter what happens.
posted by gyc at 12:31 PM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I mean, it sucks for the kids, but they still got to experience playing in the LLWS championship game, a ticker tape parade in downtown Chicago, and going to the White House to meet the President and the First Lady. These are memories they will have for the rest of their lives and nobody will be able to take that away from them, no matter what happens.

I think it's safe to say that having your picture published in the newspaper under the word 'cheater' might taint the experience for some. The kids are aware of the scrutiny they're now under. They have to be.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:46 PM on February 12, 2015

Dave Zirin further lays out why this ruling is atrocious.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:48 PM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dave Zirin further lays out why this ruling is atrocious.

What is his actual argument besides that JRW should not have been stripped of their title because... gentrification?
posted by gyc at 12:57 PM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

What is his actual argument besides that JRW should not have been stripped of their title because... gentrification?

His point is that you don't get to ignore what's happening in the real world just because you have some rules typed up on bloodless sheets of paper. As people are pointing out, this may very well be a kicking over of a hornet's nest that LL will come to regret.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:44 PM on February 12, 2015

His point is that you don't get to ignore what's happening in the real world just because you have some rules typed up on bloodless sheets of paper.

I dunno, that sounds like exactly what sports is for.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:55 PM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

“Claims of Hypocrisy in the Jackie Robinson West Controversy,” George Castle, Bleacher Report, 13 February 2015

However, tipped off by Chris Janes, the vice president of nearby Evergreen Park Athletic Association—whom JRW beat 45-2 earlier in the season, leading some to question motive—Little League’s investigation led it to conclude that JRW officials knowingly fielded players who lived outside the team’s residential boundaries and then tried to cover up their deception, a violation of league rules.
⋮
Recently, Chicago ABC affiliate WLS-TV interviewed Renee Cannon-Young. She said her son, Jacoby, was recruited to play in southwest suburban Evergreen Park’s Little League, an outfit outside of the district in which they live—a transgression Keener’s staff and Evergreen’s Janes said JRW was guilty of committing.

posted by ob1quixote at 1:12 PM on February 13, 2015

Andrew McCutcheon has a powerful piece about the challenges faced growing up athletically talented but poor, and how things are getting worse for low-income kids. Seriously, just read it.
posted by exogenous at 3:32 PM on February 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm really surprised at some of the comments being made in this thread. Metafilter is usually better than this.

I help people apply for public benefits (mostly health insurance / Medicaid but also food stamps and other public aid programs, sometimes) here in Chicago. Unless you are on the ground level you really have no idea how complex these kinds of eligibility determinations are. What Eyebrows McGee and others are saying is spot-on. All of our systems, and especially systems which are supposed to benefit low-income or disadvantaged groups, are constructed around a very outdated, Leave-it-to-Beaver-type family structure, and the more a family or household deviates from that norm, the more difficult it becomes for eligibility to be correctly determined. This issue also intersects with technology in ways which are hard to foresee. For instance, healthcare.gov partners with Experian, the credit reporting agency, to verify identity. In one way, this is a huge improvement which enables many people to apply for tax credit subsidies for health insurance without needing to submit any actual identity documents. But for persons without credit history -- for instance, recent immigrants, or persons who do not have mortgages, credit cards, car payments and all the other paper trails of the middle class -- this system doesn't work, and they have to slog through clunkier and slower methods of verification. Not to mention that they have to be computer-literate, or know someone who is, to use the "normal" system.

Of course, these kinds of non-"normal" family structures are, almost by definition, most prevalent in communities which are different to the "norm". We can't talk about these systems, about how the rules are made, who makes the rules, how the rules are policed, who is blamed for infractions of the rules -- without talking about race and talking about class. Especially not in Chicago.

So, yeah. This is about race. This is about racism -- not the cartoonish Bull Connor, segregation-forever, lynching, sneering, casual-jokes racism that most conservatives and many liberals would like us to think is the heart of racism -- no, this is about the racism that is deeply embedded into each aspect of American society. It is a metastasized cancer that has been operated on with varying degrees of success, but we haven't got it all yet and we won't get better until we start to be honest with ourselves about the severity of our condition.

Little League baseball, the most American of athletic endeavors: it, too, has just been diagnosed with that cancer.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:09 PM on February 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm still not seeing the connection, could someone ELI5? The team had to cheat by lying about where the players were from rather than just field players from their district because of racism and gentrification...why exactly?
posted by Drinky Die at 6:25 AM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would certainly appreciate it if those people arguing that this is just discrinination against poor kids from broken homes could present some evidence that the kids involved actually are poor kids from broken homes.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 6:53 AM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, here's the average median income map of Chicago, if that helps. You'll note the difference between Auburn-Gresham, Washington Heights, and Morgan Park (the area covered by Jackie Robinson West) and Evergreen Park. From what I'm understanding of the charges, they were accused of getting players from redrawing the boundaries to be directly east and north of the area (to infringe on Roseland and South Side league's territory), and taking players from the south suburbs.

I really don't want to doxx the kids to find out their home situation, but I feel safe making the assumption that kids from the area aren't rich. It's a poor area. Alternative family situations are common.

Also, I mean, we're mostly claiming racism. Class, sure, but also racism.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:19 AM on February 16, 2015

Yes, but demonstrating that the players were non-white is not the same as demonstrating that this is a race issue. Demonstrating that white teams who do similar things have not been called out is.

People upthread have already commented on how tight their local youth sports organizations are on home-address issues, apparently without regard to race. That's (loose) evidence that this may not be a racial issue. We certainly need a more rational discussion of race than "something bad happened to African-American kids, therefore: racism."

I see no reason to believe a rule that "you must have a legal address in the zone where your team draws from" was intentionally written decades ago to harm split-family or non-white kids. OTOH, these kids /do/ have legal custodians with legal addresses - parents, foster kids, whatever. I find it hard to believe all the problem in this incident was engendered by divorce rates.

A punishment happened to a team that was cheating - cheating either by the parents or the coaches or both; kids can't join a team without adults being involved. The kids suffered; that's unfortunate - and in the eyes of some, necessary to establish a lesson about playing by the rules. The kids were poor and AA; they already have a lot of strife in their lives. But are the two actually related?
posted by IAmBroom at 9:23 AM on February 16, 2015

Demonstrating that white teams who do similar things have not been called out is.

That's happened, with the team that called out JRW. (One, Two)

Recently, Chicago ABC affiliate WLS-TV interviewed Renee Cannon-Young. She said her son, Jacoby, was recruited to play in southwest suburban Evergreen Park’s Little League, an outfit outside of the district in which they live—a transgression Keener’s staff and Evergreen’s Janes said JRW was guilty of committing.

And even if the rule wasn't intentionally meant to be racist, that doesn't meant that it doesn't have racist consequences.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:35 AM on February 16, 2015

Thanks, dinty_moore.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:38 AM on February 16, 2015

They doesn't really prove much other than the other team didn't get caught because she didn't say anything until they appeared to be hypocrites. They are probably going to end up punished as well if the claims are true. The tip off against JRW if they had committed similar violations definitely puts the leadership there in the category of cheaters and sore losers, but a Championship team that knowingly cheated does still deserve to be stripped of their title.

There just doesn't seem to be any coherent explanation here with explaining the cheating as a consequence of racism. So they live in an often poor area where the kids have limited access to top notch coaching and facilities to play baseball. Their solution to this is to...say "Screw It" and get players from outside their legal area, denying the downtrodden kids actually in their area with access to a team that can provide all that. The kids that were cut to make room for the outsiders matter too. This was cheating motivated by a desire to win without feeling the need to follow the rules. It was seeing winning as more important than your duty to the kids.

In fact, those kids denied a spot are probably the biggest issue. Ultimately you always have to follow the rules in sports or pay the consequences if you get caught, but these borders don't seem to make any kind of sense as far as getting teams involved that are drawing from an equal talent pool. Urban areas may have a disadvantage because of less interest in baseball or facilities for it, but the massive population difference probably makes up for a lot of it.

Consider the Taney Dragons of Philadelphia (1.55 million population) competing against Collier Township (7,080 population). The larger district is likely going to generate more baseball talent. Being unfair like this in professional sports is usually pretty common, mainly in leagues without salary caps as an example, but it doesn't have much place in kids sports. There really isn't any way around it though, the geographical limits of some kind of to be there, it's just part of the game at this age level.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:13 AM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

No, The Jackie Robinson West Story Is Not About Gentrification
posted by Etrigan at 11:39 AM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

It is important to note that for self policing things in sports (which at the initial complaint level for LL eligibility it mostly is) people in opposition rarely pursue rule breakers if they are losing. This is even codified in some competitions for example some motor racing where only the top foo places are vulnerable to teardown challenges or only the winning atheletes are drug tested. Merely finding unsanctioned white teams that broke the rules (of which there are probably hundreds) is indicative of racism only if those teams were successful. I realize this is a little goal post moving.
posted by Mitheral at 12:19 PM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Merely finding unsanctioned white teams that broke the rules (of which there are probably hundreds) is indicative of racism only if those teams were successful. I realize this is a little goal post moving.

What a lot of the people who are against this decision are calling for is for all of the top 16 teams to be investigated. Which honestly makes sense to me - if I'm running something, find out that my championship team is a cheater from a whistleblower, and then find the whistleblower's team is just as dirty? Wouldn't it to make sense to make sure that it's not just a freaky coincidence that those two teams in districts right next to each other are cheaters? It'd be really unfortunate if allegations surfaced against the second-place team right afterwards.

Okay, if you're near the top, you need to pass more stringent guidelines. Then maybe make everyone near the top pass those guidelines. Maybe make it so that the guidelines actually seem to match a reasonable living situation for the kids in question, and rely less on grudge match self reporting. Especially considering how biased self reporting can be
posted by dinty_moore at 1:01 PM on February 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

A lot of the well known successful teams probably have had to face a lot of those questions already, I know the (sorry to keep harping on them but they are like the only Little League team I have ever followed at all) Taney Dragons faced a ton of (apparently baseless) allegations along the way during their successful run. It's probably a good idea to start auditing everybody at the top level officially though before the competition because this has been such a huge black eye.

"They said that the only reason they're still letting us go to [Mid-Atlantic Regionals] is that three-fourths of our team is black and that we have a girl on our team," Joe Richardson, Taney first baseman and pitcher, said just days before leaving for the regional tournament.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:10 PM on February 16, 2015 [2 favorites]