My dad asked me, late last week, what mythoughts were about ‘the Little League Story’ and I had to admit that, honestly, I had not kept up with the news. Things at work have been busy and there have been lots of other things going on in our lives.
But, as the purveyor of this entity called “Coach Jeff’s Blog,” which is rooted in my years as a youth baseball coach and league commissioner, I would be remiss if I continued to be uninformed on this topic. So, over the weekend, I hopped online to read a few articles in order to familiarize myself with the facts.
If you missed the news, Little League Baseball stripped the U.S. title from last year’s champion, Jackie Robinson West and suspended its coach for violating player residency rules. In essence, the team filled its roster with players out of its designated geographic area and, because of that, the Chicago-based team will have to vacate wins (essentially which is tantamount to forfeiting them).
Folks representing opposing viewpoints weighed in:
- Make them forfeit!
- No, that’s unfair!
- Don’t penalize the kids!
I don’t really want to take this blog down the road of making a strong public statement on the issue. I will say, as a former league official, that there are rules and if everyone knows the rules, they should be followed and enforced.
Also, it is worth noting, people tend to use the term “Little League” for any and all leagues of youth baseball (much as a “Xerox” is sometimes used to refer to all photocopies and a “Kleenex” denotes all soft, facial tissues). But, in its proper use, Little League is a brand and an official league with its own set of rules. Not all youth baseball leagues have the same rules.
The violations cited by Little League would have been perfectly accepted practices as defined by our sanctioning body, USSSA. For their league and for that organization, it was not permissible.
One of the hardest parts of being a league commissioner (or league president) is enforcing rules. If you have a rogue coach who doesn’t want to comply, someone has to intervene. During my time as Prez, we had a few such incidents. When you have to step in to make an adult follow the rules – and thus set a good example for his/her players – it makes the volunteer task much less fun.
I guess that’s about all I need to say on that topic.
Anyway, to the broader issue of geography, I do have some thoughts.
As I stated, our league rules – and those of our sanctioning body – did not prohibit the use of players from out of your geographic area. Therefore, it was standard practice – especially in the travel division of our league – to register out of county players. I knew teams that brought in kids from Roane County, Loudon County and Anderson County routinely to fill out their rosters, for example.
Our team, the Choppers, was not so uber-competetitve that we felt the need to cast such a wide net for players. We billed our team as filling a niche that fell somewhere between a recreation (Single A) and an uber-competitive (AAA/Major) travel team.
We were aptly classified as AA and that suited Paul and I just fine.
We played more than 12 league games but we did not fill out a grueling 50-60 game schedule. We played somewhere around 25-30 games in the spring season and, then, took a break over the summer before we reconvened to play a light 10-12 game slate of fall ball.
Our team was comprised of players from different schools and partially, for that reason, we called our team the Concord Choppers rather than the Farragut Choppers. Also, the alliteration was nice and the moniker “Concord” allowed us to fly under the radar somewhat considering representatives from most leagues have pre-conceived opinions about our corner of the county.
In any case, by calling ourselves “Concord” we paid homage to the community where our home field was located and we didn’t disenfranchise the players on our team who were zoned for schools in Bearden and Hardin Valley. In fact, one-third of our championship roster from 2010 was made up of players who were not zoned for Farragut schools.
Only once did add a player outside of the greater West Knox area to our roster and he only played with us for one season. It just didn’t work, in terms of promoting team chemistry. For the most part, our players came from similar neighborhoods if they didn’t attend the same schools, so at least they had a common frame of reference.
They came together to form a great team with loads of chemistry, won a number of games and wrote a story with a very happy ending.
JG
Originally posted 2/16/2015
No comments:
Post a Comment