Hildebrandt: What is the role of television in the latest Little League scandal?
From SABR member Chuck Hildebrandt at SABRMedia.org, the website of SABR’s Baseball and the Media Research Committee, on February 17, 2015:
A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled during the past week about the scandal involving Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West (JRW) Little League team. If you haven’t learned the specifics by now, JRW annexed parts of three adjacent districts, redrew the map for their own district based on this misapportionment and, most damning of all, backdated the map in an attempt to deceive the officials at Little League International.
Most of the criticism has centered on the adults involved, and that’s certainly appropriate. It’s practically certain that the kids neither initiated nor facilitated the fraud, although they are definitely being held accountable for the misdeed after having been stripped of their championship. As painful as it is for them to be punished for something they did not have a hand in or knowledge of, there is no other real choice. They won their championship with ineligible players because of a fraud carried out by the adults charged with stewarding and mentoring them, and if nothing else, they will hopefully learn that if it is found out that you won by cheating, even inadvertently or unknowingly, the spoils of your victory will be taken away. That’s a good life lesson to learn at that early age, and they will surely never forget it.
What about the adults in all this, though?
Read the full article here: http://sabrmedia.org/2015/02/16/what-is-the-role-of-television-in-the-latest-little-league-scandal/
Originally published: February 17, 2015. Last Updated: February 17, 2015.