The Curious Case of Little League

By Jack Furlong

Founder/President/CEO

It’s bad enough when professional sports face controversy (which seems to be frequently):  a labor issue in Major League Baseball, a morality issue in the National Football League, and soap operas galore in both the NBA and WNBA never cease to dominate headlines.  It’s even worse when amateur sports do the same:  the NCAA has become nothing short of a laughingstock.
 
At least those leagues have legal adults playing.  Little League has literal children on the field with abhorrent adults behind the scenes.
 
Little League Baseball, Inc., founded in 1939 and expanded to also include softball, has become not just the dominant youth baseball/softball organization for kids, but it has also become the largest organized youth sports organization in the world.  A quick search of the history of scandals that find their way interwoven within this group may not show an annual pattern, but the scandals that do occur seem to always follow the same trends:  adults ruin it for kids, either disguised as a narcissistic claim for fairness or a skirting of the rules to win championships.
 
One doesn’t need to travel too far back in time to see the seeds planted for these events.  In the 1970’s, Taiwan developed a dynasty of championships in Little League, leading to a ban of all international teams from the tournament in America based on the claims that those teams were sending ineligible players.  The investigation into this ban showed no evidence that Taiwan was doing this, and the ban was lifted.
 
However, in 1997, Taiwan was faced with allegations of skirting the rules again.  This time, Taiwan withdrew from the tournament and wouldn’t return until 2004.
 
In 1992, the Philippines sent a team that would eventually win the tournament.  However, an investigation from a newspaper in their home country discovered forged documents that showed players were both too old and living outside the boundaries for the team.
 
In 2001, Danny Almonte threw a no-hitter and garnered attention as a team from the Bronx advanced to the championship game.  That’s when it was discovered that he was too old to be on the team.
 
In 2014, a team from Chicago lost in the championship game to South Korea.  It was later discovered that the urban team had used illegal boundaries to expand its talent pool.
 
In 2026, a league in Tulsa was found to have committed these same atrocities more than once, this time in both baseball and softball as well as exploiting the disability program used by Little League to be more inclusive.  In the modern world, the parents who were responsible for these infractions made sure to have public statements released that deflected guilt outwards, saying it wasn’t fair to the kids that they were removed from the tournament.
 
Society will never be able to fully escape the malingering performed by adults in youth sports.  However, maybe it’s time to curb the abuse by removing the spotlight.
 
Although adopting these would mean a large forfeit of revenue (which means these ideas will never see the light of day), there are two easy solutions that Little League may need to consider.
 
The first is adaptation.  Many other youth baseball leagues (such as Cal Ripken Baseball, which is the youth division of Babe Ruth Baseball) that feature kids the same age as those in the Little League World Series have moved these kids to a bigger field.  Whereas the traditional Little League field for baseball (and softball) features 46 feet from the rubber to the plate and 60 feet between bases, this new modified field features 50 feet from the rubber to the plate and 70 feet between the bases.  (This is still short of the 60.5 feet and 90 feet used for a standard baseball field.)  This has allowed the kids to play by more traditional baseball rules which include leading from a base.  By using the slightly larger field, the cost/benefit ratio associated with cheating changes because adding kids who are slightly over the age limit suddenly doesn’t give a team the same advantage it once had.  Further, by going up the ladder and trying to add even older kids, the cheating becomes increasingly obvious.  (Just look for the 12-year-olds who have facial hair!)
 
The second is a shift in marketing.  There is literally only one obvious benefit to the television and media exposure that Little League teams receive as they try to advance through the tournament:  it makes it easier for elderly relatives to follow their loved ones.  Grandparents in Hawaii probably don’t always have the ability or opportunity to travel to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to watch grandkids compete in such a large event, so airing the games on ESPN allows them to watch on the simplicity of basic cable.  However, with the advent of both streaming services and broadcast products that allow games to be televised remotely through an app, maybe it’s time to forego the excessive amounts of ad revenue and relegate youth sports away from televisions in both bars and homes worldwide.
 
Sports everywhere are adapting and changing, bucking trends that were once thought to be sacred.  Ads are plastered on uniforms.  The New York Yankees have beards.  For the betterment of the kids and their future, maybe it’s time we raised them in a world where the adults don’t have as much of a chance to ruin an experience for them.