Posted on 06/25/2005 6:51:06 AM PDT by kiki04
Too Good to Play Thursday, June 23, 2005 A team of 11- and 12-year-old baseball players has been kicked out of its league — for being too good. Earlier this month, the Stars of Columbus, Ohio, were taken off the Canal Winchester Joint Recreation District's (search) schedule, and their $150 entry fee was refunded, reports The Columbus Dispatch. The 14 boys only joined the suburban league in early May, but since then had creamed every other team that faced them — 18-0, 13-0, 24-0, 10-2 and 17-6. "I called up the league office and said, 'No way are we going to play them,'" Terry Morris, who coaches another team in the division, told The Dispatch. "I wasn't going to subject my players to that." Pretty soon, all scheduled games were canceled, and the Stars found themselves orphaned. "I don't think it's fair," said Stars catcher and pitcher Michael Allston, who at 12 stands 5-foot-8. "We always played our best, and we were just winning games." "
[Another] team told us they didn't want their boys' self-esteem battered," said Trina Cochran, mother of 11-year-old Stars player Mario Cochran. "Our boys went into this with a good attitude," said Darla Perry, whose son R.J., 11, weighs 155 pounds. "It's turned into a disaster." Opponents' parents charged that the Stars' players were older than they claimed to be and that they were actually an "all-star" team culled from across Columbus. In return, the Stars' parents began bringing birth certificates to games, as well as documents showing that all but one of the boys lived in the same ZIP code. League officials and other teams' coaches are unrepentant. "They were just beating the rec kids up," said Michael Mirones, the league's board chairman. "It's no fun for the kids that are losing."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Here in the Allentown area, the public schools were so ticked off because the Catholic schools kicked their butts in football despite lopsided financial resources. Of course, they had to break up the league and guess what they got, mediocre games, they succeeded in destroying a great league in the Lehigh Valley.
I thought little league was about playing not winning and losing. Silly me.
Is this team going to go to the LLWS? They should get that chance.
What ungrateful, selfish, fearful fellow citizens we have in this country.
What a bunch of whiners. I coach my son's team, he's 12. He's one of the best pitchers at his age in the area. Why is he that good? Practice, Practice, and more practice. He loves the game. It's not this teams fault that while they are hitting the field to practice, the other teams are taking up space on the sofa watching spongebob.
That's probably why the left were against the war in Iraq - America was too good!!
umm guys there is a bit more to this story than just self esteem.
The kids on the all star team (and it was) was stealing bases when up by more than 15 runs. Sure it isn't illegal, but that isn't something you generally do. Winning big is one thing, but running up the score is quite another. These kids, along with their typcial little league parents (who have the typcial little league parent syndrome), were running up the scores on EVERYONE.
it IS their fault that the kids coaches wanted to steal bases when up by 15 plus runs.
The kids dont know any better, but the coaches do.
"I wasn't going to subject my players to that."
Why not? He obvisouly subjected them to bad coaching.
Ohio is being thrown to the leftist wolves. We were up there recently, just north of Columbus, union country. It was chock full of self-centered Godless leftists.
I don't know an awful lot about baseball....
I agree with that. However, there have been games where blue fails to call the game. Just because we are winning 12-2 does not mean I should tell my players to just quit trying.
WHiiine!
But I'd also never teach a kid to quit just because he or she was either winning big or losing big, they are measuring thmeslves against one another as much as against the other team.
Besides, which is more embarrasing, being beat 16 zip, or watching the other side just screw off because they knew you'd never get close?
I see no particular claim to satisfaction in a football team of up-to 12 year olds, where the average player weighs 200 pounds.
Competition is a great thing if managed properly. I remember in High school there were Four levels of teams in most sports: 120s, 130s, Junior Varsity and Varsity, with no upward restrictions: if a player weighed 100 pounds and could hold his own or better playing varsity basketball, in he went, but the reverse was never true. No matter how bad a 7-footer 200-pounder played anything, he could never play 120. Whatever happened to common sense?
As is populalry cited, Little League is as much for the parents that are living vicariously through their kids as the for the kids themselves. The other side of this story is that a small set of parents who assembled an ego-bruising Dream Team was rputed out of the League by a bigger set of parents with bruised egos.
rputed = routed
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