Bits & Pieces

 

By Kim J. Harmon

T

he thing that disturbs me the most about this Little League World Series mess is not that Danny Almonte of the Rolando Paulino All Stars from the Bronx, New York, is really 14, but that a team would spend $10,000 to try and prove it.

And fail – fail spectacularly, when Sports Illustrated was able to prove it with a plane trip and a couple of days in a Dominican Republic office of public records.

Now, it is almost obscene that a team would spend $10,000 on a private detective to investigate one kid over a game . . . a game. What could that $10,000 have been used for – say, putting new uniforms on about half the kids in the Bronx Little League, giving all the teams some new bats and helmets? Or slapping up a new scoreboard at one of the fields?

No, these parents – who cared more about whether Danny Almonte was 14 than the kids he was playing against – couldn’t let the little cheater get away with it and gave $10,000 to some guy to expose him. Because Little League had an official birth certificate for Danny Almonte (never mind that there ended up being two official birth certificates), no one had any legitimate reason to suspect the kid was older than 12.

It was a baseless accusation.

But the kid was good.

Real good.

And no parent can sit idly by while some kid who may be one of those once-in-a-lifetime athletes gets up there and mows their kid down four times a game.

That’s the other thing.

It is a common trait that people are willing to believe that anyone who is so much better than them at something can’t possibly be on the level. Sure – it’s somewhat true in this case, but if Almonte was only an okay pitcher and a so-so hitter, then nobody would have cared how old he was.

Nobody.

Although the integrity of the league would still have been at stake and it would have been right for a team to bring up the idea that this kid (or rather, his father) might be misrepresenting his age, no one would have spent a second thinking about it if he wasn’t so good.

On the field, though, it was a nice time – this Little League World Series. The games were exciting.

It’s not so surprising, though that the kids acted like adults and the adults acted like children.

Take a step back to the United States semi-final between Rolando Paulino and Oceanside, California last weekend. Almonte was skunking the Oceanside team, as was expected, but that Oceanside pitcher – Thomas Eukovich – was matching him zeroes for zeroes.

Until the top of the fifth.

When Kenny Espinal of Rolando Paulino lashed a hit to right field, he sent Reynaldo Guava from first to third. What was clear to everyone, though, was that Guava had missed second base as he rounded the bag on his way to third.

The guys in the ESPN2 booth saw it right away and were backed up by the replay.

ESPN2 cameras panned the field and focussed on the Oceanside parents in the stands. Two or three guys were on cell phones, very agitated, getting the word from friends who were watching the game on television that the kid had missed the base. Other mothers and fathers were screaming at the kids to make an appeal.

Poor Eukovich. There he is on the mound, his head swiveling towards the stands, then swiveling back to the dugout. He had no idea what to do. Finally, his coach called a timeout and brought the kid over to the sidelines and just talked about strategy, about going after the hitter and forgetting that there were two kids on base.

Apparently, coach didn’t see the kid miss the bag.

But Eukovich gets back to the mound, looks torn between the two sides of the field, and then finally makes the appeal only to have the umpire – who, on the replay, looked to be in perfect position to see the play – rule the kid safe.

Fine. Stuff like that happens. An umpire can’t possibly see everything.

Then the next batter chops a full swing bunt in front of the plate and the Guava scores the only run of the game.

A ESPN2 sideline reporter goes into the stands and questions Eukovich’s parents and while the mother made a vain attempt to say her kid was working hard, the parents only seemed concerned with the fact that the team was getting rooked.

When Rolando Paulino finally wins, ESPN2 won’t let go of the play and tries to dredge up some disappointment or anger in Eukovich or his coach. But Eukovich – just 12, now – basically says, “No, I’m not angry. He is a great pitcher and they are a great team.”

Folks, that is what the Little League ideal is all about. It’s not about whining over umpires missing calls or fretting that kids seem to be too good to be true. It’s about working together, striving to succeed, but also having fun and appreciating the game.

Parents will never change, though.

Never.

The air waves from WFAN in New York were just burning up over this Almonte thing on Tuesday, when the information from Sports Illustrated came to light. Some people – parents of a Little Leaguer – were just delusional about the whole concept of youth sports. It made me cringe just listening to them . . . now, if anyone believes thinks that the Rolando Paulino team is the only one that fudged a few records here and there while putting their All Star teams together for the run towards Williamsport is just deluding themselves. Whether or not it was outright cheating like claiming Almonte was 12 instead of 14, when it comes to putting All Star teams together it is not uncommon for district boundaries to get blurred and birthdays to be forgotten . . . moving on to the professional arena, I think it’s pretty hilarious that Mike Barnett, the former agent of Wayne Gretzky, is going to become the new general manager of the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes (in which Gretzky has a stake). Barnett used to try and suck every penny out of general managers across the league and now he is on the other end, trying to zip up his wallet and hide it so no one will pick his pocket . . . the first thing I do every week when the new Sports Illustrated comes in is flip to the back to read Rick Reilly’s column. It is usually heart-warming, almost always interesting, and generally funny. But last week he took a cheap shot at Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants – illustrating what a ME guy he was and how everyone on the team, Jeff Kent in particular, really dislikes him. Sure, it is probably all true – every bit of it – but what purpose did it serve to knee-cap the guy like that. So what if he is a jerk. It’s not like most fans don’t think he’s a jerk. It was a pointless diatribe. Rick Reilly is better than that.