I don't know, but some very strange things are happening. Remember a few years back when the team from Taiwan was so dominant? Then it was discovered they were allegedly falsifying birth certificates so older players could compete. Hey, when you're 26, competing with a 28 year old doesn't matter. But there's a huge difference between being 12 and going up against 14 and 15 year olds.
I wouldn't be surprised if those kids got preferential treatment too. A free bowl of rice here and there, and maybe they even gave them tricked out rickshaws to pull around town. Cheating in amateur athletics? The utter nerve. I'm sure glad that could never happen in this country. Ahem.
At that, there is no more Taiwan team. Yeah, there's a team from the same island, but now they're called Chinese Taipei. That's likely our way of bowing down to Communist China, which is hypersensitive to that island having any standing of it's own in the international community. They claim it sttill belongs to the mainland.
The kids don't know the difference. They just want to play ball. Yet it's probably a good idea to grant China this small favor, because if they ever foreclose on the mortgage we have with them, they'd probably own everything west of the Mississippi. The hell of it is -- they don't even HAVE a team in the Little League World Series. Maybe that's because they're too busy trying to figure out how to pass off 9 and 10 year old female gymnists as being 14 for the next Olympics. Remember that?
It gets worse. The Canadian team features twin brothers that are several inches taller and appear to be older than their teammates. Those kids are dominant players. Guess where they were born? Yep, Taipei. How in the hell did they wind up on the Canadian team?
And why is it the Saudi Arabian team consists of so many blond kids? They look American, talk American, act American, and have American names. There's not a Faisal in the bunch. What's up with that? Fake beards might be a little over the top, but you'd think they could at least dye their hair. Maybe even prayer mats in the dugout facing Mecca. Something's wrong here. I smell infidels. Off with their toe-heads.
Some of it's just silly. The Pennsylvania team is in the Mid-Atlanticdivision. Really? The only thing I know going on in the middle of the Atlantic, besides submarines and fish, is a whole lot of salt water.
The Kentucky team is in the Great Lakes Division. And just what Great Lake are they within a 3 hour drive of anyway?
I dunno. Just when all the politics have died down until the next so-called Doomsday, and the sports media are catching their breath anticipating the start of the real NFL season, the NASCAR "chase", and the baseball playoffs -- WHAM -- up pops the Little League World Series with all it's shenanigans.
It's enough to drive a man to drink. Hmmm. Maybe I'll go see the Peavulture for a little rheumatiz medicine.
Do you remember the pitching stud Danny Alomonte, I believe that was his name. Wasn't he found to be 16 after the LLWS?
ReplyDeleteThat name rings a bell. Tall, gangly kid. Southpaw. Threw some serious heat, relatively speaking. If I remember right, he played on a team from Brooklyn, the Bronx -- something to do with NYC. And he was WAY over the age limit. Never did hear what became of him. You'd think that schools like Ohio State or the U in Miami would have offered him a scholarship on principles alone -- but what do I know? JL
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