if you haven't heard it by now, rick riley si columnist wrote in this week's issue of a 9-10 year old little leauge game championship in bountiful, utah. bottom of the final inning the red sox trailed the yankees by a run, tieing run on third, two out. the sox best hitter comes up to the plate. the yanks coach decides to not let the best player beat his team so he walks the kid. the next batter up is the worst hitter on the team. this kid strikes out, game over. he goes home and cries himself to sleep, but the next day he tells his dad that he was going to work on his hitting so that next time, the other teams would walk him instead.
end of story. oh, forgot one minor detail- the sox player who struck out, him? brain cancer survivor. plays with a shunt in his head. needs to take human growth hormone to play. good on the kid.
so now many of you are thinking, that i am going to rip the coach for walking papito, that the coach was showing poor sportsmanship for picking on the player who has cancer, who needs to take hormones just to play.
continue to think that, because i ain't doing it. in fact, the ones i'm going to be ripping are YOU. this is not that big of an issue. this is not a story that warrants national attention, in fact the only reason that this is a story is because the sox who struck out had cancer. so what are we supposed to do, make a rule that states that kids who have beaten cancer should be treated differently than the normal kids? we have to villify the coach who did the right baseball move in walking the best hitter? and don't give me that crap about he knew that this cancer survivor was next in the lineup, its irrelevant. some of these sissy weak kneed uber-yuppie commie liberals are going to say the coach should have pitched to the big bopper just because there wasn't a single walk issued all season. bullshit. these people will say that the name of the game isn't winning and losing, its how you played the game and the lessons that you learned. even more bullshit. if it wasn't about winning and losing, why keep score? why have a championship game even?
well, its likely that the two teams played during the regular season and they didn't walk him then. and? different situation. it may not have mattered if the cancer survivor could do anything. the heavy hitter may not have been in front of the cancer survivor. it may have been a 4-run game runner on third, bottom of the last inning two out with the same lineup where a home run doesn't hurt you. the truth is, the past meeting doesn't matter to the title game.
so how do we fix this so that it never happens again? simple- don't keep score. don't have a title game. everyone's a winner. no one goes home crying themselves to sleep.
shame on the rest of you for making this a bigger issue than what it is. people like rodger lodge especially. saying that he doesn't care about who wins or loses, that little league isn't about winning or losingbut yet rips the yanks coach for strategy to give his team a better chance to win is extremely hypocritical. a caller on rome's show today said that the kid having cancer was irrelevant. rodger cuts him off and says "then why are we talking about it?". uh, i dunno roge, you are controlling the show for today, you set the agenda?
"why are we talking about it?" why indeed.
