Little League, Big Dreams

by Charles Euchner

  When we talk about youth sports—supporters and detractors, standpatters and reformers—we sometimes assume that the coach provides the key to the whole operation.

  Coaching matters because the coach can create an environment where the players and their families govern themselves with intelligence and decency. When the kids embrace values of hard work and play, goals and sacrifice, and achievement and caring for others, the results can be profound. And they can last a lifetime.

  In 1998, Judith Rich Harris published a landmark book entitled The Nurture Assumption that challenges the standard parent-centric view of childhood.

  The standard view is that parents play the critical role in how their kids grow up. All over America, parents scramble to get their kids the best opportunities for advancement. Parents sign their kids up for sports and music, push them to get better grades, finagle to get them into private schools, research summer camps, ride them to do their homework, and make decisions about TV and video games. All of which are perfectly valid.

  But what really matters is what kind of environment the kids are going to be in, what kinds of peers they’ll be with, and what kind of social system governs this world. It’s fine to learn how to play baseball or sing in a choir. But the activity itself matters less than the values and behavior of the other children in the group. Children learn their most important lessons from other children. Children pick up cues of how to behave from other children, and make that behavior their own. Gestures of all kinds—the saunter and the shuffle, the grand gesture and the whispered aside, the raised eyebrow and the intentional inattention, the idolization of a star, and the smirk toward a lesser being—convey the group’s values and tell the members how to belong.

  When a group of children get together and spend time with each other, they essentially teach each other how to behave. They determine whether the group will be one community or a set of factions with different status. They set expectations, enforce norms, embrace each other, and figure out how to make things work.

  Or not.

  That’s why my favorite scenes from the Little League World Series usually took place outside the spotlight. I was most impressed when the players took responsibility for each other.

  The most meaningful moments for me came when two tiny first basemen—Tanner Stanley of Florida’s Maitland Little League and Kaeo Aliviado of Hawaii’s West Oahu Little League—took charge of the field between batters. After almost every at-bat—and always when some trouble was brewing—they’d bop to the mound, remind their teammates of the situation, and say something positive. “Got your back,” Stanley said. “Hey, no problem,” Kaeo said.

  As I got to know some of the Hawaii players, I loved to see how they contributed to the team’s even keel and focus. Wherever he went, Kini Enos loosened up his teammates. Players from other teams constantly talked about how much fun Kini was. When I was in Hawaii, talking to a couple of his teammates, he bounced over to the picnic table where we were sitting and took over. Not in a selfish or egotistical way. He just drew his teammates out. He helped them find their words, reminded them of situations, and jumped up to demonstrate plays.

  I was also impressed when I watched Ty Tirpak in the Hawaii dugout, screaming himself hoarse throughout the World Series. A bottom-ofthe-lineup hitter, Ty got it in his head that he could help with his highpitched cheers and frenetic movement. And he might have been right. That kind of attitude can help to create a mindset of optimism.

  I was relieved when I saw players from Canada and Guam romp around the Little League complex. I was impressed to see the Japanese team practice together like between routines. I smiled dancers—and break into laughter in when I heard that the players from Westbrook, Maine, tromped down to the field after their games ended to gather samples of dirt from the infield as souvenirs.

  These are the things that have a chance of lasting—not just memories, but ways of living—long after the innocent dreams of winning a championship.

  A survey by the National Alliance for Youth Sports found that 15 percent of all children’s games involve physical or verbal abuse. Of the thirty million kids playing youth sports, almost half say they have experienced some kind of abuse. The extreme incidents —like the infamous case of a Massachusetts man beating another father to death in a fight over the way their kids’ hockey practice was being conducted—get the headlines.

  But it’s the steady accumulation of smaller incidents that do the most to warp the environment. In fact, 40 percent of all young athletes said they wish their parents would stay away from their games, giving them some room for fun and play.

  Little League is just a small part of that larger world of youth sports. And the pressures in Little League pale next to the pressures of some other sports programs—in most places, when some sort of league championship or tournament is not on the line. But Little League is very much a part of the larger culture of competitiveness in America. That culture has been institutionalized in adult-run leagues with volumes of rules and regulations that sometimes seem so far from the simple idea of play.

  So I wonder.

  Is the top-down, adult-managed approach necessarily the only way to organize youth sports these days? Do adults really know everything better than children? Not necessarily. Even if kids need some teaching, they don’t need to be directed every moment of their time playing baseball.

  Why not give the game back to the kids?

  Here’s how I’d run things. I’d let the adults do all the organizational stuff—draft the teams, reserve the fields, set up the calling trees, get the umpires, and keep score.

  And I’d let the adults teach the kids some skills. Many of the adults, after all, are very good teachers and love to pass along their knowledge and love of the game. As a Little Leaguer, I would have been ecstatic if I ever had someone like Joe Pimentel teaching me how to hit. I would have been thrilled to have someone like Shon Muna showing me how to field a groundball. And I would have benefited from Layton Aliviado’s ladder drills. This is all great stuff.

  But once the games start, get the adults off the field.

  You say it’s not practical? Maybe, but think for a minute. Kids have been organizing themselves forever. Only in the past generation have parents and adults become such busybodies that kids feel like they can’t organize their own games. But if they’re given some broad boundaries, the kids could do the job as well as adults.

  The members of the team could vote for a captain to make the lineup. They could pick a game manager to decide field strategy (positioning fielders, changing pitchers, swinging away or bunting, pinch hitting, and so on). Maybe you set strict pitch counts and let the game manager decide when to bring in a new arm. That might take away the pressure for a kid to go one extra inning when his arm is tired.

  I asked Tad McGwire, the Branford Little League coach I met at that dinner party, what he thought about the idea. A thoughtful and committed man, McGwire has been coaching for years, but he’s watched the Little League World Series pageantry from afar. I thought he would provide a balanced, fair perspective.

  He was skeptical. He said the approach might work with all-star teams, but it might not work during the regular season. “I know probably every kid who’s going to be on the all-star team this year, and I think they would be fine with something like that,” he said. “I’m not so sure about the team in the regular season. There is just such a range of kids.”

  His greatest fear is that the dominant personalities might exploit the situation. “You could have a Lord of the Flies situation. The alpha males take over and put themselves in key spots,” he said. “Most kids are very cooperative. I’ve seen kids ask their coach, ‘Hey, why doesn’t Bobby have a chance to play?’ They have empathy for each other. But a team can be a very delicate thing, and if one thing goes off, the whole thing falls apart.”

  As we explored the best way to achieve the right balance in youth sports—providing boundaries and instruction, but not micromanaging the games�
��we talked about how baseball could be given back to the kids.

  The older boys on the team would be groomed to take a greater responsibility for running the team. Already, many coaches ask their twelve-year-olds to lead by example. “I pull my twelve-year-olds aside and tell them, ‘This is your year. Stay positive, encourage the younger guys, teach them.’ They help me set the standards early, and that helps the team for the whole season,” McGwire told me. As the year progresses, McGwire gives the older boys more responsibility in running the practices. But when the game starts, he’s constantly shouting out instructions. Could he let go a little, cede more control to his bigger kids? “Maybe,” he says.

  I know these ideas run against the grain, especially for the more competitive Little League programs. Adults usually resist letting go, especially when all the kids have not demonstrated maturity to run the operation. But isn’t letting go the ultimate goal of teaching kids?

  It seems that every time a new problem arises—in schools, sports, everywhere—the first response is to bring in more experts. But maybe making the league more and more organized is not the answer. Establishing rules, procedures, and hierarchies doesn’t always work because it removes the game from the people playing it—the ones who really know how they feel.

  Maybe kids would actually learn more if they were allowed to have the game back. Research shows that when you give kids more opportunity to take control, they respond. The best way for kids to learn, the extensive “effective schools” literature shows, is peer tutoring. When you set the stage the right way, kids can do amazing things on their own.

  Expanding the kids’ control of their own games is worth a try. Why not test different models of running leagues and teams? If Little League can experiment with a pitch-count rule, why not also offer an experiment for giving the game back to the kids?

  As an organization, Little League faces a major challenge.

  All over the country, the best players are opting for travel teams, where they get professional coaching and play upwards of 100 games a year. These players compete against elite competition all spring, summer, and fall. Some of the best travel players take time off their schedule to play on Little League all-star teams to chase the glory of a televised championship. But the best players in Little League’s tournaments are really ringers.

  Meanwhile, Cal Ripken Baseball, the PONY League, Dixie Baseball, and other leagues have challenged Little League at the community level. Of all the community-based league programs, Cal Ripken is best poised to surpass Little League. Ripken Baseball has a plan for taking over youth baseball—and it has the most compelling figure in the sport to attract followers all over the world. If Ripken gets a national TV contract, watch out.

  Maybe Little League, the organization that started the professionalization of childhood, could do something to recover childhood. Maybe, if Little League wanted to provide a true alternative, it could give the game back to the kids.

  When Carl Stotz started Little League, you could make the argument that kids needed some help from adults to organize games. It was a nice idea to create a special kid-sized game with some of the trappings of an organized league. It was an especially nice idea to get a few adults involved teaching the kids how to play.

  But things have gone too far the other way, toward adult domination of a kids’ game. And Little League could set itself apart from the alternatives by taking a stand for the kids again.

  Little League would have a new niche. Little League would be the organization that provides instruction and does all the logistical stuff, but then lets the kids play the game without turning it into an adultdominated, pressure-packed spectacle. So what if the best players continued their migration to travel teams and other leagues? Little League would offer something truly special.

  Something interesting happened when most of the teams got eliminated in the Little League World Series.

  Little League offers the also-rans a chance to play each other in “friendship” games—what we used to call pickup games. Little League reserves the fields, arranges for umpires, and even gets someone to announce names over the PA system and keep the scoreboard going.

  The all-stars from Maitland, Florida, played the all-stars from Valencia, Venezuela. Even though they lost 13–1, no one from Florida seemed to care. Manager Sid Cash told his players that they could play whatever positions they wanted. The players took the field for the pure fun of it.

  “It feels totally different,” Dante Bichette Jr. told the New York Times. “It feels like a regular Little League game.”

  “Our guys were laughing on the bench today,” Sid Cash said. “That was a little different.”

  “Maybe for the parents, the game is over now,” added Victor Alvarez, the uncle of Richard Alvarez Jr., and the founder of the league. “But it’s not over for the kids.”

  “We had a regular pulse today,” said Dan Moroff, the father of Florida’s Max Moroff.

  With a season of pressure-packed games over—and the boys in charge—the summer had a few hours left for simple play.

  Imagine …

  APPENDIX

  2005 LITTLE LEAGUE WORLD SERIES TEAMS AND RESULTS

  POOL A (UNITED STATES)

  Northwest: West Oahu, Little League (Ewa Beach, Hawaii)

  Mid-Atlantic: Council Rock Little League (Newtown, Pennsylvania)

  Midwest: Davenport Northwest Little League (Davenport, Iowa)

  Southeast: Maitland Little League (Maitland, Florida)

  POOL B (UNITED STATES)

  West: Rancho Buena Vista Little League (Vista, California)

  Great Lakes: Owensboro Southern Little League (Owensboro, Kentucky)

  Southwest: Lafayette Little League (Lafayette, Louisiana)

  New England: Westbrook Little League (Westbrook, Maine)

  POOL C (INTERNATIONAL)

  Asia: Chiba City Little League (Chiba City, Japan)

  Caribbean: Pabou Little League (Willemstad, Curaçao)

  Latin America: Los Leones Little League (Valencia, Venezuela)

  Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA): Brateevo Little League (Moscow, Russia)

  POOL D (INTERNATIONAL)

  Canada: Whalley Little League (Surrey, British Columbia)

  Mexico: Saguro Social Little League (Mexicali, Mexico)

  Pacific: Central-East Little League (Mangilao-Barrigada, Guam)

  Trans-Atlantic: Arabian American Little League (Dhahrin, Saudi Arabia)

  POOL PLAY

  Game 1: Hawaii 7, Pennsylvania 1—In the first inning, Hawaii scored four runs on two home runs to win the game early.

  Game 2: Guam 6, Russia 2—Trae Santos struck out thirteen batters in his complete-game victory and Calvert Alokoa hit two home runs.

  Game 3: Florida 7, Iowa 3—Dante Bichette Jr. allowed a three-run homer in the first inning but only two hits in the rest of his complete-game victory. Bichette and Skip Kovar homered to lead Florida’s offense.

  Game 4: Louisiana 3, Maine 2—Nick Finocchiaro and Michael Mowatt hit solo home runs to give Maine the early lead, but Louisiana rallied in the bottom of the sixth when a series of misplays undermined starter Sean Murphy.

  Game 5: Japan 3, Saudi Arabia 0—Japan’s pitcher, Takuya Sakamoto, gave up two hits and struck out eleven batters in getting the shutout.

  Game 6: California 7, Kentucky 2—Kalen Pimentel recorded strikeouts for all eighteen outs and Nathan Lewis and Aaron Kim homered to pace California.

  Game 7: Curaçao 5, Venezuela 4—Richard Alvarez’s grand slam stunned defending champion Curaçao and sent the game into extra innings. Sorick Liberia’s sacrifice fly with the bases loaded won the game in the eighth inning.

  Game 8: Canada 2, Mexico 0—Chris Fisher allowed only two hits in getting the complete-game shutout. A single by Nathan de la Feraude and a sacrifice fly by Tanner Morache scored Canada’s runs.

  Game 9: Florida 3, Pennsylvania 1—Skip Kovar and Lee Dunnam batted in runs in the first inning to pace Florida.
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br />   Game 10: Louisiana 9, Kentucky 8—In another stunning comeback, Louisiana overcame a seven-run deficit to eliminate Kentucky.

  Game 11: Hawaii 7, Iowa 3—Alaka’i Aglipay, Vonn Fe’ao, and Quentin Guevara homered and Aglipay, Kini Enos, and Vonn Fe’ao combined to shut down Iowa.

  Game 12: Guam 5, Canada 0—Sean Manley took a perfect game into the fourth inning and gave up only one hit in his complete-game victory.

  Game 13: Japan 9, Curaçao 0—Yusuke Taira struck out thirteen batters and gave up three hits in a six-inning complete game. He threw seventy-eight pitches, fifty-one for strikes.

  Game 14: California 7, Maine 3—A two-run home run by Michael Mowatt put Maine ahead 3–2 in the fifth inning before California rallied to win. Kalen Pimentel hit a grand slam to lead the attack.

  Game 15: Mexico 7, Russia 0—Julio Arciniega threw a complete game fourhitter, striking out seven batters. Mexico collected eleven hits.

  Game 16: Japan 7, Venezuela 4—Yuki Mizuma struck out six batters and belted a solo home run to lead Japan. Mizuma relieved Shuhei Iwata after Martin Cornelius, and then hit the biggest home run of the 2005 World Series, a blast that hit the camera tower in center field, about forty feet above the outfield fence.

  Game 17: Hawaii 10, Florida 0—Alaka’i Aglipay, who pitched the first inning of Hawaii’s first two games, went the distance, striking out seven batters. Sheyne Baniaga and Michael Memea homered and Kaeo Aliviado hit a big double to pace Hawaii.

  Game 18: Curaçao 3, Saudi Arabia 0—Curaçao’s Sorick Liberia and Saudi Arabia’s Andrew Holden both pitched no-hitters into the fifth inning. A walk, two wild pitches, an error, and a passed ball gave Curaçao two runs in the first inning.

  Game 19: Pennsylvania 15, Iowa 0—Keith Terry pitched a four-inning no-hitter and he, Greg Guers, Blaise Lezynski, Benn Parker, and Darren Lauer homered.