It’s pretty sad that Little League Baseball had to come down and punish the Chicago-based team that won the U.S. Championship in 2014. Long story short, a team of twelve-year-olds got a trophy they earned or at least thought they earned – in a day where trophies are just handed out like candy – but jurisdiction ruled Jackie Robinson West had ineligible players and surrendered all of their wins on Wednesday. What that means, is the runner up, Mountain Ridge Little League in Las Vegas, is the U.S. Champion. For shame, JR West. Antsy enough to win a Championship that a coach makes up his own jurisdiction, so a couple kids can be on your team.
Now, my question about this sort of punishment, is whether we should see this at the college and professional level? My answer is definitely a yes! For example, if New England was found to have purposely gained an unfair advantage vs. the Indianapolis Colts with the deflate-gate situation, the Colts would’ve then played in Super Bowl XLIX, instead of the Patriots. However, because of the muddied waters dealing with deflate-gate, especially the latest reports saying that only one of the twelve footballs was even drastically deflated, that would not be reason to justify taking the AFC Championship away from the Patriots.
I do wonder when the coaches are going to start thinking about the kids/players, instead of the accolades that could come by adding a couple “ringers” to your squad. We’ve even seen it here locally, when East High School had a similar jurisdictional issue. The Leopards nearly surrendered their 2012 undefeated season in football, but came to a compromise, by suspending the head coach for two games, among other sanctions. It’s great the student-athletes weren’t punished in this circumstance, but until the punishments on these types of situations is taken seriously, it’s going to take more incidents, like Jackie Robinson West, for us to make an example of. One of the more sad parts to this story, aside from letting down the kids, is having the name Jackie Robinson attached to this Chicago-based team. Your team is named after a true icon of the sport and that’s how you repay his legacy?
Featured Image by: Jimmy Emerson, DVM
