Little League-gate

I loved baseball, as a kid.

I watched all the Yankee games growing up New York. Phil Rizzuto, Bed Barber, and my favorite – Mel Allen they made it easy to watch a game on the radio. I can still sing the “Baseball and Ballantine” beer Jingle.

Read more: Celebrated Little League team stripped of championship title

My dad gave me a ball signed by the 1961 Yankees. He knew the owner of an Italian restaurant called Amalfi’s in New York, and the story goes that when players came in they’d just sign a few baseballs to give away. Free!

It’s pretty faded but you can still a see Mickey Mantle, and a Yogi Berra.

So baseball, I liked. Catch in the backyard with Dad, I liked. Which is why Dad thought Little League would be a great idea. And the practices were great. It was the games I hated.

This goes back a long way – and as we all now know, you have to be careful about memories that go back a long way, but I still remember the day I discovered that the pitcher was actually throwing the ball a lot faster than necessary.

And that, unlike Dad, he was actually trying to make it harder for me to hit the ball. I will say it to this day: it felt like being under enemy fire.

Which brings me to the Chicago Little League champs who’ve been stripped of their championship, and their trophy, and who, I hear, are very sad about it.

Cheating is bad; the coaches were wrong to cherry-pick kids who weren’t eligible, so shame on them. But if I was one of those kids, I might keep a sad face on the outside, but on the inside, I’m saying, ‘Well, well, well! The coach cheated, but what this also means is that I’m so good at baseball that all these adults were willing to do something crazy to get me on this team!’

And that would be the only trophy I’d need.