Cheating in Sports No Longer Just For the Pros

Cheating has become commonplace in professional sports.  We've all heard more than we probably want to about "Deflategate", the New England Patriots allegedly playing in and subsequently winning the AFC championship and moving on to the Super Bowl with footballs of non-regulation air inflation levels. They were also infamous for "Spygate" several years ago. But when cheating or cutting corners trickles down to youth sports, it's another story altogether -- and an even more disheartening one at that.

I've always thought the Little League Baseball World Series was overkill and I recently heard  a story on ESPN that just reinforced my belief.

The Jackie Robinson West Little League team in Chicago had several victories in the 2014 season that they are now being stripped of due to fielding players on their team that were from "out of their regional boundaries."

Where do I begin to describe my frustration with this? These are 10-12-year-old kids playing a game. It's one thing to have a city championship or league championship with kids that age, but a "national championship" seems a little overdone. Then, to have such stringent rules that you can "remove" the title from the winners for violating them? Doesn't seem right.

I played little league when I was kid. I was never very good, but I enjoyed it. I don't know if it was because I grew up in a very small town in western Iowa, but the game was never so ultra-competitive that we had these kinds of rules. It was about learning teamwork and having fun -- no pressure. How times have changed, I guess.