Where Have You Gone, Norman Rockwell?

 The Little League World Series has moved from Norman Rockwell to ESPN Live, with instant replay.  Is that necessarily a good thing?

Yes, pitcher Mo’ne Davis getting on the cover of Sports Illustrated could really help girls in baseball, or not.  All of a sudden, this thirteen-year old is dealing with a world of media attention; older athletes have wilted under less pressure.  What happens if and when Davis stumbles?  I mean, even Sandy Koufax and Jennie Finch had their off days on the mound.  Or what happens if Davis does well next year but doesn’t return to Williamsport?  Will somebody stick a mic in her face to ask how she feels?

What it comes down to for me is reading rather than watching.  I want to read about Davis and the Jackie Robinson team from Chicago, but I don’t want to watch them on TV.  Why?  Because THEY’RE 13 YEARS OLD!  No one outside of family and friends should be watching.  To put kids on television like this turns them into nothing more than so much programming to help fill up a Monday night.

When Clare was in sixth grade, I coached her in a fall-ball league.  We had a pitcher who belonged in the Little League Hall of Fame.  The kid’s fastball knocked the mitt off the first two boys who tried to catch him, and he ended up striking out 27 of the 29 batters he faced that autumn.  ESPN and Sports Illustrated here we come, or so he and his father thought.  But I knew not to call.

The kid loved to pitch batting practice, if only to humiliate teammates.  Of the 12-13 players I had, only one could make solid contact off of him.  Yup, it was Clare.  That told me something about both the boy and the girl.  One went on to play in college while the other wasn’t even the best pitcher on his high school team.  Failure happens all the time in sports.

And an exploitive media can only make it worse.