Oregon In Little League World Series Final!

[oregonpackfan]

Oregon has a team in the Little League World Series Championship game today. Game time is 12:30 p.m. PST. The team is from the Murrayhill section of Beaverton, OR--a suburb west of Portland.

It is televised on ABC out here on the West Coast. I am not sure if it will be televised nationally.

Earlier this summer, the Oregon State Beavers won the College World Series Championship title. It would be a great double win if Murrayhill could win.

OPF

[Bretsky]

awesome; it'd be a dream come true if I had a son and he played for one of those teams. Congrads to those teams.

[oregonpackfan]

Well, the Oregon kids lost to a powerful Georgia team.

The Georgia kids displayed a class act of sportsmanship after the game by going to the Oregon dugout and encouraging them to join them in a victory lap around the field. Both teams jogged around the entire field with 25,000 fans applauding them.

OPF

[Scott Campbell]

It's nice to see kids embrace sportsmanship in an age where over zealous parents seem intent on screwing them up.

[BallHawk]

I'm rooting for Japan.

[GBRulz]

Did anyone happen to read an article yesterday about whether or not these kids should get paid for doing this? I wish I could remember where the heck I read it....

[TravisWilliams23]

I live 1 mile from Lamade Stadium and have the priviledge to see this event every year. I don't believe they will ever pay the kids for playing
these games because the whole concept is that it is for fun and sportsmanship. The only thing I wish they would consider is paying the parents and family members transportation and hotel stay for the trip to Williamsport because that can get real expensive. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the teams and families involved.
BallHawk, I think you will get your wish about Japan winning. They have this kid named Matsumoto who will pitch the championship game. He is lights out as far as trying to get a hit off of him.
I'm still rooting for the USA team!

[GBRulz]

I agree Travis.

I'm wondering where exactly is all the money going to? Is ESPN making all the money off advertisers because they broadcast the games? What portion is going to Little League and what is being done with all that money? The bottom line is that the kids are playing and someone is getting rich off it and it certainly isn't them.

Love the idea of the money going to help families with hotel and travel costs though.

[TravisWilliams23]

GBRulz, Little League has their own website "littleleague.org" which has lots of info on Little League. As far as the money from ESPS, they only cover the world series and some USA regional games for about 2 weeks out of the year so it's not a very large amount of $$$. Little League is a world wide organization and they do have really good programs like Urban Initiative which builds baseball fields in inner cities.
All the games are free to attend. They do take donations to help cover some of the costs but it's all voluntary. I hope they put the money to good use and don't abuse it.

[BallHawk]

Did anyone happen to read an article yesterday about whether or not these kids should get paid for doing this? I wish I could remember where the heck I read it....

You read it on yahoo.com, here's the article.
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Dakota Fanning is 12 years old.

She is an actress who has appeared in dozens of commercials, network television shows and major motion pictures. Some estimates have her commanding a salary of over $5 million per film, which are then released and, generally, earn the adults around her tens of millions more.

No one thinks that since just about any 12-year-old would be thrilled to appear in a Hollywood film for free, that Dakota Fanning should, indeed, work for free.

Now, imagine if Dakota Fanning was a softball player and not an actress.

She would be eligible to compete in the Little League Softball World Series, which would allow her to appear on national television, be used to promote corporate sponsors and advertisers and make the adults around her tens of millions of dollars.

Only she wouldn’t get a red cent.

The reason is because, ah, well, it is because people figure that since just about any 12-year-old would be thrilled to play softball (or baseball) on national television for free, then free it should be. Just ignore those tens of millions.

In fact, to suggest otherwise, to suggest that Little Leaguers should get in on the money (even just a little), is so counter to supposed American values that people get outraged or dumbfounded, then even more outraged.

But, then again, even Nike and Kathie Lee pay their child workers at least a few cents an hour.

Little League is a Big League business and gets bigger each and every year, thanks to the increased national television coverage from ESPN and ABC, which has driven up not just rights fees but corporate sponsorships, stadium advertising and ancillary income.

Little League Baseball, Inc., a non-profit based in Williamsport, Pa., took in revenues of $19.2 million in 2005 according to the IRS, an increase of 26.4 percent from just four years prior.

LLB, Inc. spent $17.4 million last year and has over $62.6 million in cash reserves. CEO Stephen Keener drew over $225,000 last year in salary and retirement contributions according to tax records.

ESPN and ABC can’t get enough of the Little League, televising all 32 games of the baseball World Series, more than a dozen regional qualifying tournament games and three softball World Series games. What began in 1953 as a single televised championship game now dominates the networks’ August schedule.

The Little League World Series is so big business that its championship game will go by the name “Little League World Series: World Championship presented by Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.”

Kellogg’s outbid all the other major corporate sponsors such as Bank of America, ReMax Real Estate, Ace Hardware and Snickers, to name a few, for the title game naming rights.

Business aside, some people think turning a child’s game into an international pressure cooker is dangerous – with kids getting hurt, adults cheating and priorities being put out of whack. Others think the critics should chill out and realize this provides the thrill of a lifetime for a bunch of kids from around the globe.

“Better than any other youth sport activity, baseball and softball have become the thread that has sewn together a patchwork of nations and cultures around the world,” the Little League declares.

There is truth in both arguments. But the Little League, which was founded in 1939 and staged its first “World Series” in 1947, was easier to believe when it wasn’t selling everything out to the highest bidder.

It is now mostly about the business of selling entertainment. It can talk all it wants about its commitment to sportsmanship and service, but please, even the most naïve romantic can’t still believe those are anything but nice by-products.

This is why the kids playing the game that fuels this business deserve something.

Here is the thing, each Little League team has 15 active players. Each game features 30 total players. There are 45 national television games for the boys.

If each player was paid just $750 for each television game it would cost the Little Legaue $1,012,500, a little more than half of the anticpated profits for the year. That is nothing for the Little League.

Since each team appears in a minimum of three television games, that is $2,250 per player, an absolute life changer for some kid from China or Mexico (let alone blue collar America).

Now imagine if Disney (ESPN and ABC) matched it.

Or maybe the money could be put into college savings accounts, or bonds that can’t be redeemed until the children are 18.

Whatever, just about anything would be, at the very least, a good faith gesture and an admission to modern reality.

Anyone who knows anything about youth sports these days knows that it is a multi-billion dollar business, complete with endless travel, sky-high fees, personal skill coaches and tournament operators who are adept at squeezing every last penny.

Parents are getting killed on this stuff. The days of the old city sand lot leagues are gone, gobbled up by entrepreneurs who have sold the supposedly better mouse trap.

Yet American society still wants to hold onto some pristine image of youth sports and apply a different standard than other forms of entertainment or business, no matter how illogical

LeBron James could have been a multi-millionaire and top five NBA draft pick after his sophomore year of high school, but he had to wait. But no one waxes on about how Dakota Fanning is missing out on the experience of the humble junior high play.

You may think this is just Little League baseball, but that isn’t how the corporations see it.

The Little League game that appears on ESPN and ABC is no different than a Red Sox-Yankees contest, or “Grey’s Anatomy” or SportsCenter. It is a show designed to sell enough advertising to turn a profit. That’s it. That’s all. If it wasn’t making money, it wouldn’t be on the air.

If Kellogg’s (or any other company) didn’t think the Little League would help the bottom line, it wouldn’t buy in either. No one is in this for their health.

Essentially a lot of multinationals are exchanging a lot of money in the entertainment industry, yet the people providing the entertainment aren’t seeing any of it.

So the 12-year-old baseball player gets an orange slice and a motel room in Pennsylvania. The suit in the corner office gets set for life.

You can argue about the sanctity of “amateur athletics” but in today’s capitalistic world that concept lost all meaning decades ago. The Olympics smartly gave up on it because it wasn’t fair to the athletes.

All that is left are high schools and the NCAA, which essentially forces its doctrine down the food chain because if these Little Leaguers were paid, they’d forfeit their NCAA scholarship eligibility.

But allowing the NCAA to set the moral standards on youth sports is like letting Exxon write environmental laws.

The NCAA is a multi-billion dollar bureaucracy that isn’t good at anything other than staging national sports tournaments. The reason it doesn’t pay the athletes is not because it values amateurism but because doing so would soak up all the revenue and prevent its administrators and coaches from becoming millionaires.

Then again, the NCAA at least provides a full scholarship for its athletes. Which is more than the Little League does.

Bob Cook at MSNBC.com recently summoned Karl Marx and insightfully (if tongue in cheek) wrote that all these 12-year-olds should consider a strike. Or maybe they could get agents like the child actors.

Unfortunately that won’t happen. Obviously nothing is going to change. Just suggesting it angers people.

The adults here – the Little League, ESPN and ABC, Kellogg’s and the rest – have a summer cash cow, courtesy of a naïve and desperate preteen work force from Staten Island to Saipan.

First they sold America on the purity of a game being played by unpaid kids.

Then they sold a lot of advertising.

[BallHawk]

These kids play it for the love of the game. I play baseball, and my team was never fortuante enough to make it to Williamsport, but if we did I would play my heart out for free. It's 12 year olds, playing a game they love, America's trying to turn it into the World Series. Yes, I find it very entertaining and plan on watching the championship today, but seriously are we really considering paying 12 year olds? What about kids that college sports. College baseball, College Football, College basketball. Those kids don't get paid a cent, and I assure you they get watched more than LL Baseball. Sometimes I think maybe the author just wrote this to be different. Most of the time I think he's just a complete moron.

[GrnBay007]

Little League honored a young boy in our community with a special sportsmanship award this year and sent his whole family to the Little League Championship game. He plays with one arm and is an extremely good ball player. From what I understand it's a birth defect and his left arm ends about midway between his elbow and shoulder. He's a pitcher and it's just awesome to watch him play.

[GBRulz]

yup, that's the article! thanks ballhawk.

I don't agree with his comparison of a little league player vs. a celeb in Hollywood.

[BallHawk]

Final postponed due to rain. Final rescheduled for Monday at 8, on ESPN 2. Call me Jane Fona, but go Japan. Go Nihonn yakuu!

Sorry if my spelling's off, I speak it better then I spell.

[BallHawk]

Japan fought hard, but lost.