I used to sort of enjoy watching the 'Senior Division' Championship game, if only to see what LL can pass off as a National Championship these days to ABC and the sponsors, who are most likely required to carry it as part of the LLWS deal.

I stopped, however, because first of all, the insane LL rule of having a freaking PITCH COUNT in softball just stupefies me to this day. It shows me LL really doesn't give a s**t about softball, and they only do it to keep themselves out of trouble with the corporate people. That, and the 'talent level' is so poor (no offense to the girls) - I'm watching and thinking I've had better JV games There are probably hundreds of decent 16U travel squads that could whip up on either team.

And oh yeah, this business with sign stealing...the fingers and everything, just shows how corrupt LL is - one of the people making the decision on the punishment of the Virginia team was....the guy in charge of the Washington team?????? :rolleyes:

Softball appeared in the scope of LL when the courts ruled they had to accept females as players on the baseball team.

IMO, that was meant to achieve two goals:

Keep the girls off the baseball field and basically, "keep it in the family" when it came time to collect the money from the parents.

And yes, there are girls playing LL baseball, but not nearly as many as there would be had they not added softball.

I've said it before, if I had been king of the ASA, I would have attempted to negotiate with LL to cooperate with each other allowing LL to handle all youth softball for the 12U level and down and ASA take over at the 14U level and up. Share the registration fees and let ASA train the umpires whether paid or volunteer.

IMO, that would have been a win-win for ASA & LL.

Then again, what the hell to I know? :)

I have several problems with this entire mess. First of all, I don't agree with the disqualification of the entire team from the event. I feel that ruling is an absolute overkill on the part of the organization. Yes it was inappropriate and unacceptable.

Second, to advance the losing team from the semi-final, one who had two individuals ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct, to the championship game is just as bad as the disqualification itself.

Several articles have referenced multiple instances of unsportsmanlike behavior from the Kirkland, Wa team that was the target of the middle finger from the Atlee players. I know one such instance was the stealing of the signs, but I wonder if there were other instances also and if event officials were aware of these instances.

Finally, you do have to question if the fact Kirkland, Wa was the home team for this event played any role in the decision making process.

First of all, I thought you were K ASA. :p

The problem would have been rules, better if LL had used "ASA" SOFTBALL rules instead of trying to apply baseball rules to softball. :rolleyes:

Besides, the 10&U keep my knees in shape. ;)

LL rules apparently consider the stealing of signs unsportsmanlike conduct and apparently the effect is the ejection of the player and coach. IMO, it is not UC and that penalty is just as much an overkill as the DQ.

This is what happens when you live in a zero tolerance environment.

LL Softball does NOT have a pitch count rule.

OK, not DQ from tourney. What would have been appropriate?
Suspending or DQ 6 players is essentially the whole team.


One incident of UC should not penalize the whole team in later games.

Do you believe the TD was not monitoring games enough?

Three separate messageboards I frequent have threads about this. I don't claim to have insider knowledge, but there is information out there that makes several of the responses here misguided, in my mind, anyway.

Here are some of the discrepancies I am reading.

1) The social media photo with 6 players giving the finger was actually taken before the semifinal game was even played. It wasn't even a response to supposed acts that were used to justify and rationalize why it was OK by the Atlee parents and coaches.

2) The Kirkland coaches and the TD were reportedly fine with a formal apology. It was other Kirkland parents that insisted further action be taken, and that they would take it higher up if the TD did not.

3) The Kirkland TD did NOT make the decision, knowing that was a no-win situation. He kicked the facts to the National Office, and the National Office made the decision.

4) As others have said, the minimum appropriate response would be to suspend the 6 players. If you define tipping pitch location as unsportsmanlike and deserving ejection of both player and head coach, there is absolutely NO WAY to ignore what these 6 kids did. In what world does that (6 suspended players) not result in a forfeit?

5) Since the photo was (reportedly) prior to the semifinal game, I see it reasonable to (at least consider) postdating the suspensions to prior to that game and declaring it a forfeit. That loss disqualified the team from continuing, not an after-the-fact disqualification. Think of it as having used ineligible players, BECAUSE ....

6) Are you freakin kidding me that LLSB would "cancel" the ESPN spot for that scheduled championship game over this? Weather, maybe; but to cancel this game when you have an administrative solution (making the suspensions retroactive and forfeiting the semifinal) is really unthinkable.

In another forum, I posted this thought:

Accountability and consequences for their actions? A public and national act of unsporting and crude behavior on social media is punished. How dare they??

It's only unfair and unreasonable to the extent that this group of kids have probably never been accountable before in their lives. Blame the parents, and multiply the blame by the excuses and rationalizations pontificated by the parents and coaches.

Thank you, Steve!

On the issue of LL Softball being nothing more than LL Baseball played by girls with a larger yellow ball, that has been changing in the recent past. LL HQ has realized that in order to attract more girls to the LL family, they needed to make LL Softball more like other youth softball programs.

So they have changed things like playing their post-season tournaments on skinned infields, implementing more softball-only rules like requiring a batter to pull the bat back on a bunt attempt or the pitch will be ruled a strike, mandating the catcher must return the ball back to the pitcher after a pitch except on a strike out or play on a runner, look back rule and leaving early rule. Yeah, they still have a way to go. LL doesn't recognize the dead ball appeal in softball. And it penalizes illegal pitches in Majors and Minors with only a ball on the batter (no base advance by runners). But they'll get there.

Like Rich Ives said, there are no pitch count rules in softball. LL does require mandatory rest rules based on innings pitched per day for pitchers 12 and under when they play Majors or Minors. A pitcher can only pitch 12 innings max in a day, and once they pitch seven or more innings in one day, they must rest for one calendar day. But for Juniors and Seniors (including 12 year olds playing up in Juniors), there are no restrictions.

As for this whole disqualification thing, I made plenty of comments in a number of Facebook groups. Suffice it to say that I thought the decision was justified in that LL has a philosophy to uphold that places emphasis on developing model citizens, not stud athletes, when it comes to the entire purpose of the program, and these girls did not live up to that image.

Any lesser punishment would make Williamsport hypocritical in how it treats rule violators. Teams get disqualified from tournament play for players who, intentionally or accidentally, are not eligible to be on a team. It used to be that teams would be required to forfeit games for failing to meet mandatory play rules. They've scaled back on that because some situations were created by circumstances beyond a coach's control. So whether they disqualified the whole Atlee team, or they suspended the seven girls involved in the bird-flipping picture (assuming the one who took the picture and posted it was a player), it resulted in the team's inability to play the championship under either circumstance.

As for Kirkland getting the benefit of playing in the championship, that's not unprecedented in LL tournament play. Anytime a team is disqualified for a violation, LL reverts back to the previous team that would have advanced. When the Jackie Robinson LL team forfeited its US Championship two years ago, the Las Vegas team that lost to them in the US Final was named US champs. It was just serendipitous that Kirkland was in a position to advance because they were 2-2 in Pool A play, and was the third seed from Pool A in the brackets. They had to beat the second seed from Pool B to advance to the game against Atlee.

Atlee and Kirkland had played earlier in the tournament as part of Pool A play. Atlee beat the snot out of them, 16-2, scoring 8 runs in the top of the sixth to run-rule them. Something must have transpired during that game, or afterward before the two teams played each other again in the semifinal, that prompted Atlee to pull off its stupid Snapchat SNAFU. Maybe there was some smack talk that took place in the three days between the two games. Who knows.

Finally, I do think the LL rule on sign-stealing is stupid. The rule is found under LL rule 9.01(d) in the Umpires section, and says, What prompted this rule, I dunno. Perhaps it all came about from the whole "I Won't Cheat" crusade that LL went on when it put those patches on tournament team uniforms, and someone in a position of authority argued that sign stealing was cheating, so it had to be outlawed. Whatever the case, LL felt strong enough to not only have it as an optional rule during regular season play, but to make it a mandatory rule in tournament play. Pretty dumb. We may as well outlaw the stealing of bases as well, since it does involve, well, stealing.

Throughout all of this, all I can picture is the kid standing at second during the LLWS and waving his arms rather dramatically to indicate to the batter whether the catcher was setting up inside or outside. It was so comical that even the talking heads speculated about how distracting it must have been for the batter. Unfortunately, I can't find a video of it, so it must have happened so long ago that it cannot possibly be the impetus for this rule.

People who never played sports think sign stealing is cheating.

Only one problem with this. The 6 girls in the picture didn't violate any rules. Only the individual who posted the picture on social media did.

Rich:

I could not have said it better myself.

MTD, Sr.

Casinos think card counting is cheating, too. In either case, it's not. Using the available information to make the best possible informed decisions is never cheating.