What do “First Take,” The World Series of Poker and regular-season tennis tournaments all have in common?
They’re all things I couldn’t care less about. But I’d still watch them on ESPN before even considering tuning in to the Little League World Series.
While eating lunch in the Union last week, I had the misfortune of glancing at competing units of preteens playing baseball. I vowed I would not tune into “the worldwide leader in sports” again until the whole thing was over.
It’s safe to return now. The Little League World Series ended yesterday — I Googled it.
Don’t get me wrong. I love watching baseball, and I loved playing little league. But adults watching other people’s children play baseball is kind of creepy to me.
Almost every concerned parent loves supporting their child and watching them play sports. Some even take it a little too far, choosing to live vicariously through the child’s athletic success. Both cases are completely normal and have existed as long as youth athletics.
There’s nothing normal about adults with no relation watching random 11- and 12-year-olds play baseball. Sorry, I don’t care how much you love the excitement and competition. You’re creepy and need to get a life.
These are the same kind of people who hang out at youth beauty pageants and swim meets without knowing a single participant in the competition. By no means is everyone who tunes in to a LLWS game a potential predator, but people who watch the event religiously are pretty suspect.
Considering how many people think Major League Baseball is too boring to watch, it’s hard to envision there is a substantial fan base of people who love the error- and strikeout-filled calamity of little league baseball strictly for the sport.
Plus, there is no way it’s good for the players.
Most of them get to be seen in a moment of defeat — always with a few tears — on national television. And the ones that win get to become miniature overnight celebrities who are placed on a pedestal at a young age.
Good idea. That never leads to problems for amateur athletes in this country.
Every Johnny Baseball who brings home the trophy from Williamsport, Pa., isn’t going to party with rappers or play Pebble Beach, but a kid who drops a pop-up and gets his team eliminated while the whole town watches will never be known for anything else as long as he lives there.
Even college athletes can have trouble dealing with those same pressures playing athletics at higher levels. The audience and pressure is much greater in major college sports, but the little league teams are made up of younger children who could be infinitely more emotionally fragile.
Maybe at one point the LLWS was entertaining and a wonderful exhibition of sportsmanship and the competitive spirit of children. But on ESPN, it has devolved into players who want to use their shot on TV to become the next Internet sensation and the strange middle-aged people who watch them.
Honestly, I still can’t believe the event survived Danny Almonte, who was two years older than the cutoff age. Coincidentally, his perfect game 12 years ago was the last Little League World Series game I watched from start to finish.
James Moran is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Beacon, NY.