Sports in America Page 15

  What makes Marshall’s arguments compelling is that while working on his doctorate he has taken x-rays which prove that elbows can be permanently damaged by excessive youthful pitching. He explains his own career: ‘As a kid I never pitched. The others were too much better. So they ruined their arms, but when I reached eighteen I had a good arm and was ready to go.’

  Orthopedists from various parts of the country have begun to issue warnings against premature overexertion. Dr. Nicholas Gianestras of Cincinnati believes that it constitutes a serious health hazard. Others are joining Marshall in recommending that no youthful hurler be allowed to pitch more than two innings if under the age of thirteen, nor more than three below the age of fifteen. And all advise that the curve ball be outlawed prior to age fifteen.

  Anyone who has studied this problem can predict what future orthopedists will be recommending. Dr. Thomas E. Shaffer of Columbus, Ohio, says, ‘We just don’t teach boys and girls the right sports in schools, the ones they will enjoy during their adult lives.’ He commends archery, bowling, golf, skating, tennis, swimming, boating. It is ironic, and a consequence of our adult attitudes, that the two sports on which we have spent the most effort and money for young boys are the two which they will not be able to use in adult life: football and baseball.

  The second area in which Little League got into trouble was its refusal to accept gracefully the dictate of a New Jersey official that girls must be allowed to play if public recreation areas were used or public support solicited. The bumbling response of the Little League officials became a source of national merriment and will be discussed in Chapter V.

  The most notorious scandal, however, erupted when Little League wrestled futilely with the problem of Taiwan. In 1939 a group of public-spirited amateurs assembled in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to hatch a program that would encourage boys to play baseball during vacations. Every precaution would be taken to prevent injury and ensure good sportsmanship. In the following years millions of boys would participate in Little League, and in one follow-up study of 750,000 participants, only two percent had suffered any kind of injury, mostly trivial raspberries or dislocated fingers.

  The apex of this developmental period came about 1954, when the boys from Schenectady were winning their world championship. After that, things began to get a little sticky. Baseball for boys became so popular that thirty-one countries sponsored Little Leagues, and some of the better ones started coming to Williamsport for the world championships. Many Americans can remember the thrill that swept our country when a gallant bunch of kids from Monterrey, Mexico, won in 1956. Of course, our enthusiasm waned a bit when they won again in 1957. And when the Japanese picked up a couple of crowns in 1967 and 1968, we became downright hostile.

  But the blockbuster came in 1969 when a dedicated team of young men from Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan appeared at Williamsport with a new definition of what boyhood baseball could be. They were lean, lithe, superbly trained, and the high school teachers who coached them had taught them all the nuances of big-league play. The teachers had learned from American coaches sent to Taiwan in the aftermath of the war, and from reading ‘inside baseball’ books supplied by our government.

  What admirable learners they were! Their teams were masterpieces. The Chinese boys could field without error, run like Formosan deer, and hit the ball without striking out Most of all, they could pitch.

  Once they became acclimatized to the diamond at Williamsport they proved tough to beat. In 1969 they won all the marbles. In 1970 they lost their opener to Nicaragua, 3–2. The 1971 series was a runaway for Taiwan, as was the 1972. But in 1973 the slim little fellows from Taiwan really unleashed their power.

  In the opening game they faced a team of sons of United States military personnel stationed in Germany, and the Taiwan pitcher hurled a perfect game, 18–0, which meant that not one American reached base. In the second game against Tampa, Florida, the Chinese pitcher threw another no-hitter, 27–0. And in the big championship game against Tucson, Arizona, the Chinese pitcher tossed yet another no-hitter, 12–0. Score at the end of three games; Taiwan 57 runs, America 0 runs; Taiwan 43 hits, America 0 hits.

  The only logical explanation was that the Taiwan players were cheating. No bunch of Chinese could come here and beat American boys at our national game by a combined score of 57–0. So an investigating committee was secretly slipped into Taiwan to see what these almond-eyed little devils were up to.

  If Taiwan was cheating, it had to be done in one of three ways: the Chinese could be lying about the ages of their boys; or the boys could be a team of all-island all-stars rather than an ordinary team from one area with a population of under 15,000; or it could be coached by professionals. Even the most cursory investigation satisfied the sleuths that none of these offenses had occurred.

  The Taiwanese were meticulous about the ages of their boys, the rigorous island identity system helping in this respect. The teams they had been sending to America were from population areas of under 15,000 and not all-star aggregations. Indeed, many locals believed that one year the best team did not go to America, and one wonders what the scores might have been had a better team come. And no professionals were coaching, for the very good reason that Taiwan had almost no professionals. Our spies did criticize the fact that paid schoolteachers coached the teams instead of amateur volunteers, but this could be corrected.

  With some apprehension the Little League people awaited the 1974 championships. The Americans prayed that some United States team would pull itself together and at least score a run, even if it couldn’t win. And the wiser heads among the Taiwanese hoped that their team would lose for a change, just to make the Americans breathe more easily, but at the same time they knew that the entire island back home was counting on another world championship in the one sport they dominated. It was a fateful tournament.

  In the first game Taiwan met New Haven, Connecticut, and beat them 16–0. The Williamsport people began to groan, sensing that they were about to witness a replay of preceding years.

  In the second game Taiwan went up against Tallmadge, Ohio, and scored another shutout, 11–0. The combined scores since America had last scored a run against the Chinese was 90–0.

  But in the championship game the American team finally put it all together. The players from Red Bluff, California, actually shoved one run across the plate, but Taiwan won, 12–1. In nine games over three years the combined score was Taiwan 120, America 2.

  The American officials knew what had to be done, but not how to do it. In a maladroit performance, Peter J. McGovern, board chairman of Little League, announced bluntly, and without explanation, that henceforth the world championship would be decided in an abbreviated tournament comprising only the four United States regional champions.

  The Taiwanese were crushed. ‘We are suffering from a strange phenomenon,’ an official said. ‘We are too good.’ The chairman of the Taiwanese Baseball Association was restrained when he said, ‘A world series with only American teams participating can hardly be a world series.’

  And then the roof fell in. Everyone who had been accumulating suspicions about Little League jumped in with acid editorials or cynical letters to the editor. Rarely has an American sporting body taken such a unanimous lambasting. Some very funny lines were written, the best being, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, ban ’em,’ and much of the fatuousness of American sports was reviewed, especially the overemphasis on winning.

  The Little League directors took a bum rap. The international competition had been getting way out of hand. The Taiwanese, and other nations, enjoyed a climate that permitted baseball games the year round. They were pouring into their leagues a degree of national intensity that we could not match, nor would want to match if we could. They were able to muster a degree of support unknown in America; and asking American boys of twelve to compete with Taiwanese who were concentrating on baseball and nothing else was like asking boys from snowbound Maine to compete in tennis against boys from
sunny California.

  The overemphasis had to be stopped. In fact, it should have been stopped after the 1954 world series, as we have seen. It is unfortunate that Taiwan had to be the team on which the onus fell, and I believe the operation could have been carried out more gracefully. But I support the basic decision of de-emphasizing the hysteria.

  I do not think the Little League action bespeaks our unwillingness to face the fact that players of other nations can sometimes play our national games better than we. After all, our big-league baseball teams might have to fold if Spanish-speaking players were not allowed to play, and it is quite possible that an all-star team of Caribbean, Mexican and Venezuelan players might annihilate a team of only white Americans. European-style field-goal kickers tend to be better than the American product, and our university tennis teams are happy to have Latin-American stars matriculate. I do not believe we are overly chauvinistic. Let those Taiwanese no-hit pitchers mature—if they haven’t already ruined their arms—and if they’re as good then as they are now, there will be a place for them on any big-league team they choose to play for.

  No, the problem lies with taking twelve-year-old sports too seriously. It does the grownup no good and the child actual harm. It is an aberration that should be corrected. Little League does not need to be abolished, but its excesses must be curtailed.*

  I have already commented on the ridiculousness of having a twelve-point arbitration procedure, including lawyers, appeals and reversals to settle disputes in football games played by eight-year-olds. This cannot possibly be for the protection of the children; it can only be for the gratification of aduts who are sponsoring the children.

  Baseball has its equivalent. In Hempstead, New York, a Mrs. Joan Leite, mother of a nine-year-old Little Leaguer, had a disagreement with her son’s forty-two-year-old manager. The mother, feeling that her son’s rights had been abused, insisted that the manager be fired. He was, whereupon he took the case to the state’s Supreme Court, demanding that he be reinstated.

  Recently a more insidious abuse has become common. Little League rules specifically state that teams must be composed of boys who live within a specified homogeneous area, but cases are surfacing in which overzealous coaches have roamed far afield to recruit talented youngsters to play for them. There have even been cases in which coaches have persuaded parents actually to move into their districts, so that a nine-year-old star can bolster the home team.

  If recruiting is encouraged with nine-year-olds, it will obviously escalate to junior high school and then to high school. We shall have, across the nation, the hideous farce that now operates when colleges recruit in high schools.

  Philadelphia has been riven by two notorious cases. In the first, a junior-high-school boy named Gene Banks, already six-foot-six and with a deadly eye, was living with his father in a house which placed him in a high school that accomplished little in sports. By moving into his mother’s house, in a different district, he made himself eligible to play for West Philadelphia High, one of the traditional basketball powers in the city. Coaches of the competing schools were goaded into issuing statements, reporters escalated the argument into a first-class brawl, and citizens caught an inside glimpse of school power plays. At one high school which was luring topnotch junior-high prospects into its boundaries, the faculty and student body issued a protest stating that their school was being misused, but since the coach was producing a winner with his imported talent, nothing could be done. At the same time, the coach of a district which was losing all its best players complained that some dozen who were legally his boys were starring on competing teams, and he wondered how his school could continue fielding a decent team if his best players were continually stolen from him.

  The second case was a classic and should be studied, because schools across the country will be facing the problems it poses. Eddie Olsen, sportswriter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, received an anonymous note from a trouble-making taxpayer living in Abington, a choice suburb to the north. The note charged that Abington sports officials were recruiting so many basketball players from the center of Philadelphia, that boys legally entitled to attend the school had to remain on the bench, unable to play.

  The newspaper focused on the case of Richard Wright, whose mother and father lived in the city in an area which required him to attend a ghetto school. He was five-foot-nine and known as ‘a quicksilver guard with a hot eye for the basket,’ and somehow or other he heard of Abington, where life was good and where quicksilver guards were appreciated.

  He therefore moved to Abington, left his parents, and allowed an uncle to adopt him legally. As a basketball player he proved to be even better than reported and was mainly responsible for Abington’s state championship.

  The Abington coach, Jim Wilkinson, explained to the press:

  I guess his mom and dad were concerned, and I only heard this in the courtroom when he had to go through legal adoption, why he left Philadelphia, he said he had to take a different route every day to school, he had to go through five gang territories and he didn’t think it was a good place to go to school.

  Now when I first met Richard and he told me he was coming to school, I complained to him. I said, ‘Richard, we’d love to have you but you can’t play basketball unless you’re legally adopted.’ When he found out that, he checked, and his aunt and uncle were willing to do that and his mom and dad, too, so that was it. I never in any way, shape or form asked Richard Wright to come to Abington. It was his decision.

  Four other instances in which inner-city boys transferred to Abington and played basketball caused so much discussion that specific legal steps, including a court adjudication, became necessary. Athletic director Raymond Coleman said in retrospect, ‘Last year I carried guardianship papers with me wherever I went through the whole season to prove it was legal.’ Norman Schmid, principal at Abington, defends his school resolutely:

  Some persons chose to parlay these different circumstances into a mass of circumstantial evidence that Abington High School engages in recruiting. Nothing could be further from the truth. In no case did the high school or its personnel seek out the student. In all cases the school immediately notified the PIAA District Committee and abided by its ruling on the student’s athletic eligibility. Neither the school nor its staff engages in recruiting.

  Two other cases which reached the courts are instructive. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the local high school had a chance to win the state football championship, but its hopes were destroyed when a rival team discovered that Elbert Williams, the star Tuscaloosa running back, was nineteen years old, and they produced records from the state Bureau of Vital Statistics to prove it.

  Since anyone over the age of eighteen was ineligible, the Alabama High School Athletic Association had no recourse but to order Tuscaloosa to forfeit a game, pay a $250 fine, and accept probation for one year. And that should have been the end of the case, except that thirteen of the Tuscaloosa players, quarterbacked by adult partisans of their team, stormed into court, filed suit against the state athletic association, and demanded that Circuit Court Judge Fred Nicol issue a mandamus directing the Bureau of Vital Statistics to issue a new birth certificate to Elbert Williams proving him to be not nineteen but only eighteen, which would make him eligible, reverse the forfeit, and restore Tuscaloosa to the championship play-offs.

  The argument of the boys was ingenious: since Elbert Williams’ mother had had fourteen children, it seemed likely that she might have become confused regarding the birthday of her son, the running back. The judge issued the mandamus and the State of Alabama was required to alter its records so that a boy could play in a crucial game and a school pursue its championship.

  Belatedly common sense came into the picture. State Officials pointed out that if Alabama birth certificates could be revised at the whim of a high school football team, all insurance policies, social security payments and retirement funds would be in jeopardy. Supporters of Tuscaloosa argued that this was not too hig
h a price to pay for a really good running back, but state leaders felt that the integrity of the state’s records had to be preserved, and the mandamus was vacated. Once again an Alabama birth certificate meant what it said.

  In Kent, Ohio, a fascinating case developed. A boy athlete from an outlying district was advised by his friends that if he could somehow transfer his place of residence from the minor district in which he lived, and which had no good coaches, to the big high school in Kent, which had excellent ones, he would have a better chance of attracting attention and winning a scholarship to college.

  The boy left his parents and went to live with an uncle who had established residence in the Kent district. The association governing Ohio school athletics challenged his eligibility on the sensible grounds that this was clearly an evasion of the state rules about residence and eligibility. The boy was told that he was ineligible to play for Kent and that he must go back to his rightful home, where his eligibility would be restored.

  This seemed an admirable ruling, just and clear-cut, but the people who wanted to see him play in Kent advised him to take his case to court, and there a most interesting situation developed. The boy was eighteen, eligible to vote in national elections, and to deprive him of the right to take up residence where he wanted was a denial of his civil rights. The case did not reach a final adjudication. The judge appears to have let the Ohio High School Athletic Association know that if the case were carried to a conclusion, he would have to rule in favor of the boy, and this would upset all existing laws and rules governing interacademic sport. Rather than see their whole disciplinary structure destroyed, the state body wisely decided to drop their opposition against this one boy and allow him to live where he wished and to play for whom he wished.