There are a bunch of old crummudgeony sports-writers and talking heads who despise the amount of coverage ESPN and ESPN 2 devote to the Little League World Series. These are the guys who never played competitive sports, but sit in judgment of all athletes, resent them for how much money they make and think the internet is the death of sports journalism.
It's Monday at dinner time and Saudi Arabia is beating Canada. Byron Keturakis is at-bat for Canada on ESPN-HD. He's 12, it says he wears his left sock inside out for good luck, and he will have the recording of this at-bat for the rest of his life. These kids are so excited to be on the same network that showed Josh Hamilton's ridiculousness at the Home Run Derby, and the same network that shows their heroes. They are all super good kids, which tends to be the case with kids who play Little League, and the joy they get from seeing their highlights on SportsCenter and seeing themselves in HD has got to be amazing. Imagine if that was you at 12 years old.
I guess dudes would rather watch re-runs of gambling addicts playing poker. That sends the kid a good message right? You don't need to go to college...exercise?...intellect? Forget that, just get good at playing poker, get lucky, and you can be like one of the other low-lifes who have found fame through their arrogance and social ineptitude (seriously, Daniel Negreanu is a celebrity?? What is going on here?).
It's fifty times worse than the race card, it's the "what about the kids?" card. Every cable news network talked about Janet Jackson's tit for a week, while preaching "what about the kids?" How many kids, much less adults even noticed the damn thing? These kids can flip around the dial and see live autopsies on Discovery Health, but we think showing their Little League games on television is going to send them the wrong message?
We're showing all of the games from Williamsport now?? "What about the kids?" They are going to get full of themselves and start to showboat. OH MY GOD!
As I type this I flipped to CNN just to see the news. It's a story about how the Shia militia in Iraq used Mosques as torture chambers, buried people alive, be-headed innocent Sunnis off of the street and just decapitating and abandoning folks at random. This is the programming alternative? You're outraged at Little League World Series coverage? Go fix the mess your President made in Iraq instead of killing the joy of 12 year olds playing the best game in the world.
The kid for Saudi Arabia's nickname who just came up was "Lil' Papi." That rules. I don't think "Lil' Papi" is going to skip going to college, turn to crystal meth and wind up in jail because of this (that WILL happen to at least half the team from Canada though) . I think he'll tell this story of being on ESPN, playing baseball when he was a kid, for the rest of his life.
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