News / Clark County News

Chicago Little League scandal resonates in Clark County

U.S. champion stripped of title for using players outside of area

By Paul Danzer, Columbian Soccer, hockey and Community Sports Reporter

Published: February 11, 2015, 4:00pm

In this Aug. 27, 2014, file photo, members of the Jackie Robinson West Little League baseball team participate in a rally in Chicago celebrating the team's U.S. Little League Championship. Little League International has stripped Chicago's Jackie Robinson West team of its national title after finding the team falsified its boundary map. The league made the announcement Wednesday morning, Feb. 11, 2015, saying the Chicago team violated regulations by placing players on the team who didn?t qualify because they lived outside the team?s boundaries. Little League International also suspended Jackie Robinson West manager Darold Butler from league activity.

Local Little League administrator Mike Ray said he “feels sick” for the kids who played on the Little League team from Chicago that on Wednesday was stripped of its Little League World Series United States championship.

“This is not what this (Little League) is about. It’s not about wins, it’s about life experience for kids,” Ray said. “Unfortunately, for the kids on that team, this is a negative life experience that is going to stick with them. … They’re always going to be associated with this, even though it was the adults who cheated.”

Only last summer, the all-black Jackie Robinson West team was the toast of Chicago and was honored with trips to San Francisco and to the White House.

But the sport’s governing body announced that team officials had engaged in a Little League version of political gerrymandering. Instead of politicians redrawing district maps to pick up votes, it was local league officials who changed the boundaries that determined where players must live. And after learning that their scheme had been exposed, they scrambled to convince surrounding leagues to go along with what they had done.

“This is so heartbreaking,” said Stephen D. Keener, president and CEO of Little League International. “It is a sad day for a bunch of kids who we have come to really like … who did nothing wrong.” But “we cannot tolerate the actions of some of the adults involved here.”

Ray is in his 15th year as the District Administrator for Washington District 4, which oversees nine leagues in Vancouver and east Clark County. He said if the district staff does its job, one league cannot steal players from another.

Jackie Robinson Little League West was stripped of all its championships last summer because it altered its league boundaries to add talented players who lived outside its geographic boundaries. Ray said that Illinois District 4 Administrator Michael Kelly should have stopped the boundary shift. Kelly was removed from his position as part of the penalties imposed by Little League International.

Ray said he and his district staff verify that all registered players in Washington District 4 are in the correct league by plotting their addresses on a map. Little League rules assign players to leagues based on where they live or — new this year — where they attend school. It is each league’s all-star teams that compete for the Little League World Series, beginning with a district-level all-star tournament.

Ray said that he has not faced a situation locally where a league has tried to steal players from another. But he has worried about it.

After a Hazel Dell Little League team played in the 2000 Little League World Series, Ray said he feared area leagues would try to bend the rules to repeat Hazel Dell’s remarkable run.

Thankfully, he said, that did not happen.

Ray said the primary job of a district administrator is to be a voice for the players — not for coaches or other adult volunteers.

“My job is to make sure the kids come first,” Ray said. “The kids want me to speak for them. If (district administrators) don’t do that, we’re not doing our job.”

Parents in Chicago were angered by the news, saying their children were being unfairly punished.

“The boys had no inside dealings … about any borders, and I as a mother had no idea there were any (questions about) boundaries,” said Venisa Green, who was driving her son, Brandon, to school Wednesday when they were “blindsided” by the news as it came over the radio.

“We weren’t involved in anything that could have caused us to be stripped of our championship,” said Brandon, appearing at a news conference with his mother.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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