Little League continues to deal with eligibility issues that are pushing many elite athletes toward travel baseball teams. The latest series of scandals in Colorado create something of a mass exodus.
It is something of a lose-lose situation for the historic organization.
If Little League decides to enforce its rules, it runs the risk of extinction. If not, then the top baseball teams in the United States will continue to stack their rosters with ineligible players to achieve the ultimate goal of winning the World Series.
Colorado had multiple travel teams in the district tournaments.
The latest eligibility scandal actually took place on the softball side of things with the disqualification of Tulsa National from the Southwest Region tournament. However, the same kind of tomfoolery is also taking place with baseball.
Colorado is a great example.
A first-year team called Northern Colorado Little League burst onto the scene during the District 2 tournament at the beginning of the month. It was sketchy from the start. The players were much bigger than their opponents. They were also a lot better.
One of the board members for Monarch Little League mentioned that Northern Colorado used to have a league but it had been defunct. Parents then started to collect information about the new program’s roster, which led to a series of suspicious discoveries.
Monarch went to its local administrator with evidence that Northern Colorado violated Little League rules. The new league was created on a whim to make a run at the Little League World Series with players from a travel team. It also played too many games in a single day to try and qualify for the postseason. Those games were only three innings in length instead of the required six.
Little League officials ultimately decided to disqualify Northern Colorado from the District 2 tournament for multiple reasons. Although it was the correct ruling, it messed up the entire bracket because the disqualified program had already played (and won) two games.
And it does not stop there! Ironically enough, Monarch was also involved with some tomfoolery.
Little League does not allow teams to enter the postseason as a “nearly intact travel team.” According to my sources, the Monarch 12U All-Stars played in the Cooperstown Dreams Park tournament and several other local travel tournaments during the All-Star window that leads up to district and regional play of the LLWS. It also fielded an 11U team with the same 13 players and the same three coaches from its travel ball organization. Both rosters were in direct violation of Regulation V(d).
Eligibility scandals create a mass exodus from Little League baseball.
Although neither Northern Colorado nor Monarch qualified for the regional tournament, Little League is not in the clear. There are a lot of different programs on both sides of the organization that are taking this same approach to their rosters all over the country.
We saw it with the disqualification of Tulsa National from the regional softball tournament earlier this week. We saw it with the Lake Mary baseball controversy last season. The incident involving Jackie Robinson West is perhaps the most notable example.
As I see it, this creates something of a lose-lose situation for Little League. And multiple people that I have talked to within the organization seem to agree.
These recurring eligibility issues have created something of a mass exodus. More and more families are choosing to sign up their children for travel ball instead of their local Little Leagues. Why even bother playing Little League if all of the teams are trying to use travel ball players anyway? Little League won’t enforce the rules so they are taking their kids elsewhere.
However, the eligibility issues are so widespread in Little League that they are hard to enforce. If the organization was to disqualify every team that fields an ineligible player, there wouldn’t be any teams left! (I say that with a heavy dose of hyperbole.)
I do not know the solution, nor am I paid to figure it out. There are full-time employees at Little League who must find an answer to this two-fold problem before its organization goes extinct and/or becomes travel ball.