1. In major league baseball the current trend is that you need to protect young arms. There is talk of Mike Pelfrey hitting his innings cap. There were Joba rules. If you are 12 and ESPN can make money off you you can pitch all the way from February to Labor Day.
2. It is not cool to televise kids crying. They are children. Why add the pressure of a national audience and cameras.
3. What’s the point of playing teams from other countries? Why can’t a team just be county champions? Or state? Why do we need to play Taiwan? We don’t even play other countries at the major league level, but we’re going to ship over a team from Curacao?
4. Danny Almonte. You cheated and started a 16 year old against 12 year olds. Like the coach didn’t know. What’s the point, to pick up girls?
5. It’s a game and these are KIDS. Win the town championship in June and go to Friendly’s for ice cream and enjoy the summer.
Regarding kids crying:
Please! This is not a big deal. Crying is part of life. It’s about time that this over-gratified generation learns that you don’t always get what you want and you certainly do get disappointed at times.
Life is hard. Get over it. Kids should learn that at a young age and seeing other kids going through a NORMAL human emotional experience is fine by me.
We also should chastise any kid who makes fun of another kid that he or she saw crying on ESPN.
As means of an analogy…do we stop televising Olympic Gymnastics because the 14 year old Romanian lost when she fell off the balance beam and cried. No, we shouldn’t.
Should we stop televising tennis when the 15 year old phenom makes her way to the semi-finals and then cries when she loses and because she was touched by the fans who rallied to her side? No, we shouldn’t.
What do we do when the coach of the LLWS cries when his team won? Why didn’t WFAN pull the plug when Russo cried on the air the other day?
Do we stop televising funerals when Presidents die out of fear that we might see his Grandchild tearing up? No, we don’t.
Crying is NORMAL folks–it is part of life. Hey kid, you lost–we know it hurts. But guess what? You’ll get hurt again and probably cry over something a lot more significant.
I also notice no kid has ever compalained that they were put on ESPN during the LLWS and the camera caught them crying.