12/21/24
August 18, 2015
Little League Team Throws Game at World Series: Little League International officials had to intervene after allegations arose that a team threw one of its games at the Little League Softball World Series in Portland, Oregon, on Monday. A Snohomish, Washington, team -- hoping to knock out an Iowa team from the next round it had struggled to defeat -- sat its best players, played all its reserves and told all players to bunt in an 8-0 loss to a team from Salisbury, N.C. "It was very evident right away what was going on. They weren't striving to win," said Central Iowa Little League coach Charlie Husak. Little League International officials responded by making Snohomish play Iowa to advance. Snohomish lost.
I feel sorry for the Snohomish team. Not only were they coached into throwing a game, which can't feel good, but the controversy colors their whole World Series experience.
The coach got greedy. He could've explained letting backups play by saying that a win wasn't necessary so they deserve a turn and they might have accomplished his goal of losing. Making the team go through the charade of bunting was too brazen.
posted by rcade at 07:34 PM on August 18, 2015
If the team was going to easily advance, there's certainly no problem (to me) with clearing the bench for a game that they did not need to win. The travesty is that the coach instructed all of his players to bunt. That would be absurd at the professional level, but certainly even worse when those players are kids. I would commend the tournament officials for their resolution to this situation for the same reasons that hincandenza mentioned.
Incidentally, I play in a large softball league in that just completed our tournament. Due to the size of the tournament (this year we had 68 teams) the league went to a group play/knockout round format a few years ago after several years of straight double elimination format, to make scheduling easier. I think it has generally been viewed as successful, but the one issue that has drawn a bit of consternation is tiebreakers, which are far less satisfying in softball than they are in, say, soccer, if they are anything other than head-to-head. Each year, a couple of pods end with a three-way tie at 2-1, and one of those teams gets bounced. The discussion of the past week looks like it could be headed toward turning the pods into mini double elimination brackets to eliminate that issue. With 5-team groups in this this little league tournament, I suspect ties are even more likely, so perhaps a format tweaking is in order for them as well.
posted by bender at 07:45 PM on August 18, 2015
Exactly- the issue wasn't losing, that earned them nothing: they specifically were trying to lose by enough runs that NC would win a tiebreaker against Iowa on run differential. Like bender suggests, for these kind of structures where ties are so common, they need more than mathematical rules; let the kids play- and incentivize it, so no one would ever dream of intentionally losing, much less in such obvious fashion.
Haven't we had wild card/division standings races where a team might actually benefit by intentionally losing in the last days of the season (i.e., allowing a different team to surge ahead in the wild card once your own position is assured). I vaguely recall a team- the Rays or Yankees, maybe?- did that to the Red Sox a few years ago in the single-wild-card-team format, where they arguably made some questionable batting order and late-game swaps on the field against a team that was fighting the Sox for a wild card slot in the last days of the season?
Oh of course, yeah, it was the goddamn nightmare 2011 season. Ugh. Along with all the other disasters, it came down the final day, Boston loses 4-3, after a long 7th inning rain delay where they led 3-2, when Papelbon struck out the first two batters quickly and then couldn't close it out. Literally minutes later, having somehow squandered an 7-0 lead with two innings to go, the Yankees end up losing to the Rays mere minutes after the Sox had lost. Not saying the Sox deserved to make the playoffs after their shitshow September, but that Yankee game never did sit right with me... thank god for 2004/2007 at that point, or 2011 would have led to a lot of bridge jumping in the greater New England area...
posted by hincandenza at 01:24 AM on August 19, 2015
Yeah, I'd feel bad for the Red Sox if they had won their game and still didn't make the post-season because the Yankees (potentially) laid down for the Rays.
But they controlled their own destiny for that entire month and simply choked it away on their own (including that last game). When you go 7-20 for the month of September (and 3-12 for the last two weeks), 99% of the blame for missing the playoffs rests on your own shoulders.
posted by grum@work at 08:39 AM on August 19, 2015
The travesty is that the coach instructed all of his players to bunt
Agreed.
Playing the reserves in an otherwise meaningless game for the team is certainly acceptable.
It could give a lot of kids an opportunity to play.
Instructing them to bunt taints that opportunity.
posted by cixelsyd at 11:34 AM on August 19, 2015
I had a situation when umpiring a Babe Ruth entry league (13-year-old kids who were of marginal skills) where one team could win the top seed for the playoffs, while the other team was going nowhere. The problem was a strict time limit that prohibited a new inning from starting after a certain amount of time. The game was not yet official, time was running short, and the team with playoff aspirations, leading on the scoreboard, could not afford a "no game" ruling. (Ties were not replayed or played as a suspended game. They were just treated as if they had not been played. Blame a shortage of fields and umpires and the competing pressures of other activities.) The coach of the team leading asked me what I could do to make sure the game got past the top of the 4th, and thus became official. I advised him I could do nothing other than encouraging hustle, but that he could make sure his batters swung at anything reasonable, did not waste time getting to the plate, and if all else failed, deliberately make outs. I made sure that the other coach was aware this was going on, and that if he objected, I would try to stop the other team from doing this. As it turned out, he did not care, his kids understood the situation, and all went well.
This is quite different from playing to lose in order to gain advantage, but it still involves a failure to give one's best effort at all times. Perhaps I wold have better said that speeding up the game was his responsibility, and how he did it was up to him, as long as it was within the rules of baseball. Losing a game in order to gain a more advantageous playoff situation has happened a number of times, but doing it in so blatant a manner should be punished.
posted by Howard_T at 01:51 PM on August 19, 2015
Back in 1992, in order for Jack Morris to get his 20th win of the season for the Blue Jays, the team needed to get through the 5th inning before the torrential rain would cause a stoppage in play. If it did, then Morris would have to sit on the bench and may not be able to come out to finish enough innings to get the win (as the Jays led the Yankees 9-0 at the time) if the delay went on too long.
So the instructions to the Jays hitters were to hurry up and get the required outs.
This led to the memorable plate appearance by Alfredo Griffin where he was attempting to strike out.
His final swing for strike three was so silly as the ball had slipped out of the pitcher's hand and went 10 feet wide and high, that the umpire decided that it was becoming a travesty and stopped the game for the rain delay.
Morris did come out after a brief delay and finished the 5th and 6th innings to get the win.
posted by grum@work at 03:47 PM on August 19, 2015
Ha, I just saw this at /r/Seattle and was coming here to post it, but I guess you beat me by a couple of minutes. :) Here's the Seattle Times story, at least. I'm most surprised they got through an entire 8-0 game without anyone involved slapping the coach upside the head.
The tiebreaker seems like a good and fair decision all around. It wouldn't be fair to outright disqualify them just for losing, when losing still put them in the next round per the rules, and they appeared the strongest team on points. Since the goal of Snohomish was to essentially smooth their own path by pushing NC over Iowa using tiebreaker rules-lawyering, having Snohomish forced into a 1-game playoff to continue was actually kind of Solomonic, honestly. The real shame is that the best team might have been knocked out of the competition by their own coach getting too cute with tournament rules.
Granted, the real flaw is how easily exploitable tournament tiebreaker rules are; as mentioned in the article(s), the coach didn't break the rules, just the spirit of "striving to win". You gotta feel bad for all the players: the Snohomish girls throwing a game can't have felt good, the Iowa girls watching their tournament dreams end... and then the one-game playoff was announced and you realize the emotions on each side probably did a 180 in a heartbeat. I'm surprised the final score was only 3-2, honestly.