Little League Cheaters.... Aw.

Remember that inner-city Chicago team that won hearts for overcoming adversity on their way to their championship game loss against South Korea in the Little League World Championship last year?

Turns out, some of the black kids came from the south suburbs -- South Holland, Dolton, Lansing, Lynwood, and Homewood, Illinois -- in violation of the residency rules.

Poor kids.

The crux of Evergreen Park’s allegations came to light during Jackie Robinson West’s Little League World Series run that ended with a U.S. championship, including online posts from a congresswoman, a suburban mayor, an elite traveling baseball league, a village newsletter and a Sports Illustrated post that detailed the players' suburban roots.
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Chris Janes says he won’t apologize for “doing the right thing” and holds on to hope that Little League International will investigate new information made public in a DNAinfo.com Chicago report.

Little League residency rules require players to either reside or attend school within a league’s boundaries with very few exceptions, and specifically state it is unacceptable for a parent to establish residency to qualify for tournament play.

According to a league map obtained by DNAinfo.com, the Jackie Robinson West boundaries include sections of the Morgan Park, Washington Heights, Auburn Gresham, Englewood and New City neighborhoods of Chicago — but do not include any suburbs.

Janes and fellow Evergreen Park league board members said news reports during and after the World Series that quoted suburban officials celebrating various players as hometown heroes exposed some of Jackie Robinson West players as suburbanites and confirmed what some Evergreen Park Little League volunteers had suspected for years — preteen blue-chip players were being recruited to join the team.

“Due to their success this year — and getting on TV — all of the information [about the players] became so readily available,” Janes said. “All you had to do was Google any one of the players' names and their hometowns outside of Chicago pop up. … It was all just there.”

“I’ve gotten several messages telling me that I’m an idiot. Telling me that it’s sour grapes. Telling me I should resign,” Janes said. “But I have no regrets. I feel like we’re doing the right thing and we just have to keep moving forward. … I don’t think this is over.”

The controversy began in late October when Janes sent an email on behalf of his south suburban league asking Little League International to investigate whether Jackie Robinson West engaged in “manipulating, bending and blatantly breaking the rules for the sole purpose of winning at all costs” by recruiting All-Star players from outside their league boundaries to put together the “super team” that became U.S. champs.
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Janes said he also received emails and calls backing his league’s decision to speak out, including a letter from a former west suburban Little League official.

“I wanted to reach out to you to thank and encourage you to continue to speak out against border-jumping families. While the story told of the JRW program was inspiring and the players deserve the admiration, it is my opinion that the choices of the adults deserve scorn,” the email states.

“What they fail to see [as do most of the commenters] is that for every accolade they have received, they have stolen those magical moments from kids and families who have followed the rules and deserve the attention. … It takes a great deal of courage and clearly demonstrates the responsibility you must feel to speak out against the injustice of deception.”

Janes says he appreciated the support.

“It’s great to hear but it’s odd when people commend you for being courageous,” he said. “What kind of world do we live in when this is what’s considered courageous? When you see something that’s wrong you report it. More people should step forward.”

Janes said that he’s hoping now that the Evergreen Park league he represents has spoken out and provided “as many facts as we could” that more people with “first-hand knowledge of Jackie Robinson West players living outside league boundaries will speak up as well.

“Maybe the more voices that are heard the more likely something will be done about it,” said Janes, who believes Jackie Robinson West should be stripped of its title if an investigation finds the team violated residency rules.

The Mountain Ridge Little League coach whose Las Vegas-based team lost to Jackie Robinson West in the U.S. title game said he believes Little League International officials will do the right thing to “protect the integrity of the league” as they have in past cases involving questions about player eligibility.

“I’m gonna leave that up to them,” Mountain Ridge manager Ashton Cave said. “I’m sure Little League [officials] would — now that there’s some controversy being stirred up — want to keep the integrity of Little League … because it will affect a lot of baseball players and a lot of families if it becomes tainted and tarnished.

“That’s the last thing that any coach or league would want to do — to ruin something because you want to win. You don’t tarnish an entire league worldwide. That would be very unfortunate. And I’m not accusing anybody. I’m just making observations."

Looking Ahead for Leadership?

Patrick Wilson, Vice President of Operations and International Tournament Director for the Williamsport, Penn.-based Little League International, said he took seriously the allegations in Janes’ letter challenging residency of Jackie Robinson West players.

Wilson said Little League officials reviewed evidence Janes sent, which included Web links to news stories, Facebook pages, crowd-funding websites and roster information from the Chicago White Sox ACE program, a travel team organization that a number of Jackie Robinson West players had participated in.

Wilson said Little League checked Jackie Robinson West paperwork to verify that the players “live in Chicago or go to school in Chicago” and asked for additional information to verify residency. Little League officials, however, did not ask Jackie Robinson West parents to sign affidavits — legal binding documents signed under oath — to verify residency or school attendance as required according to Little League’s rules, Wilson said.

Wilson declined to answer specific questions about player residency information, would not say whether the league filed residency waivers for specific players and refused to provide the map of Jackie Robinson West’s league boundaries the national organization used to verify residency.

Wilson said that Little League International followed up on the “very specific complaints” made by Evergreen Park by rechecking the documents Jackie Robinson West submitted to prove player residency. He said Little League International also asked for additional documentation to support residency and school enrollment claims.

Wilson declined to elaborate on details of the investigation but said, “We checked the documentation and the addresses that the Evergreen Park folks sent from Lynwood, South Holland and Dolton.” He said that the organization looked at documents provided by Jackie Robinson “to support the residency and school enrollment requirements.”

Wilson said privacy concerns prevented him from disclosing information about specific player documentation and that it is Little League policy not to disclose individual league boundary maps.

“We don’t publish those maps,” Wilson said. “Leagues share them how they decide to. We do not.”

Janes said he was disappointed that Little League International conducted what he considered a less-than-thorough investigation especially given the organization’s significant financial resources. Last year, Little League signed a $60 million deal extending ESPN’s exclusive television broadcast rights to the World Series tournament.

“We thought what we sent them was the smoking gun. … It seems to me with all the big money people involved, the television rights and all of that, if they were legitimately concerned that they would have done their homework,” Janes said.

“If they were concerned about everybody playing by the same rules that Little League publishes on its website, their responses would have been a lot more specific. I think there’s a lot at stake and there are a lot of people involved in this that are concerned the truth may come out.”
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The appearance that the Jackie Robinson West team is comprised of “travel players from outside their boundaries” remains at the heart of Evergreen Park’s formal complaint, Janes said.

When parents ask him how his suburban league can remain competitive against Jackie Robinson West, Janes says he doesn’t have a good answer.

"As long as they are allowed to select players from outside their boundaries to make a team largely comprised of travel players and we continue to only allow players within our boundary, it’s going to be difficult,” Janes alleged.

Janes said he “wouldn’t be surprised that other leagues do the same thing particularly if circumventing the rules is as easy as it appears to be now.”

“But I think it’s wrong no matter who does it,” Janes said. “In the end Jackie Robinson West is in our backyard and they’ve been so well-publicized that it’s obvious that they’re doing it, at least in my eyes.”

Janes said Evergreen Park volunteers genuinely fear that the continued existence of an unlevel playing field might kill their league.

“The intent of Little League is everybody plays. There are no cuts. It’s a childhood experience, not a stepping stone to play high school ball or college,” Janes said.

Travel ball exists for the players whose parents “thought their kids were a little better and it might be good to play a more competitive brand of baseball on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Travel teams are not restricted by boundaries. “They have tryouts and cut players,” Janes said. “They don’t have the same rules as Little League.”

The travel teams, he said, “really don’t want anything to do with Little League — until it’s time to play on TV.”

“All the sudden they’re a travel ball team masquerading as a Little League team,” he said.
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He added, “There’s something wrong with a process that seems to be very easily manipulated.”