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9-year-old boy told he’s too good to pitch


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All I can say is WTF!!!!! Telling a 9 year old hes too good and he cant play????


[url="http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ap-toogoodtopitch&prov=ap&type=lgns"]http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ap-t...p&type=lgns[/url]

9-year-old boy told he’s too good to pitch
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer
3 hours, 56 minutes ago

Buzz Up PrintNEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)—Nine-year-old Jericho Scott is a good baseball player— too good, it turns out.

The right-hander has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.

Officials for the three-year-old league, which has eight teams and about 100 players, said they will disband Jericho’s team, redistributing its players among other squads, and offered to refund $50 sign-up fees to anyone who asks for it. They say Jericho’s coach, Wilfred Vidro, has resigned.

But Vidro says he didn’t quit and the team refuses to disband. Players and parents held a protest at the league’s field on Saturday urging the league to let Jericho pitch.

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“He’s never hurt any one,” Vidro said. “He’s on target all the time. How can you punish a kid for being too good?”

The controversy bothers Jericho, who says he misses pitching.

“I feel sad,” he said. “I feel like it’s all my fault nobody could play.”

Jericho’s coach and parents say the boy is being unfairly targeted because he turned down an invitation to join the defending league champion, which is sponsored by an employer of one of the league’s administrators.

Jericho instead joined a team sponsored by Will Power Fitness. The team was 8-0 and on its way to the playoffs when Jericho was banned from pitching.

“I think it’s discouraging when you’re telling a 9-year-old you’re too good at something,” said his mother, Nicole Scott. “The whole objective in life is to find something you’re good at and stick with it. I’d rather he spend all his time on the baseball field than idolizing someone standing on the street corner.”

League attorney Peter Noble says the only factor in banning Jericho from the mound is his pitches are just too fast.

“He is a very skilled player, a very hard thrower,” Noble said. “There are a lot of beginners. This is not a high-powered league. This is a developmental league whose main purpose is to promote the sport.”

Noble acknowledged that Jericho had not beaned any batters in the co-ed league of 8- to 10-year-olds, but say parents expressed safety concerns.

“Facing that kind of speed” is frighteneing for beginning players, Noble said.

League officials say they first told Vidro that the boy could not pitch after a game on Aug. 13. Jericho played second base the next game on Aug. 16. But when he took the mound Wednesday, the other team walked off and a forfeit was called.

League officials say Jericho’s mother became irate, threatening them and vowing to get the league shut down.

“I have never seen behavior of a parent like the behavior Jericho’s mother exhibited Wednesday night,” Noble said.

Scott denies threatening any one, but said she did call the police.

League officials suggested that Jericho play other positions, or pitch against older players or in a different league.

Local attorney John Williams was planning to meet with Jericho’s parents Monday to discuss legal options.

“You don’t have to be learned in the law to know in your heart that it’s wrong,” he said. “Now you have to be punished because you excel at something?”
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That story is [b]extremely[/b] misleading. Here's a more fair assessment of the situation: [url="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=080827/kreidler"]http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...080827/kreidler[/url]

[quote]Let's keep this simple, for two reasons: (1) It's inherently a simple story and (2) they've got lawyers running around New Haven, Conn., filing lawsuits about kids' sports, which can't be good news for us if we dive into the deep end too quickly.

So cut it to the bare essentials and solve it. Jericho Scott, the boy at the center of this week's baseball storm, is in the wrong league.

It really is that basic. Not as sexy as the hyperventilation that is occurring over the civil rights issues around the story, I know. But just that basic, all the same.

Scott is not Cy Young; he's a kid who throws a good fastball against mediocre competition and struggles against better players. The organizing body that doesn't want him pitching anymore is not the "Satanic Summer League"; it's a group of volunteer parents who clumsily tried to clean up a gaping inequity between Scott -- a midseason import to his team, by the way -- and most of the other kids in what is clearly a developmental, low-wattage, newbie-strewn kid baseball enterprise.

And the national rush to judgment on the relative merits of the "case" is being led by a body of columnists and commentators who don't necessarily set out to come to dunderheaded conclusions, but who (it must be said) likely haven't seen a youth baseball diamond in either years or decades, depending upon whether we're talking about the MSNBC or CNN demographic.

The kid is just in the wrong league. Trust me: It happens all the time.

I've spent the past year researching and writing about kids' sports, along with the standard 10 years of Little League and travel-ball coaching that many dads my age seem to accrue. My youngest son is still 10, as is Scott, who just hit that birthday on Wednesday, and my son has played on (and I have coached with) a national traveling team. I don't know everything about youth baseball, but I've seen plenty.

And Scott is just a kid who shouldn't be playing in the LJB, the Liga Juvenil de Baseball de New Haven. Forget the legal ramifications for a minute and deal with the player himself. Scott is good enough to pitch in a much better league -- and that league, the Dom Aitro Pony League for all-star teams, is already available to him.

In fact, Scott plays in it when he isn't suiting up for the Will Power Fitness team in the LJB.

But in that other league, Jericho doesn't dominate.

And that, I suspect, is the real genesis of this story.

"We'd just move him up," said one of my colleagues, a man who runs a youth baseball league in California.

That's dead-on accurate. The most common response to a dominant player in kids' sports is to move him or her up to the next level of competition -- an older age group, a higher classification of league, whatever remedy is available.

The reasons are both obvious and multifaceted.

First, age is an almost useless calculator of youth sports talent. The more significant factors, by far, are physical size and coordination, level of interest and overall competitiveness. The behemoths standing alongside the Lilliputians at the Little League World Series were actually on the same team, but some kids grow bigger and faster than others. After that, it's about intensity, know-how and love of the game.

In all the blathering on about deprivation of rights and the de-Americanization of youth sports (and consequent wussifying of the Guitar Hero-addled U.S. child), this basic tenet has escaped the grasp of too many adults who should know better. The most American thing that a youth sports league can do for a talented kid is to get him the absolute best competition available to him, no matter what the "age" bracket says.

Little League Baseball figured this out years ago, which is why, in its national charter, it allows for its majors division to be filled with players who range in age from barely 9 to nearly 13. That's a huge gap, and it brings with it some natural disparities in terms of pure strength, size and the like. But that latitude allows little league coaches and board members in communities all across the country to annually identify, say, the 10-year-old who has no business being in the minors anymore, and moving him "up" to majors to face the best competition in town.

In the case of Scott, he already has been given that opportunity. As a member of that advanced, Dom Aitro Pony League, Scott is a good player -- but not the best. He is the No. 4 pitcher on his staff, good enough to go against the top players in the area, but not guaranteed of a blowout victory every time he steps on the mound.

So what is this kid doing in the LJB, a league that is made up significantly of kids playing baseball for the first time? Why were he and another Pony League all-star added to the Will Power Fitness team in midseason?

Why, when the LJB organizers realized that Scott, as a pitcher, was a comical mismatch against the competition, were their offers to move him to a higher age group rejected by the boys' parents, who are now suing for relief and emotional distress?

In a news conference on Tuesday, the LJB's position was made clear: It offered to move Jericho Scott up, because he was crushing the competition at his current level.

Jericho's parents declined the offer, according to the league's attorney. Now, tell me again the part about the big bad league that is beating up on the kid who just wants to pitch.

I'm sure he does want to pitch. And he should be able to.

But at the right level.[/quote]


Sounds like a case of parents being assholes to me.
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