Plenty of shame to go around Jackie Robinson West, but not on the kids

If Jackie Robinson West Little League players gathered around anyone Wednesday trying to put their stripped national title in perspective, it shouldn't have been Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Michael Pfleger at Rainbow Push headquarters.

It should have been the people most responsible for breaking the rules and betraying their trust — they know who they are — in a quiet room without microphones. It should have been to hear JRW officials, coaches or parents reinforce to their impressionable minds the link between actions and consequences without a reporter in sight, to see real accountability still missing from this morality tale.


If JRW parents were going to speak out loudly, they should have accepted responsibility for not knowing more about the rules or asking tougher questions instead of threatening lawsuits and injecting race into the equation.

Everybody talks about this being a teachable moment. When are we going to learn?


Shame on everybody.

Shame on any adult who let down all those blameless children by falsifying documents or using a fake boundary map to assemble the best youth all-star baseball team Chicago ever has seen. Shame on the JRW coaches who looked the other way.

Shame on every helicopter parent who used integrity as the shield to make allegations against JRW or investigate the wrongdoing when, just a hunch, jealousy and envy contributed every bit as much. Shame on the sore losers from Evergreen Park and Las Vegas reveling in JRW's misery who relentlessly drove the investigation that culminated, nearly six months later, in JRW vacating the national championship because of residency violations.

Shame on all of us who swallowed the tale bait hook, line and sinker because of the innocence and excellence it represented at a time we yearned for both.

And shame on me for not feeling more outrage over the feel-good story that just became another 2015 example people will use to claim that everybody cheats in sports, from Super Bowl coaches to Little League teams. Indeed, everybody probably does. That makes it prevalent. It cannot become acceptable.

No matter what officials declared, it always will feel to me like an outcome defined by a technicality more than a conspiracy. It feels as if Little League International did the right thing by the letter of its bylaws, yet it's hard to look at this case as an example of all that's wrong with society or sports or our city and country. It's still hard to grasp the idea that this group of kids from the far South Side benefited from a geographical advantage.

I remember walking around Jackie Robinson Park and speaking to people who lived in the neighborhood about the 13 African-American Little Leaguers who for a few weeks in August turned Chicago into America's biggest small town. With as much fear in their voice as pride, grown men and women spoke of the inherent challenges of raising children in that environment — of playing baseball on a diamond that wasn't always the safest place to be after dark. They knew kids on the team who had dealt with poverty and dysfunction, realities and struggles that don't justify any Little League gerrymandering but certainly make it easier to understand.

These players benefited from a geographic advantage? The irony: In several of the JRW players' worlds, geography always had been their biggest disadvantage.

But rules are rules. They must be enforced, if not embraced. The adults never should have forgotten that, but they did. It doesn't matter if they did the wrong thing for the right reasons. They cheated in a way one member of the 1983 JRW regional champs claimed had been going on for decades. So they were punished, an unfortunate but appropriate development. The next investigation should include a forensic accounting of the $164,481 Dick's Sporting Goods donated as well as other financial gifts. Put the adults who can't be trusted under the microscope. Leave the kids alone to grow up.

Whatever Little League officials took away from Chicago's boys of summer, nobody can steal their memories of visiting the White House, riding in a parade or meeting people whom youths from the far South Side typically don't get to meet. The experience broadened their horizons beyond any map or geographic measurement. Nobody ever can change that, the point of Cubs pitcher Jon Lester's tweet.

"I want you to be proud of what you accomplished on the field! Championships are kept in the heart and mind, not on a shelf," Lester wrote Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, White Sox executive vice president Ken Williams echoed the support many felt necessary to express to the kids caught up in the poor judgment of adults.


"They're still champs in my mind," Williams said.

Alas, JRW no longer is a champion in the annals of Little League history. The sad turn of events embarrassed Chicago, no stranger to corruption. It doesn't have to define a bunch of kids who weren't complicit in the lies.

If only the adults who let everybody down can make sure they get that message.

Twitter @DavidHaugh

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