by Peggy Robin
I want to pass along a highly readable though kind of tabloid-y article on the on-and-off-the-field conflict among some of the adults involved in Little League play in DC.
The article is in a blog called The Defector, which describes itself in these words: "Defector is an employee-owned sports and culture website. We write about sports, politics, TV, movies, science, weird shit that happens on the internet, and anything else that catches our attention,"
Someone sent me a link to read the article because of its juicy bits about the DC Little League dust-ups, and not having a dog in this fight --that is, a player age 12 or under in the house-- I found it amusing (otherwise, I would have found it maddening). It's basically a gossipy/snarky account of the over-the-top actions of some of DC's more litigious and entitled parents. If this is your kind of thing, here's the link: https://defector.com/a-very-ugly-year-in-the-life-of-a-d-c-little-league
Here's how the article starts:
A Very Ugly Year In The Life Of A D.C. Little League
By Dave McKenna
9:02 AM EDT on October 4, 2024
On July 8, an all-star team from the Northwest Washington Little League (NWLL) faced off against Mamie Johnson Little League to open the D.C. city championship tournament, the first round in the global annual tournament for ballplayers 12 years old and under that ends with the Little League World Series. The game came to a halt in the middle of the sixth and final inning, when the NWLL first baseman picked up the game ball on his way to his position, prompting the home plate umpire to loudly declare that the first baseman now had to pitch. With NWLL up 6-0 and three outs away from advancing, manager Mike Klisch walked onto the field and spent several minutes conferring with the umpire. The first baseman had already pitched the first four innings before being relieved, so he was likely ineligible to return to the mound. It took a phone call from the ump to Little League headquarters to untangle the rules.
“Is there a 24-hour line to answer questions about rules?” an NWLL mother in the crowd asked as the game resumed.
“Yeah,” responded an NWLL dad, “for rules … and lawsuits.”
"A communal groan came from the NWLL side of the grandstand. It was a reaction brought on by the events of the previous year, the worst in NWLL history. As is usually the case in Little League debacles, the season from hell had nothing to do with the kids or anything that happened on the field. The grownups and a seemingly bottomless supply of spite—allegations of cheating and fraud, cries of racism and classism, secret recordings, plus so many lawyers making threats of lawsuits followed by actual lawsuits—are to blame....."
It's a long article, so all you get is that teaser of the first four paragraphs. While it's not behind a paywall, to read the rest, you do need to create a log-in. You must register your email address with The Defector and create a password.
Don't want to give them your email address? I can well understand that. I don't like to do that, either. So I have a number of throwaway email addresses to use when I find myself wanting to see something or subscribe temporarily to a blog or learn more about a product without being spammed to death by whatever site has piqued my curiosity. (OK, technically, if you sign up to view an article or a product, and they start emailing you, it's not spam exactly, because you've contacted them first and theoretically, at least, agreed to let them email you. So the stuff that they send you is called "BACN" (pronounced "bacon"), not SPAM.
And sure, you can un-subscribe, but it usually takes a little time and effort on your part to do so. It's never as easy to get them to stop as it is to get them to start. And plenty of times unsubscribing doesn't work.
So here's what I recommend: Create an email address at any free email service (I prefer Gmail) and give it a name that lets you remember what it's for -- like bacnmailoct2024. Then you can check that inbox on the web as much or as little as you like-- or not at all.
If you don't want to bother checking a separate inbox, you can set it up to forward to your main email address, and then set up a filtering rule so that it's collected in a separate folder. That way, you can skim that folder's subject lines from time to time, and delete them all at once when you're done.
It's very handy, helps you manage email overload, and if that throwaway address starts getting filled up with junk, just delete the whole thing -- it's no big deal. You can always start another one, whenever you need it.
It's perfect for subscribing to blogs you're not sure you'll want to keep reading -- like The Defector.
I haven't yet decided whether I want to keep my access to The Defector but it's nice to know there's no pressing reason for me to think about it now.
Is this a lot more than you'd like to do to read this one article? In that case, I've posted some of the "Whoa, Nellie" bits for you below:
"The NWLL’s uncivil war ... made the league a national laughingstock and [made it] look like another safe haven for adults who can’t help but ruin youth sports. The mood around Turtle Park, the home field of NWLL located in D.C’s tony AU Park neighborhood, has been dark ever since."
The reporter of the article, Dave McKenna, finds himself personally involved in the story he's covering:
"After reaching out to Sweeney and Klisch [LL parents who are also the attorneys behind the lawsuits] one last time on Sept. 16, I received an email from Megan L. Meier, a D.C. attorney. Meier said she was representing Klisch and Sweeney in a defamation lawsuit they filed on Sept. 4 against other NWLL parents, and that she intended to subpoena me in that suit. The letter, in which Meier pointed out that she’d successfully sued Fox News on behalf of Dominion Voting Systems (and got a $787.5 million settlement), also threatened litigation against me and Defector."
"About a week before Klisch was to be officially named all-star manager, another league parent informed Coniglio that he wanted to apply for that job. According to emails obtained by Defector, Klisch had reported that same parent to the board last year for what Klisch described at the time as that parent’s “racial coding” while heckling a black 9-year-old NWLL player during a game."
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The Defector is available at https://defector.com/
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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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