12-year-old drops an F-bomb on live TV. Nice.

Do you like Gladiator movies?

 

Yeah, you're right. It's sorta like beating the U.S. in hockey.

 

Or soccer, or basketball, or about 98 per cent of the sports played throughout the world.

 

Yeah, that was a standout job by the then-undefeated Italians the other morning.

Memo to Italy: There are four quarters in a basketball game. Good luck with the last two.

 

All I know is, the fact that the kid played for Staten Island topped it for me. Too bad they pulled the clip from YouTube.

 

Back to the cursing kid, I still chuckle when I remember how upset my oldest boy, at six, was after being called a cocksucker by his three-year-old brother. That was when I realized that I really needed to tone down my language when I was around my boys.

 

I didn't learn to swear in Little League. I learned to swear at a tackle football "party" at the same age.

Well, the wife and I went up to Lamade yesterday for the two games. Our correspondent left us two reserved seats, and for the evening game, we were in the first row, the two seats directly behind home plate. Loved it.

The things that irritated me a bit about the LLWS experience a few years ago have gotten better. The mascot isn't so intrusive, it's not painted as sickeningly sweet as it used to be. Yeah, you've got Brent and Erin Andrews pimping around the place, but the kids seem to dig it, so whatever.

The bottom line was this. The week may be a hell of a lot for a 12-year-old to take in intellectually. But I would have killed to have had the opportunity to do it at 12. What an experience for them.

(Competition tip: If Columbus, Ga., wins the U.S. title tomorrow night, they're going to give Japan fits on Sunday. The kid who threw last night will be coming back, and he's borderline overpowering.)

 

If Little League International is smart, they will start scaling back the "production" they've made this tournament into. It's a kids' baseball tournament for crissakes. Maybe I should be getting off Moral Mountain here, but I just think it's gotten ricockulous.

 

ESPN isn't as intrusive in the actual event as you might think, either. The only place you really notice it is when they hold the kids in the dugout for an extra 30-45 seconds at the end of a half-inning.

I've come to believe that a large cross-section of America really DOES want to see these games, and we, the "gatekeepers" of sports, feel an obligation to try to urge everyone back toward simplifying it.

 

Shot, you're probably right. Something just gives me the creeps about the way it's become commercialized/hyped, that's all.

 

Watching the replay of the International championship right now... has the home plate umpiring been this shitty? Do they have a contract with ESPN to hustle things along. This doofus just called strike three on a pitch two feet outside and a foot low. Even if the bat was four feet long, there was no way to hit it. Somewhere Eric Gregg is thinking "Damn, reel it in brother." Yeesh.

 

I believe Canada beat the States at the World Cup of baseball tis spring, it was Mexico they shit the bed against.