"Revenge of the Baseball Gods"

Just wait until 2015, when Friend revisits this theme:


"Who could've predicted it? Seven years later, Shawn Johnson will be the one with her own gymnastics camp. And He Kexin will be the one in a re-education camp."

 

Until you are in those shoes, how can you predict what a kid in that situation will do? Yes, we all know what they should do but do they have the maturity to make the right decision? Some 14-year-olds can. I could have. But I also feel I'm an exception. I don't think most can due to circumstances they can't control. If they could, there would be no Danny Almonte story to tell and girls in Massachussetts wouldn't be making pregnancy pacts (allegedly).

 

Well put Apeman, but I just think that if you concede that "oh, it's ok" then you are enabling a behavior that you do not want.

 

9/11 plays a small role in the story about these two players. Enough of a role to be included in a story about how their baseball careers and lives intertwined and diverged. Not enough to be THE big element of this story unless Almonte's or Cerda's family were on those aircraft or in the World Trade Center proper.

I thought it was a decent story. If Tom Friend's closing didn't reek of cheap shot, it would have been at least a good piece. The elements were there to make that gold, but Friend will have to settle for the bronze.

 

I can't believe we're comparing a girl allowing herself to be sexually molested to a boy being allowed to play baseball with younger kids.

Who knows how the adults justified it to him. Maybe they said: "Because you don't speak English you got special permission to play with younger kids." He's a kid. He was having fun. His parents and adults around him told him it was OK.

 

It was Almonte's own father who was pushing this. And by the way, do you really mean to equate playing baseball at the wrong league age with failure to speak out on child molestation? By the way, if you want examples on kids afraid to speak out, follow the link to Elizabeth Merrill's piece on the Wilson, N.Y., high school baseball team and the community reaction to an incident (one of multiple, but the first in which someone stepped forward) where two JV players got sexually assaulted by varsity players in the back of a team bus. There are a lot of people in that community ticked that anyone would try to ruin the lives of... the kids who did it and the coaches who ignored it.

 

There are degrees of evil. The kid wanted to play baseball and he played where he was told, yeah I can see how that compares to molestation
It was a Baseball team, how do you know he even knew it was illegal?

Are you not the same person that says 18 an 19 year olds aren't mature enough to play in the NBA?

 

I cannot believe so many of you are defending a teenager that lied. Not only lied once, but carried the lie on for months and reaped many benefits from the lie.

I know kids who have horrible, horrible home lives. They can at least look me in the eye and tell me the truth when I ask them a question.

JC, telling the truth and managing a $35 million contract are a little bit different.

 

I will.

I sure hope that kid rips the shit out of the ball for the Cubs.

 

I realize that you are raising the perfect child, that will never lie to you.

With that attitude, have fun being a Grandparent, when she is 14.

 

this was simply outstanding.

 

Dude...what the hell is wrong with you?