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Little League BulliesThey're big. They're bad. They're ... 12?

By Josh Levin
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007, at 1:57 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Every player in the tournament is good at baseball, but good little baseball players can only do good little baseball player things, like bunt, take a walk, and keep their eye on the ball. Meanwhile, the one or two titans on each team breathe fire, shoot thunderbolts from their wrists, and exchange pictures of their kids. It's not that the hulk-children aren't talented—Pisciotta, Burroughs, and McClendon all eventually played in the majors. But the tiny dimensions of a Little League field exacerbate the built-in advantages that the big kids already have. For a 12-year-old behemoth, the 60-foot distance between bases takes just a couple of strides. Their moonshots often clear the 205-foot fences by a good hundred feet. And the pitcher's mound is where things really get unfair. When a 6-foot pitcher fires a 75 mph fastball from 46 feet, it looks like Yao Ming shooting down at you with a BB gun.

If the overgrown bullies—or, God forbid, their parents—had any sense, they would play in a league where the bases are 90 feet apart. That would burnish their careers far more than fanning Emmanuel Lewis 15 times on national television. National television, you say? That's right—part of the reward for the hulk-children that dally in Little League is that ESPN and ABC will air 35 games this season. Michael Broad—5 feet 7 1/2, 134 pounds—of East Boynton, Fla., was already overexposed even before he got to Williamsport. The 12-year-old with the 78 mph fastball threw a no-hitter and hit a grand slam in East Boynton's 4-0 victory in the Southeast region finals, a game broadcast by ESPN2. That night, his heroics earned him the top spot on SportsCenter's countdown of plays of the day.

There's a chance that a new rule may keep Broad, or 6-foot, 182-pound Matthew Muldoon of Saugus, Mass., from playing Godzilla in Williamsport's friendly confines. This year, no pitcher can go for more than the regulation six innings, and for those who go at least four there's a compulsory extra day of rest. But it's likely that the hulk-children will still find a way to impose their gargantuan will. In one game last year, Alvey was forced to leave the mound after pitching nine no-hit innings. He moved to the infield and hit the game-winning home run in the 11th.

When the next hulk-child comes along, a Little League official needs to stand up, on a chair if necessary, look him in the eye, and tell him to go play somewhere else. By knuckling under to a few dominant players, Little League implants a lasting lesson in the heads of the millions of youngsters that play in its leagues worldwide: The big kids always get their way. It's only fair that, for a year or two, normal-sized kids should get a chance to feel big. That is, before they get cut from the high-school team.

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Josh Levin is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at .
Photograph of a Little League player on Slate's home page by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images.
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