It’s a classic scene, your son or daughter sitting in front of the television wearing their Little League jersey cheering for his or her favorite team. Dreaming one day to be wearing the same pin stripes as Alex Rodriguez or smashing a towering shot out of Turner Field like Chipper Jones. Whether it be the Bruce Yankees, the Calhoun City Cubs, or the Vardaman Braves when kids put on their jersey they feel as if their dream is becoming a reality, but Major League Baseball looks at it another way – from the business point of view.
Major League Baseball has recently ruled that suburban Chicago Little League teams can no longer use major league team names unless teams buy their jerseys from Majestic Athletic in Bangor, Pennsylvania.
“I think it is ridiculous not being able to use a pro name, because a lot of these kids are looking up to those major leaguers,” Coach Travis England coach of the 11-12 year old Calhoun City Tigers – named after the Clemons Tigers.
On the Majestic Athletic website the phrase “We don’t make jerseys. We make dreams” appears on their homepage, but one has to ask – when did childhood dreams come earmarked with a price tag?
“Every kid dreams of making it to the big leagues and it makes it more fun to be named after teams like the Red Sox and the Yankees… I disagree with it and don’t think it is right,” Coach Josh Miller of Calhoun City.
“It’s one of the most ridiculous things I have heard of. I guess things have gotten so big business… they have lost focus on the point of all this being about the kids and the dreams they have to get to the big leagues,” Coach Eric Spann of Vardaman.
The website promotes all the good the company has done by linking press coverage from various areas in the United States, but nothing has yet to be said about the recent move by the MLB to discontinue the long time practice of using professional team names by Little League teams throughout the entire nation.
“It’s really discouraging to me as far as what message we are trying to teach our youth, is it the money or the dream of playing major league baseball one day,” Spann.
“When I played we grew up looking at the major league teams and the players as our role models and this is going to put a separation between kids and Major League Baseball that is not going to be a good one,” Miller.
For now all the teams in the suburban Chicago area are known as the Bulldogs with their town name listed below the logo. While Chicago is a far cry from Calhoun County, one still has to wonder – why has the purity of Little League dreams become corrupted by Major League greed?
This is horrible. MLB is completely shutting the average earning family out of the game. Salaries are out of control and the fans are paying the price. Ask the Dodgers if that Andruw Jones price tage was worth it. Hope so, because he’s making it on the pine. Hurt or not, the guy was nowhere near earing his keep.