Another front office leaves all-star out to dry

Baseball teaches kids important lessons, the kind that last a lifetime. How to play fair, that losing can be as instructive as winning, the value of teamwork.

These days, however, 10-year-old John Lindahl has learned a lesson he’d like to forget as quickly as possible: that big organizations have their rules and sometimes they come down hard -- even landing with a thud on a kid’s head.

And that it can happen when you’ve done nothing wrong.

John is a fourth-grader at De Portola Elementary School in Mission Viejo and has been playing Little League since he was 6. He’s a pretty good ballplayer; last year his coaches and teammates put him on an all-star team from his Lake Forest Little League.

This year, he set his sights higher and was worthy of all-star consideration, an honor voted on by coaches and players throughout his entire Triple-A league.

Maybe he’d have made the team, maybe not. But a few weeks ago, that became as moot as a long foul ball. Regional Little League officials speaking for headquarters in Williamsport, Pa., ruled that John was ineligible for any post-season play because his family lives outside the league’s boundary lines.

That was no surprise to Mark and Deidre Lindahl, who have lived in their Hidden Ridge home in Trabuco Canyon for as long as John has been in the league. Technically, he should be playing in the Rancho Santa Margarita Little League, but from the start of his “career,” John has had permission to stay in the Lake Forest league with kids he knew from school. This is his fourth season in the league. His father also coaches.

No one had ever questioned the exemption. It was granted verbally by a former league president, and there is no paperwork on file to validate it. But there isn’t the slightest suggestion that the exemption represents any kind of subterfuge. In fact, current officials say that giving John the waiver probably would have been routine.

With one small caveat: Not being within the league or district’s boundaries means John would have been ineligible for all-star play.

The Lindahls got that bombshell news only a few weeks ago, well into the season and too late to do anything about it.

Little League officials said John could finish the season with his team but couldn’t play in the all-star competition, even if selected.

When you’re 10, that is a kick in the pants.

When you’re the parents of a 10-year-old, who assumed they’d been playing by the rules all along, it’s a matter of outrage. I talked this week to Deidre Lindahl, who is just short of the sputtering kind of angry.

“It’s like a punch in the gut,” she said, noting that her son’s performance in school and on the ball field suffered after he learned there’d be no post-season.

“It’s so unfair,” she said. “You tell your kid, ‘You work hard and a lot of times you can get what you want.’ Here he is, working as hard as he can, but they’re saying no, you can’t play because you live on Chisum Trail.”

From what I can tell from talking to several of the involved parties, the Lindahls got late notification only because John was verging on all-star consideration. That prompted a residency check, as required of local districts from the Williamsport pooh-bahs. In other words, had John not been a potential all-star, his residency might not have been checked.

That irony, of course, makes the Lindahls all the more crazy. In effect, their son’s improvement on the diamond led to his disqualification from post-season possibilities.

Local Little League officials I talked to said they sympathize with the Lindahls but are powerless to do anything. Tamara Lindner, district administrator who oversees the league in which John has been playing, says the post-season ban for out-of-boundary players is a hard-and-fast rule.

The fact that John had played in the same league for so long doesn’t matter, she said. Asked how he could have played so long without written proof of a waiver, she said, “We just hadn’t been doing recent checks.”

Asked if there were lessons to be learned, Lindner said it’s that league presidents need to ensure that proper paperwork accompanies all waivers. At least then, she said, parents would realize that the boundary-line waivers preclude their children from all-star consideration.

Had the Lindahls known that, Deidre said, they would have put John in another league.

Little League officials said they spend more time than they’d like making sure that parents or coaches don’t try to fudge residency to create stronger teams. That doesn’t include the Lindahls, but it explains why Williamsport insists on adhering to strict residency requirements.

I get it. Except, that is, when the parents are blameless and the weight of the decision crushes the hopes of a 10-year-old.

Would any rule have been weakened, any principle been bent by letting John Lindahl be eligible for all-star competition?

We all know the answer to that.

“They treat these 10-year-olds like businesspeople, and they’re not,” Deidre Lindahl said. “They’re 9-, 10-, 11-year-old kids working hard for a goal. Little League claims it boosts self-confidence, but when push comes to shove, they didn’t make the right choice.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at

dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns:

www.latimes.com/parsons