A Little Out of Their League

On one of the last Saturday afternoons before the start of the traditional school year, the tradition continued.

Families everywhere gathered around their television sets to witness, among other things:

A 12-year-old scream in despair at his perceived failure.

A father scolding his son for not being good enough.

Repeated instant replays of a seventh-grader making a mistake.

The glamorization of a group of middle schoolers who, because of an extracurricular activity, have already missed the first week and a half of school.

It was nationally televised finals of the Little League World Series.

Pass the V-chip.

The dangerous chemistry of youth baseball--the mixing of adult egos with childhood insecurities--is tough enough without having the culmination placed before a camera.

Yet, since 1963, these mostly 11- and 12-year-old kids have been brought to us on an ABC platter, their heroics and their heartache, their successes and their shame.

At best, it’s unsettling.

At worst, it’s PG TV.

Network and Little League officials say that not once in 37 years has anyone complained about the televising of a championship game.

Saturday’s show proved once again that there must not be many people watching.

It was nice seeing the happy tears and prayers of a Venezuelan inner-city team that won the title.

But not at the expense of those close-up shots of the Bellaire, Texas, kids weeping as they shook hands afterward.

It was pleasant to watch these tykes run around the quaint Williamsport, Pa., setting.

But not at the expense of probing cameras and microphones that treated them like adults.

The Bellaire pitcher gave up two runs on two wild pitches in the first inning.

Loved those close-ups of his bespectacled face by a director waiting for the pain.

The Bellaire third baseman watched a line drive bounce off his foot.

Loved that live sound of him struggling to stop crying.

The Bellaire right fielder dropped a sun-soaked fly ball to allow another run, and guess what?

We saw again and again on instant replay, perhaps as a reminder that this kid will be seeing it until he is 18.

Oh, and loved those shadows.

By selling its championship soul to ABC--a new six-year deal starts next year--Little League forfeits the right to dictate a starting time.

So the title game begins at 4:30 p.m. in Pennsylvania, to maximize national viewership.

Which means that by the final innings, the batters are trying to hit the ball out of shadows that have crept far across home plate.

At this age, it’s hard enough to hit a baseball, period. But to do it on national television, with a pitch that goes from light to dark?

George Brett, who threw out one of the first balls, made the most poignant observation of the afternoon when he said that he still remembered the Little League pledge . . . but that he wished it contained the words, “And always have fun.”

It is hoped Saturday’s players had fun. It rarely looked like it.

When one of the mothers was interviewed, she acknowledged that everyone was emotionally exhausted, and why not? Those teams that qualify for the trip to Williamsport will have been away from home for three weeks by the time it ends.

In fact, when the Ocean View Little League team brought their boys home for one night during the grueling qualifying in San Bernardino this summer, they were scolded by Little League officials.

This is not an indictment of the sport or the many wonderful volunteers who make it work. Youth baseball, when done right, can be a great teaching tool.

Where else can your child learn so vividly, at such a young age, about handling success and failure? Where else can he see, so dramatically, the rewards of patience and practice?

With the right coaches, youth baseball is a good fit for any home.

As long as it’s not on television.

Certainly, we will be bombarded with video of young Olympians next month from Australia. Indeed, there are young tennis players and figure skaters constantly dashing across our screens.

But not this young. And those athletes are competing in adult sports, with adult rules.

This is different. This is a kid’s game, with kid emotions and kid mistakes.

To allow us to watch is to not allow them to be kids.

The sensitive announcers Saturday did their best to soften things.

Orel Hershiser and Harold Reynolds both questioned the wisdom of a young arm throwing a curveball. Brent Musburger refused to criticize struggling umpires confronted by managers.

Yet you wonder, what would make a parent put a curveball in a developing arm anyway?

And why on earth would any manager ever argue with an umpire at a kids’ game?

“Little League is for play, for fun, for neighborhoods, but with increased publicity and exposure, there is a risk of transforming it into a game that kids are playing for adults’ gratification,” said Dr. Marc Shatz, a Beverly Hills psychologist and former UCLA sports psychologist. “TV makes everything larger than life for the kids. It distorts their reality. They don’t get a chance to be themselves, to experience developmentally what they need to experience.”

Part of that publicity has come from this newspaper. Whenever a local team advances to Williamsport, we treat them like the Dodgers.

I have written such stories, detailed such tears, and I sometimes regret them. They’re only kids.

Yet it only gets bigger.

The championship game continually draws viewership numbers that are larger than locally televised major league baseball games, and now there’s more.

This season, ESPN televised 10 games leading up to that championship game, plus an all-star game and home run derby afterward. Next year, they will add four more tournament games.

A home run derby?

“We’ve never had anyone question whether this is appropriate programming,” said Mark Mandel, spokesman for ABC Sports. “We respect the competitors, and the fact that they are young people leads us to give them more space. People perceive this as a wholesome event.”

For ABC, of course, it is about those ratings.

For Little League, of course, it is about the paycheck.

“We look at TV as a tool for getting the image out about Little League,” said Lance Van Auken, Little League spokesman. “The kids here love TV. They eat it up. And the money allows us to make Little League more affordable for everyone.”

For the Lara family, which accompanied son Nathan to Williamsport in 1998 with the Cypress Little League team, it was a blast.

“The only complaint I ever heard about being on TV was from Nathan’s friends who play basketball,” said his mother, Laura. “They wanted to know why their championships weren’t on TV.

“The kids are too young to realize what is happening. They like being on TV, but they don’t think about that. They are just playing.”

Playing. It sounds so good when she says it. It seems so different when we watch it.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.