Little League Softball Team Throws Game, Sparks World Series Controversy

In a development that would shame even the Chicago Black Sox, a youth softball team threw a game this week in order to tailor an easier schedule in the 2015 Little League Softball World Series.

Scott Reister of KCCI 8 News in Des Moines, Iowa (h/t Deadspin's Timothy Burke), tore the lid off this rotten container of orange slices, reporting Monday night that a West region team from Snohomish, Washington, took a dive against a Southeast region team from North Carolina in order to skirt a showdown with a tougher Iowa squad in the LLSWS tournament.

As Reister reports, the West team blatantly botched a pool-play tilt against the North Carolina squad Monday afternoon, with coaches resting starters and ordering players to bunt the entire game.

The Snohomish club lost the game 8-0, with zero hits—which fit with its larger agenda of not playing quality opponents on the way to a World Series title.

Having already secured a spot in the semifinal, the West squad throttled back its game, knowing a win against the North Carolina team Monday would've pushed a club from Central Iowa—apparently the Murderers' Row of Little League softball—out of the tourney and allowed North Carolina to slide in and take that spot.

The Snohomish coaches did not want this, and as a result, it appears 12-year-old children were baptized in the less-than-subtle arts of game-fixing.

The best part is, the West team's plot has backfired spectacularly.

Fans watching the thrown game raised hell over the farce, and officials at the Little League World Series headquarters have since concluded that the game's integrity was compromised.

Responding to protests by Iowa's coaches, the Little League International Tournament Committee issued a statement Tuesday morning affirming foul play, per the Des Moines Register's John Naughton.

"The Little League International Tournament Committee recently received credible reports that some teams did not play with the effort and spirit appropriate for any Little League game," the statement read.

Naughton also spoke with Central Iowa Little League president Chris Chadd, who said the cheating was blatant and the coaches who ordered it are the ones at fault.

"It's clear to everyone that they basically threw the game," Chadd said. "It's not the girls' fault. It's the coaches...they should be disqualified."

After all this hullabaloo, Little League is giving the Washington team exactly what it didn't want and pitting it against Iowa in a tiebreaker Tuesday with the winner taking a spot in the semifinal. 

So, kids, what did we learn today?

That cheating never pays, and adults are the worst.

Dan is on Twitter. Cheating at softball: the most underhanded sports scandal.