Little League World Series: Paying Little League Stars Would Be a Dangerous Game

The dog days of August can be a tough time for baseball fans. These are the days when most of our favorite teams hit the skids, and we can only watch as all of the accomplishments of the previous months go down the drain.

San Francisco Giants fans will know exactly what I'm talking about.

As such, thank goodness for the Little League World Series. The players may be pint-sized, but it's good baseball all the same. Better yet, the players are untouched by all the usual corruptions that we associate with their professional counterparts. At the end of the day, it's not about money, it's about the love of the game.

But some people have other ideas. Case in point, Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel published a column today that argues a highly inflammatory point against what I just spelled out.

That Little League World Series participants should be paid.

No, really. Wetzel actually thinks that all those youngsters you see on TV (and only the ones on TV) should be paid for their troubles. Instead of accepting that being on TV in front of millions of people is enough of a reward, they should be given straight cash, homie.

Pretty outrageous, right? I think so. But credit where credit is due, Wetzel has a pretty compelling case for the idea.

In his mind, the Little League World Series is, at heart, a big-business operation. It's more than a fair point seeing as it is masterminded by ESPN, a Disney company, and Little League Baseball Inc. We're talking about two companies that pull in millions upon millions of dollars every year and the Little League World Series is quite the meal ticket seeing as they are essentially capitalizing on free labor.

Wetzel has the numbers to back it up as well. He points out that LLB made $5.6 million off the LLWS in 2009, not to mention another $3.7 million in “broadcast rights fees.” Goodness knows how much ESPN makes off of the event.

Given the circumstances, here is Wetzel's cure-all idea:

"

Every player could be provided a stipend of, say, $750 every time their team appears on television—all 14 players per roster get the same amount. That would cost $1.18 million total. Most years, according to federal tax filings, that’s less than half of Little League Baseball Inc.’s annual profits. They even could attempt to pass the cost onto ESPN, a do-the-right-thing fee.

It’s a drop in the bucket to the executives. It’s a big deal to the players and their families.

"

Because Wetzel is pushing for the people who are making the money to share the wealth with the people responsible for it, he's basically arguing for the Little League World Series to be subject to the very economic model that runs this country. It's actually a hard point to argue.

But that's only if you can't overlook the fact that Wetzel is missing the point.

Listen, I get the idea that sharing the wealth with players and families may be the right thing to do from an economic standpoint. I just have serious doubts about whether it's the right thing to do from a simple moral standpoint.

This is mainly because I truly believe in the idea that the Little League World Series is held for the love of the game. That's why people watch it, and it's why the kids are there in the first place. They are not, and have never been, in it for the money. It may be labor, but it’s a labor of love.

Heck, all you have to do is put yourself in their shoes, which shouldn't be too hard for the millions of people out there who played Little League once upon a time.

I guess I'll share my own story. As you can probably tell, I have fond memories of my Little League years. I couldn't field, I couldn't pitch and I sure as heck couldn't hit, but I loved it. I had no true grasp of the fact that I was participating in a tradition seemingly as old as time itself, but I just plain liked to play baseball. It was fun, plain and simple.

Given the way today's kids go about their business, not much has changed from my day. The participants in the Little League World Series have fun and they don't need dollars and cents to convince them to do so.

The obvious counterpoint here is that this is exactly the issue. Their innocence is being exploited. They may be aware that they are generating a lot of money for other people, but it simply never occurred to them that they are entitled to a slice.

To illustrate that point, Wetzel referenced child actors. A kid working on the Disney channel gets paid, and that's thanks largely to the fact that nobody says he or she should be "content enjoying the dream-come-true-experience of starring in a television show without compensation."

Writes Wetzel: "She’s the star because she’s talented. She’s making money for the network, therefore she is a paid employee. Little League players reached the World Series for the same reason."

It's yet another fair point, but I think there's one key difference. When these kids started playing Little League, the end game was not to go forth and make money. The idea is to play ball and, as Calvin's dad would say, build character. The promise of getting paid is not and has never been there.

But for the sake of entertaining the idea, let's say that it is decided that Little League World Series participants should be paid. What then?

Well, all the good things that Wetzel writes about would come true. The harsh reality of exploitation would be gone, families would get a few bucks for their troubles and hopefully the participants will find a nice college fund waiting for them a few years down the line.

But you know how Pink Floyd once told us that money is the root of all evil today? Yeah, that's the danger here.

There's no point in hiding the fact that the Little League World Series already has some problems when it comes to people trying to cheat the system. Wetzel did go out of his way to say that adding money to the equation is not going to make the corruption any worse, but that’s where I think he’s kidding himself. Money always makes corruption worse.

Think about it. If people are willing to cheat when there's no money, just imagine how bad things would become when suddenly there are thousands of dollars at stake ($750 per TV appearance, remember?). Sure, that money is supposed to go to the kids, but there would be no shortage of ways to make it change hands. All one would have to do is pull the right strings.

Then you've got a serious problem on your hands. While still a big business, the Little League World Series would also become a crime ring with a steady cash flow.

If so, adding a payment plan to an imperfect system would not make it more perfect. It would only make it more imperfect.

So as lame as it seems to say it, the status quo will have to do here. Instead of pay for play, let's just let the kids play.