Who I am is a mom of a Little Leaguer. I love baseball, I love my son and I am the wife of a United States soldier.
About three years ago, my son was hit by a baseball in the mouth. I went online to see if I could find out how to prevent split lips in baseball-was it his batting stance, I thought, or something else? What happened was I came across endorsements from the American Medical Association and Consumer Product Safety Commission for batting helmets with faceguards. I thought...hmmmm…were there others?
As I continued to read, I was surprised by the sheer volume of medical, safety and sports organizations that endorsed them. I wondered why I had never seen players use them. I became more and more interested in youth baseball safety. Quite by accident, I stumbled upon a different type of information-this time about player deaths, sex offenders and criminals as volunteers and my concerns about Little League’s safety program grew. They’re the largest youth sports organization in the world and what they do is watched by youth baseball programs around the world! I started my own research. That was three years ago.
Since I began pursuing safety reforms, I have been in contact with USA Baseball many times. I have contacted Little League Baseball (who have threatened me with legal action-more about that later), the President of the American Medical Association, the President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Marc Klaas, President of KlaasKids and many, many others.
What you see on these pages is the results of a one woman, grass roots campaign to persuade Little League to make safety reforms that make sense. At first, I tried to “give away” the information I had accumulated to various safety organizations, but they all said the same thing-that they had been singing their safety song to Little League for years and it had all fallen on deaf ears. Making any headway in these efforts would require not an organization, but a face, they said. I didn’t want to be that face and I resisted for a long, long time. I’m a mom, I thought, not an outspoken advocate who wants to “go public.”
That all changed because of two things. One concerned the death of ten year old Little Leaguer William “Ryan” Wojick. He was playing Little League baseball in Florida when he was hit in the chest with a baseball. He died in 1990 as a result of that injury. Nearly twenty years later, the Little League organization stated that, “No one had died in official Little League practice or play since 1990.” Spokesmen for the organization, including Little League President and CEO Stephen Keener were interviewed about Ryan’s death at the time it happened-and now they didn’t remember? I felt angry and sad for the Wojick family and the disrespect that this showed their little boy. They remain strangers to me, but there but for the grace of God goes any of the players we love and I found Little League’s act of omission a disgrace to Ryan’s memory.
The second thing I realized was that the Little League organization is accountable to no one-except the American people. Not even USA Baseball, the organization to which all baseball organizations belong. All USA Baseball could do, Executive Director and CEO Paul Seiler wrote to me, was to make strong recommendations for changes, but whether or not they would happen would be up to Little League Inc.
I have two versions of the blog posted here and you can look at either or both. “The short of it” simply highlights the facts; “The long of it” includes all details with citations about why Little League’s safety program desperately needs change.
Getting back to the legal action…In November of 2009, Keener responded to one of my emails with a cease and desist request-that the words in the subject line of my email, “Little League allows convicted sex offenders as volunteers/Number of deaths of Little League players underreported” were defamatory and untrue. But, the thing is, both he and Paul Seiler and others have read letters from me with the information and supporting data that it IS true.
He advised me that his legal counsel would be in touch with me. I felt I had come so far and had so much to tell them, I thought-great! Progress! But they never contacted me, so I contacted them. After placing a number of phone calls that were never returned, I thought email might be the way to go. From September to November of last year, I sent Attorney Thomas C. Marshall four emails. After each one, Marshall responded, saying that he’d been busy, etc. etc. but that he would provide a written response to the letters I wrote Keener by the end of that week-and the time would come and go and I’d recontact him the following week and he’d say definitely by the end of that week, then the time would come and go and so on. Talk about can’t get arrested in this town!
Please read on, though I may joke from time to time, this is a very serious subject. It’s the life of your child that’s at stake. These are the things that you need to know. As one Little League safety newsletter headline reads, “Think you know someone? Think again!”
This is not about my child nor is it a local issue at all. It is about all of our children and what is happening in Little League baseball nationwide.
What I hope will happen is that, after you read the long or short version, is that you sign the petition attached to this blog, which demands that Little League make safety reforms.
There is no other way-it’s up to us to turn the tide to make the game safer with these changes now or no one will.
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
