I tried again, this year, to watch the Little League World Series, but I’m sorry, I just couldn’t make it happen.

This isn’t something new - I try every year, and every year I last about eighteen minutes before switching over to something less icky and repulsive.

Why?

This most excellent book review sums it all up beautifully.

Put simply, I can only stomach about 18 minutes of tanning booth-seared soccer moms, preening in the bleachers, living vicariously through little Johnny’s early trip to pubescence and ability to hit weakly thrown fastballs over the fence.

I love baseball. To paraphrase Pete Rose, I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to see a ballgame, and the LLWS *should* be the purest form of a game so often not pure at all anymore.

But it isn’t.

It’s disgusting.

It’s parents yelling at their children. It’s coaches strutting like they’re Mike Scioscia. It’s kids getting old before their time, then getting emotionally wrecked because they lost. It’s an endless cavalcade of childhood-free rugrats who have been shipped from training camp to training camp before they’re 10 years old, and will get the added indignity of their loss being broadcast nationwide on TV by the worldwide leader in pre-pubescent sports.

I’ll pass.

My kid will play baseball if he wants to, and if he wants to go to a training camp once in a while and work on his groundball D, I’m all for it - but if I ever start to resemble those southern Calfornia automatons I saw at the LLWS, the ones who’ll elbow a 4-year-old in the face if it means they get a better view, I’ll shoot myself in the head and end it all with dignity.

To buy Little League, Big Dreams, and see for yourself what a cesspool the LLWS is, click here.