Taney Youth Baseball is Headed to Williamsport

Courtesy of Paul Alesse, LiSPN.com

Commentary by John Malone

Wow.


There's not much else to say about the Taney Youth Baseball Association and its rise to the Little League World Series.

I heard about this team during its run through districts because they knocked off the 10-year old state champions, Media. The immediate though was, "Cool. We don't get to see city teams do well in Little League too often." Then, I started reading up on the team. I started following Taney's games on GameChanger. The Dragons looked like a team of destiny, but they didn't thoroughly dominate everyone. In a state as tough as Pennsylvania to get through, it was easy to think they'd be tripped up somewhere.



They made it to the state tournament with powerful teams. Everyone in the area, and a few more who follow the blog, knew that they had Mo'Ne Davis and that she supposedly had some talent. Between the big bats of Red Land, the dominance of Collier Township, the coaching of Mike Mussina and Montoursville, there was no way I wasn't going to take the chance to drive over two hours from home in New York to see the first day or two of the Pennsylvania State Tournament.



I immediately was blown away by most of the teams at Lower Perkiomen Little League. I hadn't seen a ton of baseball admittedly this year, but two or three teams looked worthy of a regional run. I wasn't sure if Taney was even one of them that first day, a 9-3 victory over Clarion, with Mo'Ne on the mound and not showing great command.

I heard about her being the best pitcher in the state of Pennsylvania in the news. I heard about her throwing 70 miles per hour. What I saw in just a couple innings didn't support that. It certainly didn't feel that way when I saw Jared Sprague-Lott, her own teammate, throw and the big arms of Kai Cummings and Joe Richardson. Boy.. or should I say, girl was I wrong.

I got to see Mo'Ne pitch against the defending regional champions during pool play with four very good hitters back with Williamsport experience. She completely dominated for five innings. She was throwing harder than I remembered. She had command of all her pitches, and wow her swagger was on point. Nothing bothered her. Meanwhile, the boys in the batters box did not look comfortable at all. She was lights out.

She allowed two home runs in the sixth inning of that game against Delaware. Then, she picked up the save in the semifinal against Colonie, New York, but gave up a two-run homer in the process. That plus seeing her for six innings earlier in the week should've erased any mental edge she had over Delaware and based on the swings I saw in the championship it did. It also didn't matter. She flat out dominated the game once again on the back of her talent and watched her cool and calm defense make play after play until the final double play ended the game.

I didn't buy into the Taney hype in the beginning. There were murmurs about the kids being from all over Philadelphia. They're not. They're from a couple neighborhoods in and around Center City. They all go to the schools in the same area and they've all been playing Taney Youth Baseball (plus their various travel ball including the NJ Arsenal and Anderson Monarchs) for years together. After seeing them play for three weeks and getting to know parents and players. I bought in.

Taney is a team. They have table setters at the top. They have two big time starting pitchers with a crafty reliever along with two powerful right arms in the pen. They are scary hitters throughout the lineup especially the murderers row of Jahli Hendricks, Sprague-Lott, and Zion Spearman, and they have a defense that doesn't make many mistakes. They could easily go two-and-out in Williamsport or they could find themselves in the U.S. Championship game. The rest of the road doesn't matter. They reached the promised land and it was unreal to watch.

I enjoyed meeting everyone from every team in Bristol this year. The success of this blog has made it a lot of fun to hear from players, coaches, and parents every day on the Road to Williamsport. The Taney kids are a big part of that. When Taney gets the bulk of the media coverage in Williamsport just remember that it has nothing to do with the kids or even their adults. It's the culture we live in. Just have fun with it. I'm telling you this group is worth watching and getting to know.






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Welcome Back! The 2014 Season is Upon Us!

Hello everyone out there in Little League land, it's your favorite youth baseball blogger, John Malone. We, obviously, won't be kicking into high gear until June, but everyone is hopefully getting outside in the East and Central in the next week or so, and who knows how long you boys and girls have been going already in the South, Southwest, and West.

There's big changes currently in Little League and on the horizon for next year possibly. These rules will fundamentally change the future of Little League Baseball and Softball. It's to be determined if its for better or worse.

What's CURRENT for 2014 -- Well, the big rule is "School Eligibility." As of this year, if you attend school (public or private) inside the boundaries of a league that you don't reside in, you can choose between your home league and your school's league. If Johnny lives in Anytown, but goes to school in Cityville, he can choose to play in Anytown Little League OR Cityville Little League. It certainly opens a can of worms. There are many reasons for this rule change. Some of them are international, some of them are so kids can play with their school friends, and others are potentially because it will make some tournament teams stronger.

What's ON TAP for 2015 -- The biggest rule change that will be voted on this month for NEXT season is the brand new birthday. For years, the age cutoff was always July 31. If you turned 13 on that day or before, you were considered a 13 year old and couldn't play. In 2006, Little League changed its birthday date to coincide with USA Baseball and moved it BACKWARDS, making kids a few months older than they were. A few months meant much bigger kids because we all know that puberty is fickle at this age group. So, what's happening for 2015 potentially? The is now going FORWARD, all the way to December 31st. This means that if you turn 13 at any point in the calendar year... you are 13 for Little League. This makes everyone in the organization much younger now as opposed to older. Quote-unquote 12-year olds are done with the small field if this passes. Little League's "Williamsport" division will be mostly true 11-year olds. This will help the new 50/70 division which was ridiculously bad because it had glorified 14 years olds playing on 220-foot fields.

One of the big problems I've heard from all around the country with this new rule, however, is that one age group will be grandfathered in, but after that, it will be official. None of us are stupid. We all know that successful tournament teams start playing together as early as 8, and definitely at age 9 and 10. Well those teams that already started gearing up for Williamsport runs three years in advance are now defunct. They will be broken up. Some will say the "grandfather" rule needs to start somewhere, but most coaches/parents (granted they are in that bracket that will be cut up), think it should be set 3-5 years in advance, so nobody that's already played in tournaments together will be affected.

BLOG NOTES: Anyone that wants to write for the blog this year (preferably outside the East Region where I and others are located) please email me with your ideas and some writing samples. I'd love to have you. We had a monster year last year. Let's blow it out of the water.

We will have our radio show back once again this year, but we will start it much earlier in the tournament. I was approached by the station last year a little too late for it to get established. We had a great audience for it though and the station is excited.

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Those are the best ways to interact and get information, thoughts, and notes while there isn't a ton of material that requires a blog post in itself.

Dropped Third Strike Rule in Effect...Oh Boy.

A week has gone by at my local Little League in the Majors division, and wow is the dropped third strike rule taking over. It's not unexpected, especially in the beginning, but last night I opened my coaching career with a 13-3 victory. We had three hits.

I think the rule will be excellent as soon as tournament time rolls around, but in-house is going to be tough across the country. My league is very young this year, so there's a lot of kids who don't even know about the rule, let alone practice it, but I'm worried about the quality of baseball in Little League.

The gradual changes towards deeper fences, dropped third strike, and eventually 50-70 will hopefully bring players back to the best youth baseball program in the world, but it's going to take some time.

How does the dropped third strike rule look in your league? Are you happy it has been instituted? What changes need to be made to be a successful team now? When do you concentrate on developing young catchers? Let me know in the comments.