Is broadcaster Stephen A. Smith the ‘voice of reason’ standing up for our freedom to express ourselves?

Remember the Jackie Robinson West youth baseball program on the city’s South Side? They’re the ones who nearly won the Little League World Series a couple of years ago – only to have their accomplishment officially erased from the Little League Baseball record books.

SMITH: Voice of reason?

League officials contend their rules were violated and that the Morgan Park neighborhood-based Jackie Robinson West program put its team together from talented youth across the South Side and surrounding suburbs – rather than just their respective neighborhood.

JACKIE ROBINSON OFFICIALS have finally filed their lawsuit against Little League Baseball, contending the league acted unfairly to taint the on-field accomplishments of those 12-year-olds who brought international glory to Chicago back in 2014.

But what also is interesting is that the lawsuit also includes ESPN and one of its announcers – in the form of Stephen A. Smith.

For those of you who aren’t sports junkies compelled to watch the blatherings of the many people who offer their opinions on ESPN, Smith is one who has a particular record of irritating people.

I’m sure he’ll say he just speaks his mind and says what he believes to be true. Others say he’s just a donkey (insert more crude term here) who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

IT SEEMS THE Jackie Robinson West officials take Smith more seriously than I do. I rarely think anyone’s commentary – other than my own – is worth anything. And even my own is only worth the price (gratis) you had to pay in order to read it!

But because his opinion was carried forth on ESPN and all the sports nerds of our society were watching (except for those who might have been tuned into a Fox Sports channel at the time), the local officials want to believe they’re forevermore tainted.

How many 'cheaters' wind up with an Oval Office appearance?

As for the offensive comment that has local officials upset, it seems Smith said it bothers him that a baseball program named for Jackie Robinson would play loose with the rules concerning eligibility and residency.

Which if you think about it, isn’t an outrageous thought at all. Even if you believe, as I do, that much of the outrage concerning the Jackie Robinson West residency issue is a lot of sour grapes from people who couldn’t beat the ball club on the playing field.

THE MODERN-DAY family structure isn’t the same as it was back when Little League programs became organized some 80 years ago. There are families with split residences – with one parent living in the area proper and the other does not.

But I’m not about to get into trying to justify the way the Jackie Robinson West program operates – other than to say I am aware it is a highly-structured program that attracts young people from across the area who want to play baseball.

And a part of me does wonder if the people who object to Jackie Robinson West’s accomplishment are really bothered by the fact it is an all-black organization in a Little League that all-too-often is dominated by white people?

I’ve already seen some reports about the lawsuit saying that it is the portion against Stephen A. Smith that will draw public attention and news coverage.

WHAT IF IT is capable that Jackie Robinson West can do what many people in sports have tried to do and failed – that is, put a gag of sorts on Smith’s mouth!

The simple fact is that he’s a blowhard who spouts off on anything and everything, and for his good fortune has found someone willing to pay him to do so. If anything, facing a lawsuit may wind up creating friends for Smith of all the people who want to rant about “those cheatin’ black kids from Chicago.”

Personally, I don’t think much will become of their lawsuit. Particularly if it turns Stephen A. Smith into the voice of reason whom we all stand up for to protect the concept of freedom of expression.

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Little League World Series won’t give us same thrills this year, regardless

Even without the stink that lingers over the Jackie Robinson West youth baseball league, there wouldn’t have been as much interest in the Little League World Series that begins later this week.

Back when it was a sports story, and NOT a court story

For there won’t be any kind of local angle to the event this year. For 2015, the best team from Illinois was one from the Little League program in Olney – an out-of-the-way community in the far southeastern portion of the state.

AS IT TURNS out, the Olney team managed to get knocked out during the qualifying rounds. They won’t even be close to Williamsport, Pa., when the 10-day tourney begins Thursday.

There won’t be anyone local for us to cheer for.

The champs from the Roseland/Morgan Park neighborhoods who also had players from scattered south suburban communities definitely won’t be anywhere to be seen.

Not even in any way to be remembered as the defending U.S. champions (who could have been “world” champs if they could have beat that ball club from Seoul, South Korea in the final game).

FOR LET’S NOT forget that 2014 is going to be the tourney that goes into the books with re-written history – less concerned with what actually took place on the ball field. Which makes it go against the very nature of sports – where on-field activity is usually all that matters.

There will be that team from the Las Vegas, Nev., area that couldn’t beat the boys of the Far South Side on the field, but will be regarded as the U.S. champions regardless.

Even though anyone who actually watched last year’s Little League World Series remembers that the big stories were the outstanding play of the boys from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs and that girl who pitched outstandingly for the team from the suburbs of Philadelphia.
 

Another story not likely to be matched this year

In fact, a whole chain of teams that didn’t win, but are now regarded as “winners” because of the efforts to pretend that what wasn’t really was.

NOW I KNOW some people are determined to think that a major deceit took place last year. There have been recent reports indicating that only six of the dozen ballplayers on that Jackie Robinson West team that represented the Great Lakes region were legitimately from the neighborhoods that the league covers.

Although I also remember that no one ever tried to cover up the fact that many of the kids were from nearby suburbs – in many cases with one parent living in the suburb and another living within the Chicago neighborhood.

Or in some cases where they had moved to a new neighborhood, but preferred to stay in the Jackie Robinson West program that has been an elite amongst city-based youth baseball leagues.

I suspect that the Little League programs in those suburbs are jealous that they couldn’t attract those kids to want to play ball in their new home communities. That jealousy has enough of a stink that I have a hard time getting too worked up over the Jackie Robinson West program.

THERE WAS TALK of having the Jackie Robinson West program break away from Little League proper; perhaps joining the Cal Ripken Baseball program or some other league that would accept them on the terms they operate under.

A part of me does wonder if what really bothers some people is that the public attention last year went to Mo’ne Davis (the pre-teen pitcher) and the Jackie Robinson West kids – who happened to be the few African-American ballplayers in what was largely a lily-white tourney.

I’m sure some think the fact that some praised those kids was somehow detracting attention from other kids they would have preferred to get the publicity. As far as I can tell, this year’s Little League World Series might well be closer to their liking.

Which might also make it less worthwhile to watch!

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Is Robinson, Ripken, Ruth youth baseball trifecta the best solution?

Perhaps it only makes sense that if the entity known as Little League Baseball wants to treat its 2014 U.S. champions as a pariah, that program will search for someone who won’t view them as something shameful.

That’s probably the most sensible way to view the reports Wednesday of how the Jackie Robinson West baseball program on Chicago’s far southern edge is now negotiating with the entities known as Cal Ripken Baseball and Babe Ruth Baseball (which is for older children through age 18) to be affiliated with them.

FOR IT SEEMS that if the Jackie Robinson baseball program that was created in the early 1970s to try to bolster baseball interest in inner-city neighborhoods is to continue, it no longer wants to be part of the Little League entity that many people probably think is a generic label that applies to all youth baseball programs.

The Jackie Robinson West team that won the U.S. Little League championship last year had ballplayers who lived in assorted southern suburbs, which means theoretically they should have played in suburban-based Little League programs.

But the reality is that the Jackie Robinson West program was more attractive to many of those kids because it is a city-based program with leadership focusing attention on African-American interests and concerns.

Many of the suburban players had dual addresses that theoretically made them eligible to play in the Jackie Robinson program, which is why Little League International officials initially said there was nothing wrong with the Jackie Robinson program.

PERHAPS IF IT had only been one or two players on that team last year, it wouldn’t have been much of a concern.

But when six of the 12 players on the Chicago-based squad that captured national glory came from places like South Holland (two), Dolton, Lansing, Lynwood and Homewood, it gave that bit of ammunition to the people from other Little League programs who were still bitter that they had lost to the Jackie Robinson team on the path to the Little League World Series and who started up the complaints that the DNAinfo.com website originally reported on.

Both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday that Jackie Robinson league officials are talking with the officials overseeing the Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth programs that exist in Chicago and the south suburbs. Nothing is definite yet.

For it seems possible that local league boundaries could be drawn in a way that all the territory where the Robinson league team came from would be included. Or that some territory might be shared in a way that the local kids would get to pick which program they’d rather play baseball in.

NOBODY OUGHT TO have an objection to that concept!

The alleged act of “cheating” that supposedly occurred (which strikes me as being more a matter of other leagues being jealous that some kids chose to play in the Chicago-based league rather than their home leagues) would be legitimized.

Perhaps it would be best in that the Jackie Robinson program would be able to operate the way it does without someone trying to claim it is violating the all-sacred “rules” that govern this matter.

As someone who always had a hard time thinking of the league’s actions as being foul because they were being so open about what they were doing, this really does come to be the best solution.

PERHAPS IT REALIZES that the south suburbs have truly become an extension of Chicago’s South Side and that there is a certain back-and-forth of people and activities – rather than being the place certain people fled to because their “new” neighbors had the “wrong” complexion.

And if Jackie Robinson ball ultimately makes for a trifecta of baseball names honored with youth leagues, the real loser might well be Little League Baseball.

It would have the knowledge that it chased away an interesting championship ball club while trying to pretend that teams from Las Vegas, Nev. (national champions) and St. Charles (state champs) somehow won something of significance on the playing field.

Which ought to be the place where all sports disputes get resolved!

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Lewis’ ‘scholarship’ talk the kind of feisty rhetoric mayoral campaign needs

When you come right down to it, this year’s electoral cycle for mayor has become deadly dull. There are people who get all worked up about wanting to depose Rahm Emanuel, but no one opponent seems capable of uniting those people into a viable opposition.

We’re likely to get Rahm II (along with III, IV, V and however many other terms Emanuel wants to seek) at the rate we’re going. There just isn’t any of the feistiness required to truly get the public all worked up enough to care about who wins on Election Day.

WHICH IS WHY I personally got my kick out of the statement issued by Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis. She, of course, is the woman who wanted an Emanuel opponent, but developed enough health concerns to prevent her from running a campaign.

Lewis didn’t issue any kind of Emanuel criticism on Wednesday. In fact, she didn’t even address the mayoral campaign.

Her issue of concern was the fact that Little League International said it was giving in to the concerns of those people who want to view as a fraud the Chicago-based Jackie Robinson West team that became U.S. champions in last year’s Little League World Series.

That team is no longer recognized as national champions. Instead, the record books that are supposed to preserve what really happened will say that a team from Las Vegas, Nev., was the best in the U.S.

A TEAM FROM West Dundee will now be recognized as the Illinois state champions, while a team from suburban Lansing will be recognized as a regional champ instead of the kids who represented the Roseland and Morgan Park neighborhoods – even though some of them openly admitted they were from suburban places such as South Holland, Dolton, Lansing and Lynwood.

If it comes across that I think this is a stupid action by Little League officials being done on behalf of sore losers who couldn’t beat the Jackie Robinson kids on the playing field, you’d be correct.

It also seems that Lewis has a similar sentiment. She said she “do(es) not respect” the decision, and she said she will continue to think of the Chicago-area kids as the real champions of 2014.

She went so far as to say she thinks the team ought to retain its championship, ber issued an apology and that the dozen kids who played baseball and captured the hearts and minds of some of our society (perhaps others couldn’t get past the notion of an all-black team being the best) ought to be compensated with college scholarships.

“EVERY PLAYER SHOULD receive full-ride scholarships for college sponsored by the people who have humiliated these boys, their families and their community,” Lewis wrote.

Which is a concept that I’m sure would infuriate those people who brought about the investigation, even though Little League International officials initially said they did not have concerns about the residency requirements for the Jackie Robinson West kids.

Yet I can’t help but think that’s exactly the kind of in-your-face rhetoric the Chicago mayoral campaign needs in order to give a jolt of excitement, some interest so to speak, into this election cycle. Maybe require Emanuel to build new schools to replace the 50 facilities that were closed in primarily black neighborhoods?

Something that would make people care enough to want to vote and feel like there is a legitimate reason to care about who has the leadership of our municipal government.

IF KAREN LEWIS could get so worked up over the Jackie Robinson West kids, just think how hard she’d be hammering away at Emanuel. Certainly more than Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, the politico who has Lewis’ endorsement and is trying to fill the organized labor niche in this election cycle.

Certainly enough to help us avoid the possibility of so many Emanuel sequels!

Just a pair of thoughts to trigger your minds for the day – would Rahm IV and V be as incredibly bloated, pompous and vapid as Rocky IV and V?

And who is the political opponent of actor Carl Wethers' Apollo Creed character in the Rahm series of stories?

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Baseball ‘kids’ don’t live in Chicago? Why did complaints take so long?

For those people who are spewing accusations that the Jackie Robinson West baseball team that nearly won the Little League World Series this year is tainted because its players don’t all live strictly within the league’s boundaries, I’d have to respond by saying that no one ever tried to keep it a secret.

There were so many people who back in August were eager to let it be known that some of the kids had ties to suburbs such as Dolton, Homewood, Lansing, Lynwood and South Holland (instead of neighborhoods such as Roseland and Morgan Park where the league is based).

SO TO NOW hear complaints from officials with the Evergreen Park Athletic Association that the Jackie Robinson West team that represented the Great Lakes Region at the Little League World Series comes across as little more than whining.

It was a relief to learn that Little League International this week issued a statement saying the league’s team that advanced in the Little League World Series to be U.S. champions (before losing to a team from South Korea) was legitimate when it comes to residency issues.

I don’t doubt that the ball playing kids received so much hype that the reality can’t live up.

But this amounts to petty jealousy from a suburban Little League program that happens to border to Jackie Robinson West program on the city’s Far South Side that was created back in the early 1970s to spur interest in youth baseball in a community whose racial composition had changed radically.

UNTIL RECENTLY, I had a “day job” of sorts in writing stories for one of the daily newspapers in the suburbs that covered the communities where some of these kids lived and went to school.

Which local school and government officials were more than eager to reveal. I personally remember one suburban mayor saying he wanted some credit for the player who lived in his community, saying, “We’re not going to let Rahm Emanuel steal everything.”

Although I personally think Gov. Pat Quinn and the Cook County Board did more to latch their names onto the Jackie Robinson kids for his own self-promotion than Emanuel ever did.

But back to the residency issue. It was known that the kids didn’t strictly live within the city neighborhoods. But the fact that there were split residency facts merely reflect our modern-day reality in society.

I remember specifically one ballplayer had a father who lived in Dolton, but a mother who lived in the Morgan Park neighborhood. Does anybody think that means the kid is supposed to never stay with his father just because he plays baseball?

THAT WOULD BE stupid.

In other cases, there were players whose families used to live in Chicago proper, but in recent years had moved to the nearby south suburbs. It appears that Little League rules permit such players to continue to play in their old home communities if they wish, rather than being forced to shift to Little League programs in their new homes.

The reality is that many of those suburban Little League programs are run by people who are interested in protecting their own little fiefdoms and aren’t exactly accepting of newcomers.

So the idea that these kids would prefer to keep playing ball in the Jackie Robinson West league – which is unique in the fact that it is composed entirely of African-American people – seems to be an obvious choice.

PERHAPS THE SOUTH suburban Little League programs ought to be giving more thought to how to make themselves more welcoming, rather than being among the forces trying (but failing) to keep the population in their home communities the same as it was four decades ago.

Reading the Chicago Sun-Times, I see that the head of the Evergreen Park program is complaining about people who are calling him an “idiot” and are saying he is a bigot.

I’m willing to give his racial attitudes a break and say what really bothers him is the fact that when a team from his Little League program played a Jackie Robinson West team this year, the end result was a 42-3 loss.

That still has to smart, something fierce!

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Can JRW kids become a factor if Quinn achieves political victory on Nov. 4?

I'm not sure what to be more repulsed by -- the fact that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner blew off the elaborate ceremonies meant to offer praise earlier this week to the youthful ballplayers from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs who participated in the Little League World Series?


Or that Gov. Pat Quinn is so eager to let us know he showed up at that Millennium Park rally (how many people whined when White Sox announcer Ken Harrelson hosted the event)!


I WASN'T SURPRISED to learn that Rauner chose to go on another of his rural Illinois bus tours, and was at a restaurant in Braidwood (out past Joliet) at the time when the kids of the Jackie Robinson West Little League program were getting their moment in the sun (literally).


Perhaps he thinks that making his rounds on the "Shake Up Express" tour (he was in Greenville, Carlyle, Lebanon, Waterloo, DuQuoin and Edwardsville on Friday) will get him more voter support than the urban crowd would have attracted to his campaign on Wednesday.


But then I got the e-mail message from the Quinn campaign letting me know how proud the governor was of those kids -- who admittedly are getting praise from politicos all over.


There are many suburban communities with the weakest of links to the team that are desperate to now issue proclamations honoring their efforts. Perhaps they find drafting such a resolution more interesting than the process of purchasing a new lawnmower for their Public Works department?


QUINN MANAGED TO include so many photographs of himself with the kids, while wearing a yellow t-shirt with the team's logo on it. Along with video snippets.


It came across as Quinn trying to use the Jackie Robinson West kids as an excuse to give his campaign yet another jolt to try to close the gap that various polls have shown exists for the Nov. 4 election cycle.


Now I expect political people to pander for votes. They'll use whatever they can to try to find themselves favorable attention. So we shouldn't be shocked by the actions of either Rauner or Quinn.


I just want to know that if Quinn winds up giving a victory speech on Election Night, will he acknowledge these kids -- and everybody else whom he has glommed onto -- as the reason people voted for him?


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EXTRA: JRW -4/Seoul - 8

Ugh!!!


Not only did the U.S.-representing team from the Roseland neighborhood-based Jackie Robinson West baseball league manage to blow a ballgame to the international champion team from Seoul, South Korea, they did so big time.


KEEPING THE GAME close enough to dream of a comeback until the end, when the South Korea team managed to score five more runs in the final two innings -- turning an early 3-1 deficit for Chicago into an 8-4 loss.


Still, those kids managed to give Chicago a sporting ride that likely will be the highlight of 2014.


And it was encouraging to hear the team's coach, Darold Butler, remind the kids prior to their final at-bats that they had already managed to accomplish much of significance by being the lone U.S. team to survive to the championship game.


"Look at those other teams, they're not here right now," Butler told his pre-teen players. But that end-of-game Korean surge was just too much of a deficit for a sixth-inning rally of 3 runs to overcome.


SO WHERE DO we go from here? Those kids get to come back to Chicago, just in time to resume the upcoming school year. They get to resume their daily lives.


Although we can hope that they all gained enough of a taste of excellence that it can motivate them through the rest of their lives -- even if this turns out to be the highlight of their athletic careers.


So even though we're not getting a real "World" championship team this year, it has still been an interesting week watching the Little League World Series tourney. It will create a lasting memory, which will be necessary because it may be another three decades or so before a Chicago-based youth ball club makes it back to Williamsport, Pa.


Now we can go back to wondering if the Latin pairing of Avisail Garcia and Jose Abreu will lead the Chicago White Sox to a World Series someday in the near future? Or if the Cubs' grounds crew will ever learn to lay down a tarp in a timely fashion?


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EDITOR'S NOTE: Was I the only one who saw the purple colors worn by the South Korea team and the gold and blue of Chicago and thought it kind of looked like Northwestern vs. Michigan?

EXTRA: Jackie Robinson baseball now far bigger than Defender sports pages

It was earlier this past week that I happened to be in the Pullman neighborhood when 9^th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale got a crowd of 400-plus people all excited by merely uttering three initials.

“J-R-W.”

AS IN THE Jackie Robinson West baseball league that consists of a couple dozen teams from predominantly-black neighborhoods such as Roseland, Pullman and Morgan Park on the far Sout’ Side (and a few surrounding suburbs that have developed sizable African-American communities).

It’s a league that usually only gets public attention from the Chicago Defender, which often uses pictures of young African-Americans in action on their sports pages.

But now, that league is something far much bigger. They’ve been partaking in the Little League World Series tournament this past week, and became the best youth team in the United States when they defeated a Las Vegas, Nev.-area team Saturday by 7-5.

Which was particularly pleasurable because the one negative for the Jackie Robinson West all-star ball club during the past week was a 13-2 loss to that same Las Vegas team.

IT WAS PAYBACK of the finest kind for those of us with a Chicago interest and enjoy seeing one of our youth teams show it can compete with the best of the rest of the nation.

And considering how in recent years baseball has become so overwhelmingly pale in complexion while lacking in much interest amongst more urban communities, the sight of an all-black ball club takes on a certain other significance.

Particularly since they’re now going to represent this country when they take on the winner of the Japan/South Korea game played Saturday night.

I can’t think of a better ball club to represent what this country is about than the kids from the South Side. Particularly since way too many people tend to think the only things of significance in Chicago come from select neighborhoods on the north lakefront.

IT’S THE ENTIRETY of Chicago that makes it amongst the most interesting places in this country (and quite possibly on Planet Earth) to be. A small piece of that South Side existence is now getting national attention.

It’s a good thing that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has already committed city officials to having some sort of city-wide celebration when the team returns to Chicago in coming days.

Memories of that 2005 post-World Series parade the White Sox made through Bridgeport and Chinatown on their way to downtown come to mind. Although is a Grant Park-type rally also possible.

Let’s only hope that these kids go on to be inspired to achieve greater success in life (and not necessarily just in the world of athletics). Because the sad thing would be if this moment at age 12 became the highlight of their lives.

IT OUGHT TO be a moment that inspires all people to want to strive for greater things and higher levels than we already have achieved. That could be the real-life lesson we all learn.

So as we relish this moment of a Chicago-area ball club (even one of 12- and 13-year-olds) actually winning something (as opposed to seeing the White Sox blow a couple of ballgames to the New York Yankees in recent days or watching the Cubs’ ground crew show its ineptitude at laying down a tarp to avoid a rainy day), keep this thought in mind.

The next time Beale rattles off “J-R-W,” it won’t be just a room full of Pullman people cheering.

It ought to be the nearly 9-million of the metropolitan area  expressing its joy.

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Davis vs. Jones could be the sporting matchup of the year for Chicago fans

It has become the matchup I’m hoping becomes reality in coming days – pitcher Mo’Ne Davis going up against slugger Pierce Jones.

He of the three home runs and a triple who led the Jackie Robinson West team from the Roseland neighborhood to a victory to kick off the Little League World Series. She of the Philadelphia-area team that also is playing in Williamsport, Pa., who pitched a complete-game shutout and only gave up a couple of hits.

BIG SLUGGER AGAINST top pitcher – a key matchup that will occur if the Little League tourney plays out in such a fashion that the Chicago and Philadelphia ball clubs wind up facing off against each other.

Much has been made of the fact that Davis is a 12-year-old girl. Although all it really proves is that girls can be athletic, and most likely many of the boys she is facing have yet to go through that teenage growth spurt that turns them into adults and will erase whatever physical advantage she now possesses.

Although as one who enjoys watching baseball and often hears of the decline in the number of African-American ballplayers in the professional ranks (largely because of the upshot in recent years of ballplayers from Latin American and Asian nations coming to the United States to play ball), I would find this story to be a bit encouraging.

For Davis is black. As is Jones, and his entire Chicago-area ball club. That’s what happens when a Little League program representing an African-American portion of Chicago winds up getting good and winning the qualifying tournaments to represent the Great Lakes states in the Little League World Series – which has eight U.S. ball clubs and eight international teams.

YES, I’M FOLLOWING the activity of the team from Nuevo Leon, a northernmost Mexican state along the U.S./Mexico border – which kicked off its play by beating Canada 4-3, then losing Sunday 9-5 against a team from Japan.

But the big games that caught attention early on were that 12-2 victory by the Sout’ Side club against a team from Lynnwood, Wash. (I'm going out of my way to erase Sunday's 13-2 defeat from my memory); along with Davis’ shutout against a team from South Nashville, Tenn.

It was unique to see black ballplayers being such a dominant presence on the ball field. Not that I mean that in any bad way.

The degree to which some people with racial hang-ups were probably getting annoyed at the sight (or thought) of such activity was pleasing to me.

IT WAS ENCOURAGING to see some of the nonsense-talk that some people spew get rejected while watching these particular kids excel at something that some people would want to think they’re not supposed to have any interest in.

Plus, there’s the fact that they were kids – not quite at the stage in life yet where such an experience would lead them jaded.

I don’t know if any of these kids is destined for professional athletics in any form. It may well be that these few days in Pennsylvania will be a highlight moment that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

I’m also not convinced this is some seminal moment that will help shift black people back to an interest in baseball away from certain other sports. It would take several consecutive years of this – along with a certain shift in the baseball mentality itself – for that to happen.

BUT WATCHING THESE kids does create some intriguing moments on the ball field.

Particularly the thought of a Jones/Davis matchup.

Will Jones and his Jackie Robinson West teammates be the ones who can handle Davis and smack her pitches around the ballpark as easily as they did the kids from Lynnwood, Wash., last week?

Or will Mo’Ne be the one who schools Jones and company – giving them a lesson in humility that our city’s professional ball clubs give Chicago fans every time they lose another game on the field?

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Sout’ Side (but not the White Sox) make it to a ‘World Series’ of sorts

Baseball fans oriented to the South Side have something to cheer about this season – and not just the fact that Cuban sensation Jose Abreu is in the running to lead the American League in both home runs and runs batted in.

It’s not enough to pull the Chicago White Sox into contention for a division title.

BUT THERE WILL be talk of “World Series” bandied about on Thursday, and hopefully in coming days.

For we’re at that tournament in which youth league teams from around the world converge in Williamsport, Pa. – the annual home of the Little League World Series.

There are some “international” ball clubs present, but most are from the United States. And this year, the team representing the Great Lakes Region is from right here in Chicago – the predominantly-African-American Roseland neighborhood to be exact.

For the Jackie Robinson West Little League champion team this year advanced through the rounds of qualifying games to beat an Indiana team to make the trip to Williamsport.

ON THURSDAY, THEY will play their first game in the World Series against a team from Lynnwood, Wash. ESPN will carry the game live at 2 p.m.\

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has talked of having a viewing party so Chicagoans can watch the game, while Gov. Pat Quinn declared a “day” across Illinois for this year’s Jackie Robinson championship team.

That’s pretty heady stuff, particularly since the Jackie Robinson League baseball program is usually something only the Chicago Defender newspaper bothers to pay any attention to – and even then only to get a picture of a kid looking cute while trying to do something athletic.

So chances are most of us Chicago baseball fans had no clue what was happening in Roseland that a baseball team good enough to make it to the international tournament was in our midst.

REMEMBER THE CONTROVERSY from a year ago when the baseball program at Walter Payton College Prep tried cancelling out a game against Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep out of fear of the neighborhood?

That was Roseland as well, and in fact the Brooks high school uses Jackie Robinson League facilities for its program.

It will be intriguing to see a group of inner-city kids taking on the more heavily-experienced (when it comes to travel) teams that usually wind up playing in these youth tournaments.

And if some baseball fans get a jolt to see that black kids don’t just dunk basketballs, that may be a plus as well.

NOW I’M NOT about to predict a Chicago victory in the Little League World Series. The Jackie Robinson West champions (Jackie Robinson East baseball is played out in Newark and Jersey City, N.J.) may well be among the first teams knocked out this year.

Although let’s be honest.

If they were to accomplish something, it would be the sporting highlight of the year for Chicago – particularly since neither professional baseball club is going to win anything of significance this season.

So go Jackie Robinson West. Beat Lynnwood. And do the city proud as you work your way through the ranks of the top youth league baseball players the world has to offer. Show them you belong!

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