Little League World Series softball team accused of throwing game

The statement ordered a one-game playoff between the Washington and Iowa teams to be held Tuesday.

Little League officials determined the West did not play fair and did not try to win, and in fact tried to lose by a certain number of runs. South Snohomish failed to record a hit in the game.

Snohomish lost to Iowa, 3-2, pushing them to the fifth place game against Uganda on Wednesday morning. Iowa beat a Canada-based team handily in their fourth game to move to 3-1 in the tournament. Reports suggesting that the teams could have met in the semifinal round are not true.

“Our coach was faced with a decision that, in the bubble of intense competition, appeared to him to be in the best interest of our team”, he said.

South Snohomish Little League president Jeff Taylor denied any wrongdoing, saying South Snohomish head coach Fred Miller opted to rest some starters who had been playing in tournaments for more than three months.

This counterintuitive situation arose because of the way ties are broken during group play in the World Series.

The strategy backfired, though, as both teams were disqualified from the tournament. Central Iowa won that game, 3-2, and celebrated as though they’d won the tournament (they now advance to the semifinals), in part, certainly, because of who they’d just defeated.

That’s because of a tiebreaking formula called “defensive runs ratio”. “They are trying to compete at the highest level”, Shaughnessy said of the softball teams.

When Snohomish lost, Rowe said, the players were very gracious, and stood in line to shake the hands of the Central Iowa players.

The East region will take on the victor of Southwest (Texas)/Southeast (North Carolina) at 8 p.m. on ESPN2. By laying down, Snohomish thought it had wrapped up a spot in the semifinals.

Little League worldwide agreed, setting up a game that sparked broadcast debates over sportsmanship, competitive cheating and youth sports coaching. The Washington and North Carolina teams had to face one another.

What Mo’ne Davis accomplished on Little League baseball fields last summer did a great deal for gender equity, but it also may have made us forget that there are tons of school-age girls across the nation still playing softball.