Jericho Scott has a wicked and accurate arm for a 9-year-old, and the unhittable lad has now become the scourge of kids’ baseball in New Haven, CT: he’s so good the league has prohibited him from pitching and sought to disband his 8-and-oh team. The New Haven Register reports:
The fight between youth baseball league officials and one of its teams over a player whose pitching is said to be too good for batters is moving from the ball field to the legal field.
Leroy and Nicole Scott, whose fast-pitching son, Jericho, 9, is at the center of the dispute, met Monday, along with another player’s parents, with prominent attorney John Williams to see whether the season could be saved. Williams said Monday he will take legal action to try to get Jericho’s team into the upcoming playoffs, where they belong after an 8-0 season. He also will sue the league over the pain and suffering of Jericho and the other young players.
League officials offered to move the team’s 13 players to other squads after they tried to dissolve the team last week because the coach, Wilfred Vidro, refused to pull Jericho off the pitcher’s mound as requested by league officials.
Jericho ’s pitches are so fast and accurate that league officials and some parents feared their kids weren’t able to play freely, league attorney Peter Noble said recently. All the players on Jericho’s team declined to move and are sticking together.
The Register’s original story about the affair is here, and includes this nugget (which rings true to anyone who has watched the actions of the very small people who too-often populate Little League officialdom):
Scott said the crux of the issue is that her son’s team had an 8-0 record, which was good for first place in the summer league. She also added that league officials were in charge of the team that was in second place and had won the league the previous three years, but no league official would confirm that.