A Matter of Priorities

It is, of course, a tragically stupid tale:

Little League Baseball has stripped the U.S. championship from Chicago-based Jackie Robinson West and suspended its coach for violating a rule prohibiting the use of players who live outside the geographic area that the team represents, it was announced Wednesday.

Jackie Robinson West must vacate wins from the 2014 Little League Baseball International Tournament — including its Great Lakes Regional and United States championships.

The team’s manager, Darold Butler, has been suspended from Little League activity, and Illinois District 4 administrator Michael Kelly has been removed from his position.

The organization found that Jackie Robinson West used a falsified boundary map and that team officials met with neighboring Little League districts in Illinois to claim players and build what amounts to a superteam.

As a result, the United States championship has been awarded to Mountain Ridge Little League from Las Vegas.

“Quite honestly, we had to do this,” Little League International president and CEO Stephen D. Keener told ESPN on Wednesday. “We had no choice. We had to maintain the integrity of the Little League program. … As painful as this is, it’s a necessary outcome from what we finally have been able to confirm.

“The real troubling part of this is that we feel horribly for the kids who are involved with this. Certainly, no one should cast any blame, any aspersions on the children who participated on this team. To the best of our knowledge, they had no knowledge that they were doing anything wrong. They were just kids out playing baseball, which is the way it should be. They were celebrated for that by many, many organizations, many people. What we’re most concerned about today is that it’s going to be hard on these kids. And that’s the part that breaks your heart.”

(ESPN)

People are, as you might imagine, furious. And they should be. Yet what is it about our society that so many people waste so much energy being furious about the wrong thing?

Dubious Perfection

We do not, it is true, give Facebook much for appreciation. Most days, the reason for this is perfectly obvious to, well, pretty much anyone.^α At the same time, though, given the numbers, it is a statistical inevitability that the Big Blue F will eventually provide some reward of utility, such as, well, two seconds’ worth of chuckle that might compel one to wonder why anyone would bother with the small handful of minutes required to blog it.

Well, you know, to the one there is the news about video games. But that’s the sort of news one can pass by word of mouth. The real gem is the NFL news:

Rick Reilly: New York Giants punter Steve Weatherford bench-presses, drops 190-pound ESPN writer

That is to say, come on, that is … er … um … perfect.

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^α To the other, we should probably clarify that we are, in fact, referring to a mere subset of Facebook users; the joke would pretend the rest either don’t exist or, simply, are instruments of that giant Zucking sound swallowing loads of data over the course of any given millisecond. In this case we refer to Facebook users who only ever took up the website at all because, for some strange reason, there came a day when all their friends suddenly disappeared, and when phone, SMS, email, and even driving over to their place to see if they’re okay all failed, well, it turned out that they were all on Facebook, and that became the most reliable way to find them. Of course, communication is a two-way street; one might contact, say, the former partner about routine matters of child rearing and actually expect a reply. And if we are not thankful for the bountiful replies featuring cats being cute by disgracing their own names, one can only wonder who the f@ck ever thought we should be.