"It's a woman's perogitive to lie about her age."
- Author Unknown

"When you cut the tree in half, son, you count the rings to see how old it is."
- My father - teaching me how to age a tree

"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. "
- Author Unknown

"Cheaters never prosper."
- Aesop

Summer 2001

I was a little hesitant to make this my first rant, but I wanted to get to this while it was still fresh in the news.

Danny Almonte.

For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last few weeks. Danny Almonte is the little boy miracle pitcher for the Bronx Little League team. Wow! Did he pitch great or what? It was the most amazing pitching display ever made by a 12 year old ever. He pitched a perfect game against his rival team in a championship series. People from everywhere were commenting of this kid's great future in baseball. He was a prodigy.

No, he wasn't. He was a cheater.

Danny Almonte was an amazing pitcher for a 12 year old, but there was one problem. He was FOURTEEN! I'm not sure how many of you adults out there can remember what it was like to be 12 years old and confront a 14 year old. 14 year olds are huge when you are 12. At 12, a boy has just started his growth spurt. At 14, He's well into it. Danny Almonte was not small for his age. As a matter of fact, he seemed gigantic compared to all of the other kids. And why not? He's been growing quickly over the last two years. Next year, I think he'll probably start shaving (Cute little shaver, they used to say).

But, we have to get to the real issue here. Who is responsible? Did Danny Almonte mastermind this entire thing. No, of course not. He couldn't have. First of all, it would have taken some amount of planning. His father, one of the coaches on the team, needed to falsify some documents. That takes some work and money. He also had to make certain that Danny wouldn't be spotted by the kids in school in his age group, so Danny DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL! That's right, little Danny was not attending school in the U.S. (I got that one from CBS radio news.) So, in addition, Danny couldn't have planned it. He just wasn't smart enough.

I always try to put things into perspective. Maybe, he didn't know that he was 14. Maybe he couldn't do the math. (Let's see 2001-1987=14. Basic math right? There were no fractions or algebra involved with that one.) So, what happened? Well, we found that Danny's parents (both of them) are a couple of major league liars in a little league. His father lied to the Little League and his mother lied on TV. Both parents saying that Danny was, indeed, 12. However, the Dominican Republic which had Danny's real birth certificate said otherwise. I have a tendancy to believe the Dominican government. I hear that they have to know math in order to obtain employment there.

I really am unsure of what kind of message we, in general, are trying to pass to the next generation.

When El Duquee (Orlando Hernandez) came aboard the Yankees he said that he was 27, when in actuality he was 32. He, naturally, wished to make the impression that he was a pitcher with many more years ahead of him. So, what did he do? He lied. I'm not sure that I would have minded so much about that but we, as the Yankee viewers, were also bombarded with another gigantic lie about Hernandez. It was his life and limb escape from Cuba and how he came over on a raft and got to Florida. Except that wasn't the case, either. He actually motor boated a couple of miles and came to Florida with little risk involved on the ocean. So, that was another lie. So, what we have here is a potential role model for kids telling whoppers to make himself look better and reap the advantages from lying.

I won't even get into Darryl Strawberry.

What I worry about is the state of affairs this world is coming to. When lying like this becomes commonplace and it is accepted. When kids look up to their parents and they turn out be no better than the lying role models in the media. Whatever happened to the days when a man's word was his bond. Mine usually is.

But now we have kids like Danny Almonte. Who, to put it simply, lie and cheat because it is what their parents do. The Bronx mini bombers got every award taken away from them because of this and I think that is right. Pitching is half of a baseball game strategy and they went in and used a pitcher who never should have been there in the first place. Why?

They cheated.

Plain and simple.