"Absolutely not," Brady told a cheering crowd at Salem State University in Massachusetts, when asked by sportscaster Jim Gray — at a speaking engagement that was scheduled months before Wednesday's damning report came out.
"Because we earned and achieved everything we got this year, and I'm very proud of that and our fans should be too," Brady added.
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."
President Barack Obama, who had honored Jackie Robinson West with a White House ceremony, said Wednesday that he continues to be proud of the team and that he blames the problems on "dirty dealing" by adults.
"The president is proud of the way they represented their city and the way they represented the country," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a briefing. "The fact is some dirty dealing by some adults doesn't take anything away from the accomplishments of those young men."
No comments:
Post a Comment