I’m sick of Little League baseball.

Don’t take that the wrong way. I played youth baseball and count my two years with 11- and 12-year-old baseball at Mike Miley Playground in Metairie as the most fun I experienced in organized sports.

The problem does not rest with the game. It’s the exploitation by national media outlets like ESPN, unscrupulous adults and the grandfather organization of Little League Baseball, which is crowning a global champion this month in Williamsport, Penn.

A quick scan of llbws.org provides the national television schedule that includes a mind-numbing 136 games listed for television this month on the greater ESPN family of networks. This isn’t a cute little story for ESPN. This isn’t simply a civic mandate put on by Little League.

There’s real money at play, and that is no game. The stakes have gotten too high.

Why is winning a league, city or state championship not enough when dealing with children this young?

It should be, and that’s why I’m sick of the Little League World Series. My stomach turns in knots when its games are broadcast ad nauseam.

In a perfect world, having these wonderful games played on television would do nothing but make things better. We just don’t live in that world, and we never will.

Just this week in the South Snohomish Little League, a youth softball team was forced to play a one-game playoff because its coaches were accused of throwing the game as the girls tried to advance to the Little League Softball World series.

The South Snohomish Little League released a statement Tuesday that read, in part, “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. In hindsight, it is very likely he would have made a different choice.

“Though the decision that Coach Miller made did not violate the letter of the rules, I can see abundant evidence that it was not in line with the spirit of the game.”

The glaring segment of that quote is the “bubble of intense competition” that has been created. This isn’t a kid’s game anymore. The stakes are high, the reward is great and, therefore, the players (mostly adult leaders) don’t play fair.

Jackie Robinson West of Chicago won the U.S. Little League baseball championship in 2014. The players represented our country when facing the international champion in the Little League World Championships. The boys from Chicago eventually lost, but they were still rightfully celebrated in the weeks and months that followed. They even made a trip to the White House.

Unfortunately it was discovered eight of the 13 players were from outside the boundary and Jackie Robinson West orchestrated a “fraud and cover-up” that included two false maps to justify their alignment.

The young boys were stripped of their title.

The sad story sounded familiar to one ten years ago that involved Danny Almonte, who, with the encouragement of adults, lied about his age to play in the Little League World Series. His New York City team was first celebrated and then left in ruins when the lies and cheating caught up with all involved.

With a largely volunteer-led staff, Little League is not in a position to govern a fair playing field. For every player and team found cheating, dozens more are getting by outside the rulebook.

The game has gotten too big for the boys and girls who play it. They never needed an international tournament in the first place. If Little League actually returned to a loose organization of “little” leagues and ended their glutinous global tournament, we could get back to crowning championships on the local and state level.

Too bad that will never happen. There is no money in it.

Stephen Hemelt is publisher and editor of L’OBSERVATEUR. He can be reached at 985-652-9545 or stephen.hemelt@lobservateur.com.