Tag: Little League

The New York Times reports that the Dominican Republic has confirmed suspicions that pitcher Danny Almonte was 14 — not 12 — when he pitched in the Little League World Series. It also turns out that Almonte is in the country illegally, since his visa expired six months ago (on that count, though, I’ll side with great pitching over the INS any day of the week).

Almonte also apparently had plenty of time to practice. Although his biography claimed he was enrolled in a South Bronx school, the school in question has no record of him ever enrolling there.

I did not watch any of the Little League World Series, but it was almost impossible to avoid coverage of pitching sensation Danny Almonte. The young man from the Dominican Rublic struck out 86 percent of the batters he faced, gave up only one run in four games, and managed to pitch a perfect game to boot.

Of course, those feats might not turn out to be all that amazing if, as Sports Illustrated claims, Almonte was in fact 14 years old — a full two years older than the cutoff age for players in the Little League World Series.

Almonte’s coach was showing reporters a copy of Almonte’s birth certificate listing Almonte’s birth date as April 7, 1989, but when Sports Illustrated traveled to the Dominican Republic it found that Almonte’s birth had been registered twice.

In 1994, his parents registered his birth and recorded his birthday as April 7, 1987. But then in March 2000 — coincidentally just before Almonte left the Dominican Republic to play Little League Baseball in New York — they re-registered his birth, this time listing the birthday as April 7, 1989.

Little League officials plan to investigate.