South Side Little League Coach: JRW Must 'Abide By The Rules'
CHICAGO (CBS) -- During the uproar over Jackie Robinson West losing its title, the heads of adjacent South Side Little Leagues have largely remained silent. Until now.
One president speaks out for the first time to CBS 2's Derrick Blakley.
Some vocal defenders of Jackie Robinson West have left Little League veteran coach Ralph Peterson upset.
He runs the Rosemoor Little League, which, like JRW, competes in District 4.
"We have a very close relationship with JRW," he said.
Saturday, at a JRW support rally, Rainbow PUSH Coalition national spokesman Jonathan Jackson implied South Side kids have no choice but to play for JRW, no matter where they live.
"Our baseball diamonds aren't picked up, so the boundary map; if I could explain to you, if I could show you, you would see there's no baseball to be played in most of the boundaries," he said.
Peterson says that's just not so. He strongly supports the boundaries JRW is accused of violating.
"There are other leagues in District 4 that offer quality baseball," he says. "We choose to play Little League baseball. There's other organizations that we could play, but we choose it so we have to abide by their rules and regulations."
Peterson says some leagues overlook residency rules during the regular season just to give kids a chance to play. Come tournament time, it's a different story, he says.
"If JRW expanded its boundaries, leagues like mine – Rosemoor, South Side, Roseland – they wouldn't exist anymore," Peterson says.
Little League International officials have said Jackie Robinson West officials knowingly violated league residency rules by using players who lived outside the team's official boundaries. A Little League investigation found JRW leaders secretly and purposely redrew the team's official boundaries in order to pick up a couple key players who were ineligible to play on JRW's all-star squad in tournament play.
Peterson says he had no role in the accusations against JRW. He believes league boundaries should be posted on the web so that parents know in which league their kids are eligible. Currently, those boundary maps are secret, leaving it up to each individual league to tell parents whether or not their kids live in the league's boundaries.