The Most Illegal Little League Team Ever 

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The overage scandal is like the “I am twelve” scene but in real life

This story is absolutely wild. Luckily baseball doesn’t exist, so this doesn’t really matter

I remember back in '92 watching this on ABC. My dad, who has passed away since then, loved baseball and we'd watch the Little League games together every year mainly because I was in organized baseball all the way through college. The only thing the 2 of us kept saying was...." There is NO WAY these kids are 12 !!!" I was in awe when the camera showed a close-up when they were at bat. A few of them looked like young men, because they were ! Oh well....RIP in peace Pop, you were right.

One of our high school coaches was a victim along the way of this scandal. Because of the reputation that Philippine Little League Baseball got because of this, he was stripped of most of his coaching offers. Nobody would touch him. He would teach us for some cigarette money. Taught us batting, fielding, gave us drills, and even coached our pitchers. We were not really anything excellent as a team but he got us on the field and into the sport got some of us off trouble and off the streets. I think a couple of us went into varsity during college and most of us graduated college and still thinks that what we did on the field was some of the best times that we had as friends.

I asked my Filipino father in law about this, he said it's the biggest sports scandal the country ever had. Nobody brings it up and pretend like it never happened.

I love how the one Dominican Republic player had a full mustache and that somehow didn’t raise any alarm bells

We saw this on the local news when I was, like, 8 years old. My aunt said the most peculiar thing while we were watching the news amidst all the excitement and national pride overflowing from the game’s result. She said, “The coach… look at his face. It’s like he got away with murder, and is now worried he will get caught. You think those kids we sent were really kids? They don’t look like it.” True enough… a few days later, someone spilled the beans. It was weird… even now as I look back at the story as an adult. We were never a baseball country. Baseball required a certain level of teamwork and patience. The game had a stop-go pace about it and went on for 9 innings, each lasting 15-20 minutes. Much of our population did not have the patience to sit through that, much less play it. It boggles the mind how we thought we could pull it off and get away with it. Why? What was the point? I understand if it was basketball. 😂 I mean, I won’t respect it. It’s still a heinous sports crime.

I coached LL baseball from 1985-1987. I was 20-22. Just watching the underhandedness that went on soured me to the whole experience. The first try outs I attended there was a kid who showed up and was obviously "laying down" or sandbagging if you will. In fact, there were a few kids sandbagging. It was obvious. I walked away after my 3rd year and never went back to coaching. I did become an umpire which was 100X worse. I'll never get involved in youth sports again.

When he showed the Dominican team at the beginning that was over age.. They literally had a dude with a beard longer than mine and I'm 30. Some of these teams really didn't even hide they had grown adults playing children.

I played on a 14 and under travel team when I was 13. We were pretty good and I was one of the best hitters on the team. The 14 and under state championship tournament got canceled so we had to play in the 16 and under instead. We picked up a couple of older kids and now I was the youngest player on the team. We thought we were stacked. I only got one hit the entire tournament. We ended up getting 3rd place. Just one or two years makes a huge difference when you’re that young.

OH WOW! I stumbled across this video by chance in my suggestions for some reason. THANK YOU FOR COVERING THIS! Quite a story below! Former Long Beach little league player here! To explain, yes you are correct about the size of Long Beach. We are in fact so large in size, in my league alone (I played for East Long Beach), we had two traveling All-star teams. (I played for ELBJB T2 : Long Beach Team Two. Team A was made up of "better" players in our league.) We ended up beating our A-team and moved on to face WLBJB. Burroughs played for WLBJB. We ended up losing to our counterparts so they moved on to nationals and we stayed state-side. (we had no idea they ended up winning the title in the end!!) We ended up going to the Pacific Palisades state tournament. It was my first time going and it was supposedly a big deal because we were supposed to be knocked out very early--being the B squad from little old Long Beach that never placed in that tournament before. We beat teams left and right, with good small-ball, hitting and fundies. We kept advancing, (I pitched a few of them since I was the only left handed pitcher on my team at the time) and ended up beating the host team Pacific Palisades to advance to the final against the favorites almost every year: Patrick Henry. (No I have no idea where they are from.) We beat Patrick Henry with a very good fundies heads-up play on a fly-ball that I was involved in while at first base: and helped us do the unthinkable: beat Patrick Henry. It was a moment I'll never forget to this day; this video literally brought EVERYTHING back--and even tears. To my ELBJB coach, George Brooks, if you are still alive and somehow see this comment, this is Kevyn your #34 lefty. I miss you dearly, you were an amazing coach and a better man off the field. After this tournament, I ended up playing Pony/Colt in Long Beach with great success and in High School as well. But I was more interested in gymnastics than baseball so I pursued that instead.

I'm mad at myself for not discovering this channel soon enough! I love learning about this kind of stuff, it's actually one of the reasons I got into Journalism and a focus on Sports Journalism and Photojournalism.

If the MLB was in charge of handling this scandal they’d charge the losing teams for not pitching better and revoking their little league memberships

This happened with the Nigerian U17 soccer team in the 90's. They got busted when some of their players were heard calling home to speak to their wives and kids who were 7-8 years old.

I am from Zamboanga City Philippines, I was a Pitcher of little league baseball here . Zamboanga City was and still the no. one baseball City or place in the entire Philippines. Zamboanga City dominate little league baseball in the Philippines. If you check the record of the little league baseball tournament here in the Philippines. Zamboanga City dominate. It's politics and the corrupt people from the north orchestra this shamefully act. Zamboanga City is an old fashioned people and not accustomed in cheating. This fiasco stain our legacy as the best baseball City in Asia. In case you don't know: In the 80's which is my time : Most of the elementary school here in Zamboanga have it's own baseball field. Zamboanga City have 96 barangays or barrios. We play baseball everyday after school hour here in Zamboanga City. From grade 3 to grade 6 that's what I remember. Also every summer we have a zonal league in our barrios. This is how we select our little league baseball team here in Zamboanga City. 1. Unit meet - compose of 3 or more neighboring schools competition. Champion team goes to District meet and can recruit players from the other unit meet participants. 2. District meet , composed of the unit meet champion team from our district. ( in our time 3 districts participate). Champion goes to Division meet. You can select a players from other participating district. 3. Division meet, composed of the champion in the district meet. ( remember, Zamboanga City have 96 barrios) . Champion will represent ZAMBOANGA CITY (selection of best of best players in the division meet., championship team may keep usually 5 to 7 players. The division official makes the selection. ) they will be train for months for the regional meet. 4. Regional meet . Composed of the ( western mindanao or region IX in the Philippines) which Zamboang City team is like a dream team. Here a lighter tournament than of the Zamboanga City Divison meet. 5. National meet or Palarong Pangbansa. Again RIX or Zamboanga City little league baseball team is like a dream team here. Next is Asia or Far East Asia tournament. This is went those crocodiles 🐊 👏 from the CAPITAL and NORTH intervene. and only 1 or 2 from Zamboanga City players are selected to represent the national team. That's the fact. Why do this crocodiles 🐊 loves to do this? 1. MONEY ( they have to receive travel allowance) 2. Travel ( a vacation trip with your family for free ) 3. Resume advancement.

6:42 Carlos Buret, the only 12 year old to have a full moustache in the LLWS of 1983. As well as the only 12 year old to have an 11 year old daughter.

I remember something like this happened to me when a team in my youth football league who usually went 2-14 went 14-0 before they got caught. Turned out they had two 17 year olds playing in a league for 13 year olds. They had an interesting QB and RB duo😂

Few corrections: 1. Zamboanga is not at all a small town; it was given "highly urbanized" status in 1983 and has over 860,000 people in the city proper alone 2. Most places of the Philippines speak completely different languages from each other (though nowadays, those who aren't born in Tagalog-speaking areas often speak Tagalog and English in addition to their native language), although the language spoken in Zamboanga is a Spanish Creole rather than an Austronesian language like most Philippine languages. (A couple other regions do speak a Spanish creole) 3. Zamboanga is not located on a remote island; rather, it is located on Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippines. It is surrounded by mountains which normally creates linguistic divides in the Philippines though

I thinks its great that some of the Taiwan players in the 80s got to bring their wives and kids with them to watch them play

16:42 This is also apparently common today in the US for low and no states tournaments. My brother was part of a rag tag team in 2020 because all the local little leagues were closed. They just rolled up to nearby baseball events, of varying levels of formality. One, which was only a day long, had the verification process of a formal tournament, requiring birth certificates. It had an usually narrow age range 12-13 instead of 12-14, and so my brother was a few months too old. My brother used the birth certificate of another player who wouldn't be able to make it (and whom without my brother to substitute, the team wouldn't have been able to play). The team they played totally did the same thing but with someone actually in high school.

I heard Carlos from Benchwarmers played for this team “I am 12”

I had to pause and rewind to make sure I heard that right..... “Taiwan won the entire tournament without giving up a hit”.. that’s absolutely ridiculous

As someone who just stumbled upon this channel, I didn't realize baseball had so much intrigue. Excellent content BDE. You've put together a goldmine of content and I've enjoyed watching your content the past 24 hours.

Carlos Buret at 6:43. In the words of Austin Powers: "It's a man, man!" His stache is way better than mine and I'm 41

The best part is the parents cheering like they’re really kids and not borderline adults playing Vs 12yo. YEESH

Cheating goes on at every level. The team that barely beat my all-star team was later found to have three 13 year olds and 1 14 year old. This was Texas in the 1960's. One year makes a huge difference at that age.

You have to appreciate the fact that the players didn't mind the gifts if it meant that it would help their families out; some bought BMX bikes while others bought head of livestock and supplies for their families' farms and shops.

The way it worked during my eligible playing years for the LLWS was when my team went on to the play-in tournaments, we were allowed to select a few players from other teams in our league to join us ... a team from the Bronx came down to Philly to play us and we smoked them ... then we had to go to Waterbury Connecticut and we got absolutely annihilated, like 24-2 or something like that, and all those dudes had facial hair .... we got boned, boned hard

(played 2001 LLWS, lost to Almonte in semi final from West, Oceanside, CA. Fan of this page so figured I'd share some parts of the LLWS experience.) One of the trippy things, worth sharing, about the Japanese team. I watched them practice one day since we were all confined to the premesis. The Japanese team did not stop in-between stretches- went from jumping jacks to pushups to leg stretches, on the last jumping jack they jumped down into push-up position. It was similar when they took infield, just constant grounders and rotations between the backups and the starters. It was really cool to see the culture difference of practicing baseball. Isn't mentioned much, but upon arriving in Williamsport for the LLWS they gave our team about 15 new bats along with our uniforms. Likely a marketing thing for Easton or whomever but they were great bats and at that age it was quite awesome. The night we won our western regional, our flight was at 4am from LAX and the regional is in the IE, about 2 hours away. So we got to stay up and "party" all night with the other team that won the Northwest region. We were 16-0 coming out of the West, I've always heard it was the hardest region to come out of, thus losing to Almonte was bitter.

We can all agree this is one of the most underrated RU-vid channels of all time. You deserve so much more subscribers than you have

Your videos are really in depth & are so fascinating to watch. Thank you for sharing.

I was born in the Philippines. I live in the US but I’ve gone back to visit family. Although the common people are warm & friendly, corruption is all too common there. This behavior is neither shocking nor is it a surprise.

I love this channel

18:18 100 filipino pesos is 2 dollars, imagine letting someone use your name illegally, then having only getting enough for some ice cream

Love the content on this channel… even the ads, I usually skip ads on sports channels but realized my hairline is starting to recede… definitely will be buying keeps and using your code!

im 308% sure every team does this and they only “investigate” when a team they dont like wins 💀

The first Little League video was one of my favorite videos ever. And this one is even better. wonderful job Mr. baseball doesn’t exist.

HE’S BACK

When a bunch of kids are caught cheating you can always find adults are behind it the kids just want to play

As a 80's and 90's kid who was 12 when this happened I can say the youth sports leagues I was involved in as a kid where dirty as hell with tons of ringers and all types of cheating going on.

You make this crap so entertaining

i am a Filipino, and it's shame that this team which should have strengthened our love towards baseball cheated their way towards a title. this could have been the reason why the sport hasn't made enough progress in the country, like a facility left unfinished after a promising start. still, a great exposé here! from a Filipino baseball fan!

I’m 42, no balding and 5 gray hair. I can’t say the same for the so called curly haired boys the girls wanted in school.

3rd year in High school in the Philippines is just 14 years old tbh. I was 14 at 3rd year. We didn't have K-12 then. We had 10 years of Elementary and Secondary education.

I'm still having trouble believing this "baseball" sport doesn't exist, crazy deep lore.

6:43 Carlos Buret is clearly 28 years old in that photo 😂

In 1992, I was the US Embassy Legal Advisor in Manila & my primary responsibility was negotiating a new military bases treaty. But what was the #1 US-RP bilateral issue for the Filipino people? The “fact” that the racist US revoked the Philippines’ LLWS title & banned them bcoz we couldn’t bear to lose to little “brown-skinned” boys. Of course we were getting quite used to losing to little brown-skinned boys from all over Asia since the late-60s. And if these “little boys” had been anywhere close to the size of the average 12-yr old boy in Zamboanga del Norte, I doubt anyone would’ve said a word. But the fact was these were the very best 13-16 yr old baseball players from throughout the Phils (but not surprisingly, none were from Zambo). But I personally don’t believe Phil President Fidel Ramos had any idea an unprecedented fraud had been committed. As a graduate of West Point, he would’ve known that little league baseball is almost a religion in the US, & that a fraudulent scheme of this scope being managed by the 3 Stooges could never succeed. There’s no way he would’ve let his Nation’s reputation be ridiculed like this. Unfortunately, some corrupt little league officials in a country where there was no real country-wide little league program & very few knowledgeable people in positions with potential oversight. And that’s what enabled the adults involved to run this scam as far as they did before the wheels came off. But 1 bright spot in all this was the journalist courageous enough to raise questions, & his equally courageous employers who reported the complete facts in their newspaper once their inquiry revealed the truth behind the scandal. ⚾️🧢🥎

Alfaro and Pantaleon are probably the only ones who probably could have gotten away with it since they used their family members name.

Wait, so your saying when little league caught a team cheating they stripped them of their championship. Hey MLB, take notes!

Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) had also done the same cheating method multiple time from 1969 to 1996, but none of their Little League Champions get stripped

In Washington State, we had a girls high school basketball team win the state championship after extreme cheating. They had their championship removed.

I went to a small school in the USA that played soccer. A family in the area adopted a highschool "boy" from Korea. He was an amazing soccer player. Turns out he was 26! I don't know if our school won the soccer championship or not. I don't know if it only came to light when he ran off with their married daughter, or if they had suspicions before that. What a shock!

Imagine thinking you're good when you are 17 years old playing against 12 year olds

Always makes my day when baseball doesn’t exist posts

Your intro is so hype,. Please let the whole thing run before the ad! Love the channel

I've been into baseball a few months ago since I saw shohei pitches in yt. I thought, why is it that baseball here in ph is so rare. I know one of my friend was in a little league team once and my crush who played softball. We have a place where baseball/softball plauers play but it's not like one of those good looking ballparks or those standard ones that has bleachers and a metal fence as the walls of the ballpark. The only thing standing there is the back fence from the catcher's back. It's just sad to see that the ph sports commission is so into basketball and doesn't support other sports. Gotta find a college where I can play baseball even being a complete rookie.

I'm from the Philippines and am a pure Filipino, and I gotta say, our country never ceases to disappoint me lmao.

Because of this scandal I can’t be a little league player for the Philippines. :(((((((((((

Bro I don't even really like baseball, yet I'm subbed and keep coming back for more. My guy, you're honesty really good at this and might end up making me a baseball fan. Keep up the good work!

I lost it when that shot came up of the Dominican Republic team and the one "kid" that had a mustache thicker than mine

Lmaoooo when he showed the Dominican team 2 of those “12 year olds” had full grown mustaches 🤣

this is literally the definition of "Mr. I am twelve"

It's such a shame that some people would resort to cheating to get what they want. Whichever way you're going to look at it, it remains a shame to be caught cheating and even more shameful when despite the glaring evidence that proves their guilt, these people have the audacity to rationalize their wicked acts.😔😔

Love your style. You don’t try to be funny or add a bunch of filler. This could have been a 2 hour documentary with a bunch of filler and scenes that go on too long, but you just give it to us straight :)

I coached baseball when I was in high school and college, I helped my dad with my brother's travel team and Dixie League World Series team when I was home for the summer or not playing baseball in the summer. I would always have these weird dreams where I would be 16 or 17 years old and playing against 12 year olds when I was coaching and I don't know why. I would always wake up feeling super guilty before realizing it was just a dream. It doesn't really have any relevance to the video, other than these kids were literally living my dreams that I had at the time. I don't know how you could do that as a player and not feel wrong afterwards.

meanwhile the astros didnt recive a single game ban or have their titles revoked

Even up here in the cornfields of Indiana we have 12u travel teams that print their own birth certificates for older players. One team got busted years ago at a small tourney for having several high schoolers on their team...in a 12u tourney. Several of the kids were very good wrestlers and some parents and other kids noticed them playing. Unreal.

Remember school rugby league competition got introduced in my country. Under 16 game we turn up, and the other team/school had their PE teacher on their team playing,. We knew they were 19 and older, my cousin who was 25 was in that team. We lost badly but made sure we hurt them in our tackles.

Just when i thought when is the next baseball doesnt exist video gonna come out i get the notification, keep making videos man they get better and better every time

It’s funny how people will cheat, and then get upset when they are punished for it.

You are so underrated dude. Keep up the good work!

6:43 hell nah that guy got a wife and a kid with another on the way. Ain't no way he's under 18

Me whose filipino and plays baseball: in pain 😭😭😭😭😭😭

When you're Filipino, studies baseball, and an Astros fan:

This is common in our own backyard. When I played little league we always had 14, 15 yr olds on our team and kids that we had never seen before. And to us it wasn't cheating because every other team had older kids on there teams and that were not from our district. The parents didn't say anything and the staff didn't say anything (they were the ones that organized it) but what did we know we thought it was normal. But when you get older you figure out it's about winning. But shame on us for pointing the ugly stick at everyone else.

I remember going to the LLWS as a 12 year old, looking at Taiwanese 12 year olds and thinking, why are they so tall? Later, I had a Taiwanese friend who told me they completely cheated. They were sending kids up to 16.

I was also on an American team that was beat in the mid 80’s! Played for North Hollywood LL and lost to Mexicali in the last game before Williamsport! Mexicali played Seoul and both teams were disqualified for having 14yr olds! Good times!

If this channel has taught me anything, it’s that if there is a really good little league team with yellow jerseys, than they’re probably cheating

If they went through all this trouble to cheat- WHY did they make it so obvious by winning by such large margins. 29-0 ? not allowing a hit in the WHOLE tournament ?

I remember as a 12 year old our team won the league and advanced to the local tournament. We played a team that was the closest to our league , basically the same district. We where eliminated that first game and I swear to god the other team had a stacked team of 13 to 15 year olds. Some of them had a 9 to 11 inch height difference, I’m almost sure the team we played was a senior team as the pounded us 15 to 2 . I never played in a league after that as did a lot of guy’s on that team that talked about playing in the senior level next season . We knew we had been cheated.

He always takes his time and does research. He actually cares about this not like other people Edit: Wow thanks for the likes keep up the good work!! Looking foward to more vids

Starting to understand why my dad doesn’t really even consider the idea of going back to the Philippines...

Met Sean Burroughs when he was with the Bluefish. Really cool guy probably one of the best players I met when I was working as a Clubby's Assistant/Bat Boy. Dude is also a part of the last USA Team to win the Gold Medal for Baseball at the Olympics.

The team from the Far East were literally too good...at cheating. Love how you bring up the amazing Twain team that was cheating

What I don’t understand is if the EAST has been winning LL Titles forever than where are all the superstars in the MLB since the 70’s?

I'm from Philippines and I hailed the journalist and whistle-blower Mendoza as one of the great unsung hero. My people really are sore losers. I was glad I didn't had cable tv to witness this embarrassment. I like baseball more than the overly hyped basketball.

3:50 they used a ripped basketball as catchers mitt too. Days have been better though since cheap but unreliable gloves/baseball gear have been accessible especially online shopping.

LOL.The reason so many of the foreign teams were "Too Good" was that all their players were 6ft tall, 200lbs and heavily bearded....

is there a video about that 1973 LLWS team no-hitting everyone?

Heh, I was cheated in 2001. That Bronx team with Almonte. I knew he was overage when they asked me, him and some other dudes to film a lil segment. We got screwed, but whatever, was still an epic summer.

I'm Filipino, And I've never heard that the Philippines had a little league team before, And I didn't know either that there was a cheating happened. But honestly, I don't really know that there was something like this happened before, I think it's because baseball here in the Philippines are not that famous so few people would know about this. I'm kinda disappointed on our 'little league before' about what's actually happened, I hope something like this will never happen again. Anyway thanks for posting this, I wouldn't know what entirely happened if you didn't post this video.

I’m from Zamboanga City and a huge baseball fan, but I wasn’t born yet when this happened. I never knew about this scandal until my mom told me stories about it while we were watching the World Series together on TV last year. Seems like the Filipinos and Zamboangueños who were alive to witness all of this have chosen to sweep it under the rug and forget about it.

I just want to say that I absolutely LOVE your videos. I went on a binge one night and have been hooked ever since!

What a wild ride! How many more of these little pieces of history do you have lined up for us? Keep it up man you're 🔥

Something most people aren't aware of is that the rules for this tournament (distance from mound to plate, base distances, leading/stealing, etc) are for kids that are generally 8-9 years old, but it's played by kids that are 11-13. If anyone has a child in the Cal Ripken/Babe Ruth league like me, think "Farm division with a sprinkle of Minor thrown in".

Did not know The Philippines used pesos. You really do learn something new everyday.

I've seen this in soccer as well, there were teams in our tournament from Taiwan and South Korea where the players were over aged for the tournament.

quality of content improvements on this channel from start to now unreal

Wow. That famous player Alan baton from Philippines on 1992 I remember when I was 12 years old and a player also of children's baseball in my school. He was a great player