Little Leagues ban Astros nickname

Major League Baseball may have hoped the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal would recede into history as a new season began, but outrage over the team’s behaviour continues to reverberate from spring training clubhouses to the lowest levels of the sport.

Little Leagues in California, New York and Pennsylvania — the latter not far from the home of the Little League World Series in Williamsport — have decreed their teams will not be nicknamed the Astros this season because, as one administrator put it, wearing that name would send the wrong message.

“Our Little League pledge says, ‘I will play fair and strive to win and win or lose I will always do my best,’” said Bob Bertoni, who leads Pennsylvania’s Little League District 16/31. “We have so many teams take major-league teams as their nicknames that this would not be right for us to promote someone who does not play by the rules.”

This month, California Little Leagues in Long Beach and East Fullerton banned the Astros nickname. Fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who lost to Houston in the 2017 World Series, have been among the most outraged.

“Parents are disgusted,” Long Beach Little League president Steve Klaus told the Orange County Register.

“They are disgusted with the Astros and their lack of ownership and accountability.”

Bertoni, a retired teacher who has been involved with Little League for more than 40 years, said this was an opportunity to educate its players.

“They’ve got to understand there’s consequences for everyone’s actions. When you do something that’s not right, there has to be a consequence for that,” he said.

“Little League is part of an educational environment . ... Besides teaching them the game of baseball, we want to teach them the game of life, too. I think that’s lacking in today’s society.”