XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.democrats, rec.sport.baseball   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: cheating.assholes@nytimes.com   
      
   Mike Klisch suspected something was off when his son’s spring 2022 Little   
   League baseball team, “The Grays,” slaughtered nearly every opponent,   
   winning at times by 15 runs or more, with many games ending early under   
   the mercy rule.   
      
   Seeing other teams getting stomped by 11- and 12-year-olds didn’t feel   
   good. “I would watch these games and I would just want to go home and take   
   a shower,” recalled Klisch, a lawyer.   
      
   It also didn’t add up. The Northwest Washington Little League, in a tony   
   part of the nation’s capital, had a draft system to spread out talent, so   
   no one squad could assemble a juggernaut like the ‘27 Yankees.   
      
   What if, Klisch wondered, somebody was cheating? Not tobacco-spit-on-the-   
   baseball kind of cheating, but the kind that happens in the front office.   
   Emotions can run high in Little League, a touchstone of childhood for   
   millions, and while blowouts sometimes raise suspicions of foul play, most   
   parents keep the speculation to a whisper.   
      
   That isn’t the case when the moms and dads of Little Leaguers are law-firm   
   partners, lobbyists and other Beltway heavy-hitters.   
      
   The result has been a bench-clearing brawl: Parents pitted against each   
   other, a lawsuit, and an investigation by a white-shoe law firm. Baseball-   
   gate even dragged parents’ employers into the bickering.   
      
   ‘Whistleblower’   
      
   Northwest Washington Little League draws from Georgetown, Cleveland Park,   
   Palisades and nearby. Students from prestigious prep schools such as St.   
   Albans and Sidwell Friends bolster the rosters. Barack Obama showed up to   
   play catch when he was president.   
      
   When Klisch and another parent, Erin Sweeney, who is also a lawyer,   
   started asking uncomfortable questions, they were skunks at the garden   
   party.   
      
   They eventually accused coach Ricky Davenport-Thomas, in a formal letter   
   to the league, of bending rules to stack his team with talent and   
   falsifying paperwork to bring ineligible players into the league.   
      
   They alleged the coach poached an elite player from a nearby league but   
   ranked the boy’s abilities as average ahead of the spring 2022 draft, so   
   he could choose him in the fourth round and avoid using his first pick.   
   Davenport-Thomas was also accused of paying himself and his friends with   
   league funds to coach teams, even though the league was mostly volunteer-   
   run.   
      
   Davenport-Thomas didn’t respond to requests for comment. He has previously   
   denied stacking his team and purposely falsifying paperwork.   
      
   The allegations were as polarizing as pinch-hitting for a pitcher in the   
   middle of a perfect game.   
      
   Some parents rallied around the coach, appearing at league board meetings   
   to defend him. They praised him for skippering two 12-and-under all-star   
   teams that went to Little League International’s regional tournament in   
   Bristol, Conn., a precursor to its World Series. He had been the league   
   president seven years.   
      
   Klisch and Sweeney didn’t relent, continuing to bat out the issue at board   
   meetings and in emails circulated to league parents.   
      
   ‘Holy grail’   
      
   Klisch argued that bringing in ineligible kids unfairly siphoned talent   
   away from surrounding leagues. He said it also gave Davenport-Thomas a   
   better shot of advancing his team to the Little League World Series in   
   Williamsport, Pa., a pinnacle for the players and coach alike.   
      
   “He has made it clear to me in the past that his holy grail is   
   Williamsport,” Klisch said.   
      
   If you ask Little League parent Joshua Daniel, a board member and   
   Episcopal priest, the cheating campaign against the coach was pointless   
   and petty. Watching his son pitch in a game in Bristol broadcast on ESPN   
   was a moment of family pride, Daniel said.   
      
   Klisch and Sweeney’s actions “injected toxicity into the community,” he   
   said. “It just felt like a complete burn-it-all down campaign.”   
      
   The vitriol spilled into meetings of the Northwest Washington Little   
   League board, on which both Klisch and Sweeney served. Sweeney swung back   
   in a lawsuit in D.C. in which she sought access to league records. She   
   accused the league of stonewalling her and Klisch, and said they faced   
   brushback from others on the board.   
      
   One board member said at a March 2023 meeting that this wasn’t a “Bank of   
   America” board and that “shit falls through the cracks when you’re running   
   a Little League,” Sweeney said in her lawsuit.   
      
   And yet another board member warned Sweeney and Klisch, “either you end   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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