Hey, Play with Kids Your Own Age

And he did (for the most part).

And he won.

You'll remember Danny Almonte, the kid from NYC who pitched his team to a 2001 Little League World Series championship only to be outed subsequently by Sports Illustrated as being too old and having his team stripped of the title. Well, Almonte is still pitching, now as a 17 year-old tenth grader (hence the "for the most part"), and yesterday he pitched his HS team to the NYC public league championship, striking out the fifth-round pick of the Angels twice. Good to see that Almonte is out there still, pitching away, and that he actually beat some older kids in the process.

The irony about the Almonte birth certificate story was that it broke around the time that Major League Baseball also figured out that many of its Dominican prospects had "age" issues. A supposed 19 year-old prospect at low A ball turned out to be 23 and not a prospect at all, and even some major leaguers had a few years added to their ages.

Thankfully, for Almonte's sake, his problem was fixed before it was too late.

After all, right now in Major League Baseball, performance enhancing drugs might get some bad press, but they're not outlawed. Lying about your age, however, is un-American.