An 8-year-old boy in Stockton is rated one of the top third-grade basketball players in the country, by a couple of national websites.
The amazing story of King Tari Johnson, written by The Chronicle’s Connor Letourneau, raises an important question: Is it crazy to have rankings for 8-year-olds?
Of course it is. That’s way too late for your toddler to get plugged into the pipeline. Luckily, it turns out that some of the ratings experts rank kindergartners.
How would you like your kindergarten son or daughter to have to guard a 5-year-old superstar with a Nike contract? Whose agent has negotiated him a two-juice-box deal?
For a moment I thought the story of the Stockton lad was a prank. Like the 1985 Sports Illustrated story about a Mets pitching prospect named Sidd Finch, who threw 168 mph fastballs. That April Fool’s Day story, by George Plimpton, actually fooled a lot of readers.
Is a 168 mph heater more implausible than a hoop-ratings scout in Letourneau’s story saying he rates kindergartners because “Time flies. You’ll be in first grade in no time.”
Letourneau swore to me he didn’t make up the story.
Back in my playing days, kiddie hoopsters weren’t ranked nationally. Or so I thought, until I checked with my mom. She went through some family scrapbooks and dug up a basketball scouting report on me in eighth grade, when I started organized hoops. Here it is:
Rating: No. 79,402 nationally (among eighth-grade, right-handed power forwards born under the sign of Libra) … Needs to add some muscle, in order to compete on the low block, and in order to cast a shadow … Problem with dribbling, maybe needs a smaller Gatorade bottle … Doesn’t need the ball, which is good, because nobody passes it to him … Vertical not impressive, but horizontal is (he falls down a lot) … Gets rid of the ball in a hurry, usually by dribbling it off his feet … Distributes the ball well, to all nine other kids on the court.
Onward and downward …
On a related topic, I was relieved to learn from my Twitter feed that I’m not the only person who avoids watching the Little League World Series on TV.
There are not a lot of us, but maybe enough to form a small Zoom support group.
You can’t totally escape the LLWS when you’re channel-surfing. Games are televised non-stop, day and night, for what, four months? Whatever happened to school? Are these kids being dugout-schooled?
And do we really need former big-league players providing expert analysis?
Hi, folks, and welcome to ESPN and the semifinal round of Miss Freen’s kindergarten finger painting contest. Here to break it down for us are two guys who really know their stuff, Hall of Famers Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet.
Fans, be sure to join us tomorrow when we bring you live coverage of the international Tee-ball World Series, brought to you by Gerber, the Breakfast of Champions.
• The “Field of Dreams” game that MLB played the past two years in that cornfield in Iowa is a fun idea, but the corn is getting a little corny.
It has been suggested by Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins that MLB expand on the concept by taking the “Field of Dreams” game to a different historical/mystical locale every year. MLB told Jenkins, “(W)e hope to highlight other special locations with rich baseball traditions in the future.”
Jenkins and Chronicle ballscribe John Shea nominated Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala. That ancient green ghost, built in 1910, is the oldest baseball park anywhere, and still in fine shape. It has felt the cleats of Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige and a teenage Willie Mays.
Here’s a couple other ideas:
The Los Angeles Coliseum. No sports venue in America is more historic. The Coliseum (and Los Angeles) saved the Olympics movement by hosting the Games in 1932, during the Great Depression, when no other city/country could afford to.
As for baseball? When the Dodgers and Giants moved West in 1958, baseball west of the Mississippi was a gamble and an experiment. The Giants played at crackerboxy Seals Stadium, while the Dodgers played four seasons in the Coliseum, capacity 90,000-plus. One 1959 World Series game drew 92,706.
The field configuration was a joke, but wonderful. Left field was 251 feet from home plate, so they put up a 42-foot-high fence, a giant mesh curtain. The left fielder would literally play with his butt against the fence. Dinky pop-ups went for homers, crushed line drives thudded into the fence for singles.
The strange field, and the wild enthusiasm and massive turnouts, proved to the world that pro sports could thrive on the West Coast.
And for fans who are fond of the Iowa cornfield idea, here’s a West Coast twist on the agricultural motif, updated to appeal to the younger demo: Carve a baseball diamond out of a marijuana field in Humboldt County.
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler
