By Fredrick Kunkle | The Washington Post
A bench-clearing brawl of sorts has broken out over alleged cheating in a Little League serving one of the District’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
Not among the kids, of course.
The verbal dust-up between grown-ups began last week after an email blast accused Northwest Washington Little League president Ricky Davenport-Thomas and his allies of engaging in a long-running pattern of cheating to stack the league and his own team with talent — allegations Davenport-Thomas has denied.
“The allegations being made by these accusers have been so frustrating partly because I have a long-standing reputation for fairness and honesty,” Davenport-Thomas told The Washington Post in a written statement.
The cheating accusations hit inboxes in the form of a 40-page letter — written like a legal brief, complete with case citations and addendum — on Sunday, just days after the league’s top players represented the nation’s capital in a bid to reach the Little League World Series. Their run ended Aug. 11 when Washington’s team lost a second time to a team from Pennsylvania in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship game in Bristol, Conn. Some of the games were carried on ESPN2.
The letter — signed by Mike Klisch and Erin Sweeney, both of whom are attorneys andNorthwest Washington Little League board members with children in the league — accuses Davenport-Thomas of habitually ignoring Little League’s strict eligibility rules to poach talented players from other city Little Leagues.
It says Davenport-Thomas has on several occasions manipulated paperwork and lied to parents, coaches and Little League officials about certain players’ eligibility — which is based on a child’s age and residency or school attendance — to field players who shouldn’t have been playing in the league. The letter warns that such violations could disqualify the league from tournament competition.
