Free Little League Is A Right

Last year and early this year, before I returned to California to become a New America fellow, I spent some time in Pennsylvania researching the life of Carl E. Stotz, the founder of Little League Baseball. Stotz broke with Little League in a bitter dispute with the organization's board in 1955. And his successors, who came from the corporate world, changed Little League. But his original vision of Little League survives in several rules -- including a little-enforced Little League rule that any child who wants can play, even if his or her family can't afford the league fees. Here's my piece in the New York Times explaining the roots of a little-known American right: free Little League.