Here's an angle on the raging Little League sportsmanship debate that seems to have escaped notice: The Hispanic kid hotdogging it down the third-base line and the white kid in the dugout throwing his glove and crying into his hands are two sides of the same problem.

It's not a racial thing. It's a priorities thing.

The kids act the way they do because so many parents and coaches are living through them. The kids know this. They can feel this. Especially the best players, which is all you have in the Little League World Series.

	To be honest, we thought the kid was constipated.

All the hand-wringing and beard-stroking concerning the role of television and the poor examples set by big leaguers is misplaced. The truth is, every 12-year-old with a quick bat or a precocious curveball knows exactly what's happening out there. He knows no coach wants to make him mad -- or, God forbid, sit his spoiled butt on the bench -- if it might jeopardize his chance at glory.

The kid knows he's in charge.

The kid knows how to take advantage of a culture that is reaching the point where it will do just about anything to avoid disappointing its children, despite the fact that disappointment is a big part of life.

The manager of the Harlem team was feted and honored for raging at his players after the home run showboat scene, but if you listened to what he said to his team you would have noticed he told them they'd be thrown out of the game by the umpires -- not him -- if there was further showboating.

Despite the ease and availability of the target, you can't say this is television's fault. Well, you can, because you can say whatever you want. You can say it's Donald Rumsfeld's fault, 'cause he's been on national television hamming it up for going on 12 months now. And if some little kid in Harlem spent the day watching MSNBC, who knows what he might have seen? Curtis Sliwa doesn't exactly exude modesty, now does he?

But back to the point …

The people who are blaming television are the ones who see Little League baseball only during the Little League World Series. Any scientific study would have to include a control group, and every other Little League parent out there can tell you the same thing: This stuff is happening far removed from the television cameras.

It's happening in April and May, in city leagues and rural leagues alike. Find a field and you can find kids who stare out at the pitcher every time a ball comes inside, even when it's thrown by a 10-year-old kid who couldn't knock someone off the plate if dessert was riding on it.

And this isn't a house-man apology for the network that owns the letters at the top of this page. It's not a rationalization, either, because there's no doubt the television coverage serves as an accelerant for the predisposed show-off.

But it might be worth noting that sportsmanship appears to be the rule in games involving Venezuela, Guam, Netherlands Antilles, Japan, Curacao. Sense a pattern?

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Now this -- this is Little League: After the Massachusetts-Harlem U.S. semifinal, the Associated Press reported, "The game started 20 minutes late because of rain and was delayed briefly in the second inning when Harlem's Ralph Rodriguez was stung by a bee in left field."

If there is a baseball strike, here are two phrases we can hope we don't see in print or hear over the airwaves: 1) "The only thing we have to fear is Fehr himself"; 2) "A pox on both their houses."

Also: No odes to what we lost, and please save the references to the '94 Montreal Expos.

Yeah, I know: It's futile.

My violin's in the shop, or else I'd be playing it like Charlie Daniels after six Red Bull vodkas: Rangers owner Tom Hicks said Major League Baseball needs a salary cap, and he said so while talking on the phone from aboard his yacht off the coast of San Diego.

Two possibilities that ought to make the two sides think twice about shutting down: 1) Boy, are those people in Milwaukee going to be hacked if they don't get to see the season play itself out, and; 2) Marlins fans just might decide to stay away forever.

Just for the heck of it: Elias Sosa.

It's every existentialist's favorite time of year: NFL exhibition season, where nothing means anything.

Proving once again that nobody should underestimate our ability to use the most ridiculous extreme and somehow make it sound like the norm: The constant media use of Alex Rodriguez's $252 million contract as a benchmark for the salary structure in the big leagues.

If you're going to say, "How can the players strike when the Rangers shortstop will make $252 million," then you have to say: "Okay, but how can the owners shut down the game when one of them was dumb enough and rich enough to give a guy $252 million -- by all accounts at least $80 million more than anyone else cared to offer?"

The good news is: I've got Netherlands Antilles in my Little League World Series pool.

And finally, just as everyone predicted: Cory Lidle's inevitable march toward Orel Hershiser's shutout streak, killed by a strike.

Tim Keown is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tim.keown@espnmag.com.