Thursday Grab Bag: City Tournament

By now you know that Naa'taanii will play in the City Tournament despite violating a rule that disallows teams with at least two forfeits to participate.

After talking to most all of the key individuals involved, I must say I'm surprised with the final decision.

The crux of the issue, which it eventually turned on, is that Terry Nelson and the Farmington Amateur Baseball Congress did not want to ban the Naa'taanii players from the tournament because of coach Dineh Benally's failure to comply with the rules regarding eligibility.

It became an ethical question: Punish the players on a fairly trivial technicality vs. stick to the rulebook in an effort to continue standardizing the league, backing Connie Mack vice president Rick Quevedo's goal of eliminating the inconsistencies and minor shortcuts that have gone on for quite some time.

While I don't have a problem with the actual decision, some of the coaches will, I'm sure.

The general response among the coaches ranged from, 'It's a tough decision for the kids, but allowing them to play sets a dangerous precedent for others who choose to bend the rules on purpose,' to 'There's a rule, they broke the rule, they shouldn't play,' to 'We believe the Naa'taanii team has a history of minor deviations from the rules. Because this is a long-standing issue with their team, we don't think they should be allowed to play.'

My issue is with the way the FABC handled the process, not the final decision. Quevedo is a volunteer. He doesn't get paid to run the day-to-day operations of the Connie Mack league. He faces a fair amount of political pressure which escalates in a situation like this one.

He could take the path of least resistance, choosing not to be viewed as a dictator and letting minor details slide. That's not what he decided to do. He decided to accept the hassle and the trouble and try to make a cultural change within the league, which started back in April when he began a clear communication process laying out how he would operate.

When he realized that Naa'taanii was supposed to forfeit two games by the rule book, he moved fast and he moved with stealth, letting Benally know. If the original decision had been allowed to stand, it would've been made public eventually -- when we noticed Naa'taanii didn't make the City Tournament -- but the drama would've been much, much less.

Benally protested -- understandable, considering the winner of the City Tournament has the potentially life-changing opportunity of playing in the Connie Mack World Series, and who would want to be responsible for denying their players that chance?

Even at that point, I can understand why the FABC listened. They don't want to be unfair to the players, either. But what followed was a series of waffling, confrontations and misspeaks that reflects poorly on the power structure in place. Who really makes the decisions? How much sway should an angry coach have on who makes those decisions? When is the decision final?

These are questions raised by the events that followed. Quevedo, realizing this was turning into a bigger issue, figured the FABC Board of Directors ought to be involved. Why have one if they aren't involved in decisions like this? But, according to Quevedo, a member of the board confronted him and, in Quevedo's words, "threw me under the bus." Basically he told Quevedo he needed to make the decision on his own.

So Quevedo went back to Naa'taanii and told Benally that he wouldn't play in the tournament. Benally argued with him, and a frustrated Quevedo basically said, 'Fine. Do what you want,' and exited stage left. Quevedo just wanted to end the conversation, but Benally took it as truth: His team was back in the City Tournament.

Of course, it eventually ended back in the hands of the FABC, who allowed Naa'taanii in the tournament. They undercut Quevedo, who was on record publicly as being against Naa'taanii playing in the tournament and had to face a bit of criticism for doing so. He doesn't get paid for the position, yet was using an aggressive approach that mimicked what the league's coaches desired: Better enforcement of the rules.

Benally messed up, and he's paying the consequences by getting suspended for the rest of this season and next year. The players have had to sit through some terse moments. The FABC is immune to anything more than a 'I don't like it' talk from the league's coaches. Quevedo is left out to dry a bit here.

If the league had a firmer grasp on who has authority and what the formal procedure should be in a case like this, much of the drama, emotion and public nature revolving around this controversy wouldn't exist.

Should Quevedo have thought of a compromise that allowed the players into the City Tournament and punished Benally in the first place? Perhaps. But when he abdicates his volunteer position, the FABC is going to have a hard time finding another volunteer that cares enough to stick their reputation out there and face criticism. The next volunteer likely will fall back into 'apathetic, it's not worth it to chase down minor paperwork violations and sketchy import players' mode, and the league will be worse off for it.

*****

I'll let you digest my opinion on the Naa'taanii/City Tournament situation for this week without forcing some other potatoes down your pallet. But I will say that the next week will be telling for Lance Armstrong's chances in the Tour de France.

I'm on record as saying he won't finish in the top five, and here's why:

1) He's old -- at 37, he's the second-oldest cyclist in the field.

2) He didn't -- couldn't -- train like he did before his previous tours. He broke a collarbone, saw his child being born and had a much busier appearance schedule across the country, and had to make some sacrifices and truncate his training.

3) He never finished outside the top 3 in an individual time trial during any of the years he won the Tour. This remarkable streak ended early this year -- Stage 1, where he took 10th place.

4) His Astana teammate Alberto Contador, the 2007 Tour champion, has better odds than Armstrong. Armstrong has said all along that one of them will have to defer to the other at some point, and Contador is expected to make his move in the mountains beginning Friday.

5) The mountains. Armstrong built his legend during the climbs, separating himself from contenders often in psychologically crushing fashion. I don't believe he's capable of that during this Tour, and Armstrong himself has acknowledged he's not sure what will happen. Watch for him to fade out of contention during the next week.

Stay true and keep pounding,
Christopher