Chicago Little Leaguers, stripped of 2014 title, get say in new documentary

There is a scene in the new documentary “One Golden Summer,” about the 2014 Jackie Robinson West Little League team, where one of the players, Darion Radcliff, describes his life as a teenager.

Radcliff was part of the team that won the United States championship that year, before it was engulfed in a cheating scandal that made national headlines. Baseball got hard after that, he said.

He felt stressed, like people knew his story and judged him. Simple things, like throwing a baseball, became hard. Radcliff started smoking pot and got expelled from high school.

“(He went) into the dark room and closed the curtains,” his mom says in the film. “He wouldn’t eat.”

Radcliff decided then that he needed to quit baseball.

It is a somber moment in a documentary, which premiered as part of the Chicago International Film Festival on Wednesday, that has plenty of joy but also cannot escape the trauma of what happened to the 13 kids on that team.

Director Kevin Shaw’s film revisits the story of the all-Black baseball team that captivated the city and the country a decade ago, only to have their title stripped after some players were found to live outside the league’s prescribed boundaries. Shaw’s project, which he hopes to sell to a streaming platform, marks the first time most are speaking in-depth about what happened.

“People from all over the city came out to these (Little League World Series) watch parties. I was there,” former Illinois governor Pat Quinn said at the premiere, before showing off a photo from that summer of him wearing a Jackie Robinson T-shirt. “This team was a movement.”

After winning the U.S. championship (and losing to South Korea in the World Series final), the boys were stars. They were covered by “Good Morning America” and on cable news. They went to the MLB World Series and visited President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. In Chicago, the city threw an enormous downtown parade attended by 10 thousand people, and Chicago Magazine named the team Chicagoans of the year.

The film recounts that rise and then what happened next: a competing team’s claim that Jackie Robinson Little League used players from outside its assigned geographic boundaries; a Pulitzer-winning reporter’s work that backed up those claims; Little League’s decision to strip the team of its title; and the seven years of lawsuits that followed.

The film asks who’s to blame but doesn’t exactly answer. Maybe it’s the Jackie Robinson league administrator who put the team together (he does not appear in the film) or the rival coach who made the accusations (he does). Or maybe it’s Little League officials, for not having better protocols to ensure players are eligible before the tournament.

Shaw, the director, said finding blame wasn’t the point.

“It’s to think about the kids and their experiences,” he said. “They’re 13 years old, and they have to live with this.”

Part of that mission is to reintroduce us to the players, including a corrective on lazy media narratives from that time rooted in racial stereotypes. “Thirteen young boys have become beacons of hope for some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country,” a CBS reporter says in one clip.

As the movie points out, the players were mostly from middle-class families in neighborhoods that were decidedly not besieged by violence.

Shaw, in an interview, said he also wants the audience to consider the meaning of the punishment and what it did to the kids at the center of the story. Can you punish the adults without inflicting damage on kids? He noted the recent scandals from Michigan’s football team and the Houston Astros, neither of which were stripped of their titles.

However viewers answer those questions, it’s striking to see those players today, their broad shoulders and deeper voices, interspersed with footage of their smaller, more innocent childhoods.

Though some declined, several former players participated, sharing stories of overcoming the mistakes and callousness of a group of adults. One player, Josh Houston, tells the story of the team attending a Chicago Blackhawks game after the scandal and one man heckling the group with racist abuse, calling the kids “a monkey train” and cheaters.

“What if all those things didn’t happen?” Tre Hondras, a member of the team, said in an interview before the premiere. “You don’t know. We might be immortalized in the city.”

But on the red carpet, the story was a happy one, and a reminder of why the group was, for an instant, megawatt stars.

The players smiled and posed. Hondras and his teammate DJ Butler said they graduated from college and are playing independent pro baseball. Pierce Jones is studying to be a chef. “I can’t wait for this to come out,” said Butler. “Instead of me versus a million people, trying to tell the story.”

Darion Radcliff was at the premiere, too, smiling and laughing with friends. “I’m hoping this could be some kind of closure,” he said. (Today, he’s working on his music career.)

There was also something poignant about seeing the parents of the players on the red carpet watching their kids give interviews and give updates on their lives. They took pictures and filmed them just like they were Little Leaguers.

“Ten years ago they were like little babies,” said Jerry Houston, an assistant coach on the team and Josh’s dad. “But this feels similar, it’s the same pride.”

He added: “Except they’re grown up now. I have to get on my tippy-toes to get my pictures.”