Green and merciless.

Here’s the condescending precursor to today’s game, as published by Youtube.

Here’s the condescending CBS treatment of the first round LLWS game today against Tennessee.

Not about race or sex. It was, for most of us, about Philly sports teams.

We watched, enthralled and engaged. Philadelphia has never had a team in the Little League World Series. Generations of political incompetence and corruption have thrown out all the parochial schools, all the possibilities of middle class participation such as the LLWS represents. But a visionary coach fought his way in, and we are cheering them all on. Yes, Mo’ne (pronounced like the artist Monet) is a gifted pitcher, but she’s also backed up by the kind of team Philadelphians recognize as their own. Daring and gifted fielders, bad ball hitters at the plate, risk takers, loyalists to one another, and endowed with that grim determination to prevail over the usual anti-Philly propaganda.

Philly won.

Watching them today was an emotional throwback to the batting antics of Mike Schmidt, who habitually went 0 and 2 on the first two pitches. Then he just stayed alive, fouling off the strikes and waiting for the balls. He led the league in walks as a rule. Schmidt, being the best third baseman in history, also often ended his at bats with a home run. But the Taney team accomplished something just as important as a homer when you have an ace competing with an ace. They fouled and fouled and fouled a power pitcher until he finally ran out of pitch count and had to be benched. Little League relievers are at a disadvantage. They’re not closers. They’ve been playing the game in other positions. They have control problems when they’re suddenly called to the mound.

Philadelphia did what Philadelphia does. Stick with what’s working. Mo’ne did not strike out as many as the Tennessee ace, whom you could almost see ten years from now on an MLB pitching mound. But she finished the game. She didn’t need as many pitches to finish her innings. Sometimes she needed only eight pitches to get three outs. And she was her own closer. She struck out the last four batters she faced.

Through the course of the game she never changed expression. When she needed a big play her teammates provided it. They love her. City of Brotherly Love.

Even the Tennessee ace acknowledged her with a fist bump after her last at bat and his last inning. America is not about race and sex. (Although I’m thinking a bunch of power hitters from Tennessee are scratching their heads tonight…)

City of Brotherly Love. Not about separation, demographics, divisive narratives. Watch the kids. A team is a team because it suppresses all those things in the name of working together.

But gunfighter eyes don’t hurt.