Were JRW Coaches Vindicated In Cheating Scandal? Not A Chance

CHICAGO – A couple of Jackie Robinson West coaches want Chicagoans to believe they're like Buck Weaver — the 1919 White Sox player who claimed to be the only guy who wasn't on the take when the White Sox rigged the 1919 World Series.

Darold Butler and Jerry Houston told reporters Tuesday they've been vindicated of cheating accusations because Little League dropped a civil lawsuit accusing them of fraud to help the 2014 team win a national title that got taken away.

[COMMENTARY]

Vindication happens when someone gets cleared of blame or suspicion.

That hasn't happened. And now that the case has been dropped, and a jury won't deliver a verdict after hearing Butler and Houston testify under oath what they knew about the scheme to put together a team of ringers, there's no vindication to be had.

Except, maybe, for me. See, I broke the unfortunate news that JRW officials secretly drew and submitted to Little League a fraudulent map that expanded the league's boundaries to overtake sections of three sister leagues to pick up all-star players who helped them win a U.S. title.

READ MORE: A JRW CHEATING SCANDAL TIMELINE

People still say they hate me — and worse — for writing stories packed with details that didn't jibe with an untrue, yet heartwarming narrative about a team of inner-city Chicago kids slugging their way to a nationally televised championship worth millions in advertising to ESPN and six-figure donations to the adults who ran JRW's non-profit organization.

JRW's then-president assured me the cheating accusations weren't true. “Oh my goodness, we did not cheat. We did not recruit these guys,” Bill Haley said in 2014. “Nothing was done to put these kids together. We absolutely did not cheat.”

Sympathetic reporters across the city ignored the stories I wrote for as long as they could until Little League officials in February 2015 stripped JRW of its national title — saying only five of 13 players lived with the JRW's South Side boundaries.

This week, Little League settled a lawsuit with parents that included an agreement that the U.S. title would not be returned to the team.

The unfortunate facts that I reported bore it out: Adults cheated. End of story.

They put together a team that included players who lived as far away from Chicago as suburban Lynwood, Lansing and South Holland — towns that all have Little League teams of their own.

At the time, public records showed the Butlers lived in Calumet Park, and the Houstons lived in Dolton.

When I asked Butler in 2014 about accusations that he fielded a team of suburban ringers to make a run at the Little League World Series, he said, "nothing was done that should not have been done."

He was wrong about that.

But maybe Butler and Houston didn't know that JRW's then president Bill Haley and District 4 administrator Michael Kelly had filed phony paperwork that Little League officials say was an attempt to cover up the use of ineligible players in the 2014 World Series tournament.

If that's the case, then they are like Buck Weaver — a tragic figure who went to the grave denying playing a role in Chicago's most notorious baseball cheating scandals that got him banned from Major League Baseball for life.

But vindicated? Not a chance.

The facts get in the way.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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