Money, steroids a world away to Little Leaguers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Twelve-year-old Akene Farmer-Michos, who walks 10 blocks from home to play baseball at Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park, says major leaguers who use steroids to make them bigger and richer are wrong.

"You're not the person who's playing, but these pills are playing," the first baseman said on Friday at Little League Baseball and Softball's first International Opening Day.

"Little League is different. There are kids you see every day in your community. They're not like the huge $8 million players."

Spring brings the start of baseball season for professionals who do it for a living, and for millions of children who do it for fun.

At Marcus Garvey Park, not all the kids were dreaming of becoming the next Hank Aaron, Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez.

"It's a thinking game, and I like the people I play with," said Tschabalala Self, a 15-year-old pitcher from West Harlem who has played softball since she was six.

Stephen Keener, chief executive of Little League International, oversees an organization that coordinates some 2.6 million players in 7,400 leagues in 75 countries.

"Kids are influenced by what they see from their professional heroes," he said. "Our concern is they get the wrong message.... You can't cheat and get away with it. You work hard and do it the old-fashioned way."

Many of the Little Leaguers were aware of the professional game's realities and the accusations swirling around whether San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds and other players may have taken performance-enhancing drugs.

"They definitely shouldn't be able to play the game," said Self, referring to steroids users.

Yet Ralph Rodriguez admired how hard major leaguers play.

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"Most of the players, no matter how much they get paid, they go 100 percent hard," said Rodriguez, a 15-year-old shortstop for the Homestead Rays in the Harlem Little League. "Talent doesn't come from steroids, it comes from you."

Rodriguez said he believes Bonds did not take steroids, and belongs in baseball's Hall of Fame.

Rich "Goose" Gossage, a former star relief pitcher for the New York Yankees and San Diego Padres who joined in the Little League Opening Day ceremonies, said soaring salaries had cost major-league baseball much of its innocence.

Still sporting his trademark Fu Manchu mustache 12 years after retiring, Gossage added drugs were "no part of the game," and that parents and kids should focus on perseverance and teamwork over absolute performance.

Playing at Marcus Garvey Park, a small field surrounded by a chain-link fence, is hardly like patrolling the Yankee Stadium outfield a couple of miles north.

But for Farmer-Michos, it is baseball heaven.

"I can come to this field, and there's usually three or four people playing catch, and I can join them," he said. "All you have to do is just come in and start playing."