In Santa Monica our impeccably liberal beach town the park where many of the games take

In Santa Monica, our impeccably liberal beach town, the park where many of the games take place truly resembles the melting pot much of the country can only fantasise about: multilingual, multiethnic and representing every social class.Like much else in America, the sporting idyll is not without its darker side. Despite many well-intentioned efforts, rank competitiveness creeps in startlingly early, among parents as well as children. It is sobering to realise, too, that the key to success in this group is not being friendly, intelligent, or witty. What it’s all about is how adept you are at knocking the ball over the pitcher’s head or shooting hoops on the playground.And then there’s the Little League pledge, which opens with: “I trust in God. I love my country and will respect its laws.” What on earth has that to do with baseball? Since my encounter with the pledge came on the eve of the war on Iraq, it set me thinking how easily American idealism can get perverted for all the wrong causes.With its talk of God and the law, the pledge comes perilously close to the rhetoric of George Bush – the first former Little Leaguer to become president.

Is this what my son has signed up for? Actually, I don’t think so This is Santa Monica, not the wilds of Mr Bush’s west Texas. Here, our motto is simpler and more secular: In Coach Todd we trust.. A mountaineer whose right arm became trapped under a heavy boulder in a remote stretch of the eastern Utah desert took the drastic step of hacking off his own arm with a pocket knife before abseiling down a sheer rock wall and looking for help. He saved himself,” sheriff’s deputy Mitch Vetere told reporters.Mr Ralston, who is 27, was climbing alone in the Canyonlands National Park last Saturday when the boulder dislodged and landed on him. For several days he held out the hope that someone would stumble across his path or spot him from the air By Tuesday, he had run out of water. By Thursday, he realised he would not survive unless he took drastic action.Using his penknife, he cut off his right arm just below the elbow – an excruciating process that took several hours.

He then applied a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding, rappelled 60 feet down a rock wall to the canyon floor and kept walking until he came across two other mountaineers. They managed to flag down a rescue helicopter, which took him to hospital.By yesterday, he had been moved from Utah to a hospital in Colorado, where his condition was described as serious.. The scions of the Bacardi rum family gather next week in the gentle island of Bermuda, but the mood will be anything but holiday-like. Instead, one burning issue may split the clan asunder: should outsiders be allowed to invest in the world’s largest privately owned drinks company?

The scions of the Bacardi rum family gather next week in the gentle island of Bermuda But the mood will be anything but holiday-like. The family fled after the revolution, their assets confiscated.