Mo’ne Davis, Little League World Series sensation

The optimal metaphor for all things Internet, in the end, is already settled. The Internet is a garbage barge floating idly around a bay on a hot day, with brightly colored birds periodically alighting on it. But if we can indulge a sub-metaphor: Twitter, when it works, is something like a city in which you can rent for free in the neighborhood of your choice, and which you will populate with the neighbors you most want to have scream jokes at you all day long.

That was supposed to sound appealing, because Twitter is generally pretty fun and good, but also even good cities have places in them you wouldn’t go -- bars you’d hate, neighborhoods you’d just as soon avoid for a number of reasons, parties to which you can count yourself blessed not to have been invited. It’s one of many things he does on Twitter, but @FanSince09’s self-appointed role in Twitter City is to go to those terrible bars and awful monster-patrolled neighborhoods and super-shitty parties and then report back on all the terrible things he sees there.

It’s too easy to talk about Mo’ne Davis the wrong way, or at least in a way that puts a burden on a 13-year-old girl that her performance does not require. The Little League World Series is mostly just a fun chance to watch kids play baseball at a precociously high level. It is also, perhaps as often, a chance for us to completely lose our perspective.

It’s so easy to forget the “little” in Little League, especially when we’re watching alpha-children who are already nearly adult height. Because they are so good, and because of the reflexes we build up as baseball-watching humans, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that these are kids, and forget that word is shorthand for “not fully formed.” You can put anything on LLWS players in terms of projecting a future, but any and all of it will be both flatly irresponsible and wrong, not because some of them won’t be major leaguers, but because most of them won’t be. Most of them won’t even come close. In this way, they’re like most everyone else their age.

Think for a moment what it was like to be 13 years old. If you can remember at all, if you can separate the 11s from the 12s from the 13s from the 14s. Everyone’s experience is a bit different. We all come from different backgrounds, and where you grew up, how you grew up and who you grew up with all played factors in who you were as a 13-year-old. Poverty, wealth, strict parents, forgiving parents, no parents, older siblings to learn from, younger siblings to care for. There’s no prototypical 13.

Still, there are universals. You probably felt more grown up than you were, wiser to the world than you were, more independent than you were. You probably felt a bit awkward at times, a bit confused. You probably didn’t understand your body or your thoughts. You probably acted out at times, even if you didn’t want to, made decisions that left you looking back wondering why you said or did those things. Changes occur, not just aesthetic ones, but ones inside the body, too, making emotions that feel all the stranger. You’re not a child, not an adult. Thirteen is a difficult age in the best of circumstances. Little League Baseball World Series star Mo’ne Davis is 13 years old. We need to remember that.

Remember Mo’ne Davis, the 12-year-old girl who struck out all the boys in a shutout win to get her Taney Dragons squad to the Little League World Series? Well, Mo’ne is now in the Little League World Series, and she remains absolutely dominant:

In six innings, Mo’ne struck out eight Tennessee batters, allowing only two hits and allowing no walks. She’s the first girl to throw a shutout in the Little League World Series, and has now thrown 12 straight shutout innings. Her team got the 4-0 win over the squad from Nashville, which puts them in great shape to start the double-elimination tournament.