Photo credit: Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports

Photo credit: Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports

Allison Davis, writing for New York Magazine:

Reading about race relations in America is the most depressing experience you could embark upon this month. Thankfully, here’s this black teenage girl not just dominating at the most American of America’s pastimes, but winning everyone over, making headlines, and negotiating appearances on late-night talk shows. Her interviews, in which she considers what it means to be a superstar and role model at the age of 13 and her own potential as a future baseball star (or, frankly, whatever she wants), are a much-needed antidote to otherwise bleak headlines about what it means to be black in America right now.

But still, Davis: You should probably ignore people like me who are trying to hang way too much symbolism on your shoulders and just play ball. We’re all really glad you exist.

Well, that MAN CHILD on Las Vegas may not be really glad she exists, but yeah, Mo’ne is probably the coolest, most postive thing going on in America right now.

From a local standpoint, Mo’ne and the Dragons are the Philly story. Girl against boys is Rocky, it’s Allen Iverson, it’s the ’93 Phils. Philly loves talented, unconventional underdogs. A 13-year-old girl throwing two complete game shutouts on national TV, with a chance at another against powerhouse Las Vegas coming tomorrow night, is straight out of the Win Philly Over, and in a Hurry script. 2) Las Vegas is the perfect villain. They’ve scored 54 runs in their last six games. They have players with names like Payton, Josiah, Dillon, Dallan, Zach with a ch, and Austin. It’s as if the 2003 book of top baby names exploded onto their roster. With their formation, White America has completely outdone itself. They’re basically the D2 Iceland of the Little League World Series:

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Philly is a diverse group of city kids whose best player is a girl. All they’re missing is Emilio Estevez and an invasive Hendricks sponsorship. Dragons fly together?

3) They’re in the late-summer, Phillies stink vacuum right now. There’s no competition. Win tomorrow night and I’m not sure this city is going to be able to handle itself. Philly does hysteria well, but not even Action News has enough reporters for the man-on-the-street segments that will be needed for this one. As a community, we’re gonna have to resort to YouTube bar gamewatch celebration videos to satisfy our euphoric needs, because we can’t have Don Tollefson on our screens anymore screaming, “IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN!”