While it might be overly optimistic to say that if the Little League World Series weren't televised none of this would have happened, it's a fair bet that in the absence of the ESPN exposure it would never have become the cause cΘlΦbre it did.

The annual tournament for 12-and-under baseball players ended two weeks ago, but the repercussions linger on. The New York Times still has a team of investigative reporters digging into the sordid details of Danny Almonte's fraudulent credentials. Rolando Paulino, the impresario who sponsors the Hispanic youth league bearing his name in the Bronx, has already been banned for life from Little League activities, as has Felipe Almonte, Danny's father.

The odd part of it is the Rolando Paulino All-Stars didn't even win the damned tournament. Just days after the Dominican-flavoured team from the Bronx had extinguished Oceanside (California) 1-0, they had to face another squad from Apopka, Florida, in the American championship game. Although Danny had pitched a perfect game - the tournament's first in 44 years - against Apopka in the round-robin stage a week earlier, Little League rules prohibit pitchers appearing in consecutive games, making him ineligible to take the mound. Apopka posted an 8-2 victory, putting them into the "world" final against a team from Tokyo.

President George W Bush was at that game. The Japanese kids won 2-1 but from the standpoint of television viewers, the final was somewhat anticlimactic, for it was Danny Almonte who had captured the hearts and interest of the nation.

A fireballing left-hander who stood, literally, head and shoulders above his 12-year-old compatriots, he had demonstrated a dazzling repertoire, mixing curves and change-ups with a fastball that was clocked at over 70 miles per hour.

He had thrown a no-hitter against Bristol (Connecticut), and then topped that with the perfect game against Apopka. He won all four of the games he pitched in Williamsport, striking out 62 of the 72 batters he faced, and allowing just three base hits and one run, that unearned. USA Today featured a full-colour picture of Danny on its cover.

He thoroughly captured the imagination of American sports fans, even those who rarely watch youth baseball games. ESPN's ratings for the Little League World Series were up 129 per cent from a year ago. Fans lined up by the thousands to get Danny's autograph after the Rolando Paulino All-Stars' games. The team's new nickname - The Bronx Baby Bombers - entered the American lexicon.

One morning a few weeks ago I showed up at my golf club and a member came over and asked me: "did you watch that Dominican team from New York last night?" "You mean the one with the 16-year-old pitcher?" I asked, not entirely facetiously.

All right, I was off by two years. I was only guessing, but, having coached Little League teams for a couple of years myself, I have a pretty good idea of what a 12-year-old, even a big 12-year-old, looks like, and Danny Almonte certainly didn't fit the bill.

Others had harboured similar suspicions. Officials from the Staten Island team the boys from the Bronx had beaten for the New York title had spent $10,000 to hire a private detective (apparently not a very good one) to investigate the ages of Danny and the other Rolando Paulino All-Stars.

"Every time a Hispanic team, even though the majority of (the players) were born here, triumphs, people will look for whatever way to take away what they've done," complained Rolando Paulino.

The probe came up empty, but their private eye evidently didn't try very hard. When Sports Illustrated subsequently dispatched a reporter to Almonte's Dominican hometown of Moca, it cost the equivalent of $2 to obtain records showing there were two birth records for Danny Almonte, one filed years ago by his parents showing he was born on April 7, 1987, and another, filed by his father just last year, giving his date of birth as April 7, 1989.

On the off-chance that two sets of Moca parents had coincidentally given birth to boys named Danny two years apart, SI checked the registration numbers of the parents filed at the Oficiala Civil records office. They were identical.

The games won by the Rolando Paulino team were ordered forfeited, and their records, including Danny's perfect game, have been expunged. But far from going away, the episode has spawned endless subplots, with a new revelation coming almost every day.

After New York newspapers discovered Danny had never been enrolled in an American school, Dominican school officials confirmed he had faithfully attended the seventh grade at the Andrews Bello Primary School in Moca up until June 15th of this year.

This development in turn made it impossible for him to have participated in half his New York team's regular-season games, the Little League's qualification standard, suggesting that in addition to record-tampering, the Rolando Paulino folks might also be guilty of player-poaching.

Back home in the Dominican Republic two days ago Danny's father Felipe de Jesus Almonte was charged, in absentia, with falsifying a birth certificate. He faces three to five years in jail if convicted, and a government official vowed that Almonte pΦre "will be arrested as soon as he sets foot in this country," which in turn makes it unlikely Danny or his father will be returning to their homeland any time soon.

Lawsuits will inevitably follow. (The one whose chances of success we'd like best would be that of the Staten Island parents against the private investigator who pocketed their ten grand but didn't turn up any of this stuff.) Most everyone agrees the adults should shoulder the blame, although it should seem clear enough Danny Almonte wasn't exactly an innocent pawn in this whole process. Danny might be a na∩ve youngster, but he certainly knew he wasn't 12 years old.