Alright, up 7-5, top of the sixth, man on first and second, one out, two more to win it all. As clouds spread across the sky above Howard J. Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport, PA last August, everyone’s eyes were fixed on the mound.

On the first pitch of the at bat, Las Vegas Mountain Ridge’s shortstop, Josiah Cromwick, grounds the baseball back towards Jackie Robinson West’s relief pitcher, Ed Howard, and the team completes a 1-6-3 double play to win the game. Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West is named Little League United States Champion.

For these 9 to 13-year-olds, it must have felt like winning the World Series. But imagine being forced to relinquish this victory, as if all the time, commitment and sacrifice put into eventually claiming your national title was put to waste.

Last Wednesday, after several months of investigation, Little League publically announced that Jackie Robinson West officials had deliberately utilized a “falsified boundary map” to recruit athletes in bordering Little League regions. Along with stripping all of the team’s victories in the 2014 Little League Baseball International Tournament, Little League also suspended team manager Darold Butler from Little League activity and suspended the team from Little League World Series activity until Anne and William Haley, president and league treasurer of Jackie Robinson West, respectively, are removed from their positions.

Before people begin to point fingers, it is crucial that they direct their attention first to the players. According to Little League International, the kids had no prior knowledge of the cheating scandal. If this is true, I have the utmost sympathy for these children who were put in this position at the expense of others’ desire to win.

After hearing this news, 13-year-old Jackie Robinson West pitcher Brandon Green said, “We do know that we’re champions.” He is a champion, and so are the other twelve players on his team.

Although revoking their national title and giving it to Las Vegas Mountain Ridge, the second place team, was the correct decision, the fact that the trophy is sitting in Nevada rather than Illinois should not diminish the Chicagoan players’ achievement of becoming “champions.”

On the other hand, at the end of the day, they were members of a team that cheated to win, and it is truly unfortunate that the players, their friends and their families will always see “2014 Little League United States Champions: Jackie Robinson West.”

However, the underlying factor is that not all the of the criticism should be directed towards the team officials.

Consider the beginnings of Little League Baseball. In 1938, oil clerk Carl Edwin Stotz, per request from his two nephews, wanted to give children the opportunity to play organized baseball. He created a 3-team league in Williamsport, PA and created what we now know as “Little League.”

Little League formed solely on the basis of allowing kids to enjoy themselves and play the game of baseball. It wasn’t the highly-intense competition we see today.

In society, there exists an increasingly, almost excessively, competitive tendency especially in Major League Baseball (MLB). For example, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, both significantly-influential MLB stars, tainted their reputations by using performance-enhancing drugs. These cheating cases, ranging from steroids to corked bats to pine tar, call to question if we should really continue to call baseball “America’s sport.”

It’s difficult not to notice that this culture of cheating transcends just one sport (exemplified in the New England Patriots’ “Deflategate”). It’s prevalent in almost all aspects of society because of the progressively-competitive environment we live in.

There is a certain “win at all costs” or “do whatever it takes” mentality that is so pervasive only because we want to prove our dominance over someone or something. These destructive habits have increased in severity that they even have the ability to compromise an individual’s intuition or common sense.

Take for example the causes of cheating in school. It is a simple choice to not cheat on exams; yet, students worldwide still do it every day. They are willing to do “whatever it takes” to perform highly even if they are cheating the tests and most importantly, cheating themselves.

The issue is that there is no definite solution to resolve this competitive nature in society. I believe that it is an innate desire to want to excel in certain aspects of life, at times unintentionally at the expense of yourself. There are various circumstances that will test our moral compasses, and in those moments, we have to ask ourselves, “Honestly, to what extent are we willing to prove our “superiority” over others? Where do we draw the line?”

For example, the team officials of Jackie Robinson West tried to “win at all costs,” but what about the cost of indirectly teaching immoral, duplicitous behavior to the young players? Weren’t the coaches and parents supposed to be role models?

In society, there seems to be this double standard regarding the success of professional athletes and the moral innocence that we expect from them. We certainly want these athletes to play their respective sports with integrity, yet we also pay them an exorbitant amount of money to win and perform at the highest level of excellence.

Perhaps, our lofty expectations of athletes’ success causes them to “win at all costs.” Is the prevalence of cheating in professional sports and in society our own wrongdoing? Can this problem even be fixed?