Danny Almonte

Baseball Player
Date Of Birth:
7 April 1987
Place Of Birth:
Moca, Dominican Republic
Best Known As:
Overage Little League star of 2001
Danny Almonte was a New York Little League baseball player from the Dominican Republic who made headlines in 2001: first for being an outstanding pitcher, then again when it was revealed that he was 14 years old, and thus too old for Little League. Danny Almonte was a left-handed pitcher for the 2001 Rolando Paulino All-Stars, a Little League team from the Bronx, New York. The team made it to that year's Little League World Series, where Almonte's 70 MPH pitches made him nearly unhittable; on August 18, 2001 he pitched a perfect game against Apopka, Florida, striking out the first 16 batters he faced. His team, made up mostly of Latinos from the Bronx, became media darlings and earned the nickname of the Baby Bronx Bombers. After the tournament a Sports Illustrated reporter found documents in the Dominican Republic suggesting that Almonte was born in 1987, not 1989, making him two years too old to compete in Little League. Investigations by Little League and Dominican officials found that Almonte's father had registered the boy's birth twice, saving two years off his age with the second registration. Little League erased Almonte and his team from the tournament records, and banned Almonte's father from Little League activities for life. Almonte went on to play for New York's James Monroe High School, where he helped win two championships in 2004 and 2005. After playing briefly for a pro team, the Southern Illinois Miners, he attended and played ball for the junior college Western Oklahoma State. An arm injury kept him from playing after that and he became an assistant coach at a school in New York.
Extra Credit:

Apopka, Florida later defeated the Rolando Paulino All-Stars in the 2001 tournament’s U.S. finals (in a game that Danny Almonte did not pitch); the next day the Japan All-Stars defeated Apopka to win the World Series… Danny Almonte was back in the news in 2006, when the New York Daily News reported that he had married 30-year-old hairdresser Rosy Perdomo on October 14, 2005; at the time, Almonte was 18 years old and a senior in high school.

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