You are about to get inundated with Little League Baseball for the next week or so, whether you like it or not.

Quite honestly, I don’t like it.

Oh, I don’t mind the concept of Little League baseball. It’s a great part of Americana; you know, the whole Norman Rockwell thing.

My objection of what has happened at the top end of Little League Baseball. For years, you could tune into ABC’s Wide World of Sports and catch the team from Taiwan dusting some American team that never had a chance. It was a one-shot, two-hour telecast and had a great deal of charm to go along with it. Especially when a USA would defy the odds and win the thing.

Not anymore. This proliferation of ESPN’s coverage of EVERY game at the Little League World Series has made it almost unwatchable.

Like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, networks need to learn there can be too much of a good thing. It is such cookie-cutter broadcasting; all they do is change out the teams and do it again. And again. And again.

You know it’s coming before every telecast starts — shots of little boys dancing with mascots, mommies being interviewed in the stands, kids sliding on pieces of cardboard down the hill behind the outfield fence and miked-up coaches who love showing how they can over-coach.

A couple of things you rarely see: (1) announcers saying the word “error” when a ball goes through the second baseman’s wickets and (2) good umpiring. We are constantly reminded that the umpire are volunteers, but the strike zones (especially on outside pitches) is beyond laughable. Even a volunteer should be able to see that.

I know they are all cute little boys and they come from all over the world to play in South Williamsport, Pa., as summer comes to a close, but it’s too much. And don’t get me started on how they also televise the semifinal games from the Great Lakes Regional.

Make it special. Show less of it.

I was in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, this weekend on some R&R with old friends, and discovered that there are approximately two million toes, active and on duty, in this fine town.

I didn’t count. I’m working off the 2016 census number of 198,541, so this is a give or take situation. Some people might have had six toes on one foot, like Cricket back home in South Carolina. (He still made All-State.) Some folks might have lost a leg, and thus their toes. Some people might have shot a toe off, as my dad did with a shotgun. (True story! True story!)

Those sorts of tragedies will skew the numbers. And the toes.

Me and my (10) toes ended up in Little Rock because of two of my immature friends, who have important jobs but still…they, like me, are basically idiots. We always say we are going to meet somewhere and do something. Two of us will get to go to this (Final Four, 2018) but one can’t make it. Two of us will get to go to that (LA Tech Athletics Hall of Fame inductions) but the other one can’t make it.

But when I walked into the downtown Marriott Friday afternoon, Thing 1 was there to meet me — “I can’t believe we finally DID it!” — and Thing 2 walked in 30 minutes later.

Joy. Rapture!

(Often at night when I am sitting on the couch and I have my phone in front of me and I am laughing, my spousal unit will ask, without stopping as she walks by, “Talking to your immature friends again?”)

It’s so beautiful. Longtime immature friends are the best friends. History and all.

So we walk around downtown LR Saturday morning and all, cruisin’, being cool, trying to keep the chicks away from us, and we end up at the Farmer’s Market, which — kudos to Little Rock — is awesome. And that’s where I see the sign above. And I figure, “Dang, the toe ring biz in Little Rock must be off the charts.”

“Hey, all you toes! Back off! Stay in the waiting area!”

There was no such problem on this steamy morning. Maybe it was the humidity or the time of day, or maybe all the toes needing toe rings slept in, but business was slack on this particular lazy day. There were ten toes in the Getting Fitted Area and, despite two million toes within this sign’s gravitation pull, no toes on deck.

But I appreciated the guy’s sign. And his optimism. And his willingness.

Ringless, our toes cruised on to a book store and to a latte, and then to THE event of the trip…

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