Little Boys' Games? Hardly.
When sportswriters want to put down professional athletes--that is, the very people who enable them to make a living--they like to refer to them as "grown men playing a little boys' game". (I don't know of one who's ever called Billie Jean King or Martina Navratilova a "grown woman playing a little girls' game", but I guess that's beside the point.)
The fact is, every sport I can think of was created by grownups for grownups. Yes, some of them, like baseball, grew out of a boys' game, but quickly outgrew those childish roots.
Let's take baseball as an example. The modern form of the sport was created in 1845 by the Knickerbocker Club, a group of young men who got together for recreation on their days off from work. It was soon adopted by other young men. When little boys took up the new sport, they were only imitating their elders.
American football was created by college students for college students, and it became a professional sport primarily because some of those students wanted to keep playing football after graduation.
Basketball was invented by James Naismith at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, specifically as an indoor sport that would encourage young men to exercise during the winter. It spread around the world through YMCAs whose mission was to offer physical recreation as well as spiritual sustenance to young working men who might otherwise fall prey to urban evils.
Hockey, as a modern sport, was created by students at Montreal's McGill University, and it was brought to the United States by other college students.
Lawn tennis, far from being a game for little boys and girls, was invented by an English army officer and was first played by grownups at a lawn party in Wales. (For that matter, it was inspired by court tennis, which was a sport played by kings and their courtiers.)
And golf? Is it even possible to think of golf as a children's game? The thought of its origins conjures up images (for me, at least) of canny old Scotsmen, whiskered and kilted, carrying a few bottles of the auld mischief tucked into their bags next to their gnarly clubs.
Which brings us to auto racing--oh, never mind.
Anyway, guys, it would be much more accurate to call Little Leaguers little boys playing a grown man's game. That's why the Little League diamond is smaller than a major league diamond. And that's why the bats are smaller. The typical ten-year-old with a full-sized bat is a much bigger danger to himself than to the baseball.
If you want to denigrate professional athletes, say they make too much money, as most of them do; say they're boors, louts and/or oafs, which some of them are (and so are some sportswriters); but don't raise that tired " little boys game" banner. I sure won't salute it.