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Today's story is about a scheme that exposed a Little League team as one of the biggest frauds in youth sports history.

In ‘92, the Philippines qualified for the Little League World Series for the first time ever.

Then they won it all.

It was also the first world championship for a team sport in filipino history; HUGE deal for the country.

On the surface, it seemed like a fairytale story, but there was a dark side no one knew about.

It all starts in Zamboanga City; a remote metropolis in the Philippines.

It's the most unlikely of places to find an all-star Little League team.

The kids in Zamboanga practice with sawed off tree limbs as bats, and play on fields that are meant to raise goats and cows.

Matter of fact, in '92 there was only 10 Little Leagues in the entire country.

To put that in perspective, there are over 6500 little leagues in America.

Not only that, but the Filipino team was up against some STIFF competition.

They were a part of the Far East region which included Taiwan, who had won the LLWS 15 times at that point; way more than any other region.

In ’73, Taiwan won the tournament without giving up a single hit.

The Filipino team started to raise some eyebrows when people noticed that the coaches spoke a different language than the players, but there was no hard evidence of cheating.

Once they got to Williamsport, they rolled straight to the finals, losing only one game to the Dominican Republic who was also under suspicion for cheating.

They faced off against Long Beach in the world final and put up seven runs in the first inning.

The final score was 15-4 and the boys returned home to hero’s welcome.

School was cancelled and Filipino’s gathered by the thousands to celebrate their big win.

Kids were awarded with cash prizes from their mayor and local business owners.

Plus, the team received 1 million Filipino pesos from the president; about 80 G’s in US money.

Errbody was gettin' paid.

But it wasn't long before reporters blew the whistle on this whole thing.

Six days after the championship game, Al Mendoza published a damning article about the team.

The paper had received several letters from parents stating that players on the team were ineligible, and two players were even in their third year of high school.

These kids were pretty much Carlos from Bench Warmers.

There was no real proof in the article, but it caused a lot of outrage.

It also made Mendoza public enemy #1 in the Philippines.

Many people called him a traitor; accusing him of treason, and even calling for his execution.

Two weeks after the article came out, Little League started their own investigation and ended up stripping the team of their championship.

Turns out, it wasn't just a few players that were over age.

The league discovered an intricate system of cheating that could’ve put some of these people in prison.

Shortly after, when Long Beach was given the championship, Al Mendoza was at the celebration and was given the key to the city; which painted a massive target on his back.

When Mendoza got back to the Philippines, he had to go into hiding.

Politicians in the country vowed that they would take the title back, and the national organization of lawyers threatened to bring legal action against Little League.

At this point, the championship was a source of national pride.

They argued that other teams were also under suspicion of having over-age players, but were never subjected to an investigation.

In a nutshell, the Filipino team felt like they were being singled out.

The government claimed it was because the Americans did not want to be embarrassed, so they changed the rules to boost their own image.

Two months after they were stripped of the title, the Philippines Daily Enquirer blew the roof off the scandal when they published a six-part deep dive into the incident.

After digging deeper, it became clear that not a single person on the team was eligible for participation, including the coaches.

The squad originally started with 15 players from Zamboanga City, but after they won the Filipino national championship, eight of the players were replaced before the Far East tournament.

The parents of the original players were the ones who ultimately exposed the cheating.

Players being replaced is no issue under Little League rules, but they’re supposed to be kids from the same district.

In this case, the Philippines took the best eight players from the ENTIRE COUNTRY, which had a population of approximately 64 million people at the time.

Long Beach only had 460K people in it, and in '92, they didn’t allow one of their players to participate because he lived two blocks outside of their assigned zone.

The Philippines had kids that lived up to 700 miles away and didn’t even speak the same language as the other players.

Plus, they were committing identity fraud to get these kids in the tourney.

The Filipino players were taking younger people’s identities and using them to get in.

Even crazier was the fact that parents adopted the names of the individuals whose children's identities were used in the scheme to avoid arousing suspicion.

So basically everyone was in on the fraud: the coaches, the players, and the parents.

Everyone in the scheme was promised a financial reward, but when the money they expected didn’t come through, they exposed the team's cheating to the press.

The next year, the Philippines was caught cheating once again with players that were too old and they were banned from the tournament.

Since then, no other team from the country has made the Little League World Series.

BASEBALL TRIVIA

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Frank "Noodles" Hahn played in the show from 1899 to 1906.

He led the league in strikeouts his first three years, but his best season by far was 1901.

That year he threw an ABSURD 41 complete games.

Noodles was also the last pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the 19th Century.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

• The Superfan: Wild Bill Hagy and the roar from 34

• The Wheelie: Jeff Kent’s mysterious injury

• The King: Baseball’s first superstar