I agree with the Yankees
Given that I'm a huge Mets fan, that's something you probably never thought I'd say, but given the recent story involving the coach of the Staten Island Little League team (TLDR version: he ripped Aaron Judge for not spending time with his team while at the Little League World Series), I have to side with the Yankees on this issue.
To begin, it was incredibly ungrateful for coach Bob Laterza to say what he said, because several Yankees not named Aaron Judge, including ace Gerrit Cole and manager Aaron Boone, spent some time with his team a couple of Sundays ago, sharing advice, signing autographs, posing for pictures, you name it. Instead of being grateful for that once-in-a-lifetime experience, Laterza chose to complain that one player - one of the most popular baseball players on the planet - was unable to dedicate a significant amount of his time visiting his players.
Most brazenly of all, Laterza dropped the sports-talk-show-caller line of "[The kids] are the ones who pay your salary." When someone uses that line, it's a good probability that this concept of "I pay your organization some money, therefore you should do everything I want you to do" bleeds into their viewpoint of other professions, which means my heart goes out to the employees at their favorite restaurants.
The Yankees, to their credit, said the team was committed to spending time with all the Little Leaguers who were in attendance, which, surely to Laterza's surprise, includes seeing Little Leaguers who are not from Staten Island. And they are still planning to invite the Staten Island team to a home game after the LLWS wraps up. Aaron Judge, because he is a kind and decent human being, declined to get into a back-and-forth with the coach through the media, and preferred to keep the focus on the kids.
Professional athletes, in my opinion, don't owe the fans anything beyond playing the game to the best of their abilities. If a player offers to sign autographs and pose with fans for some selfies, it's a gracious gesture that should never go unappreciated. Hopefully, those Little Leaguers will remember that, and forget what their coach had to say.
If Coach Laterza finds himself back in the LLWS next year - which will feature the Mets and Mariners in the Little League Classic - he had better be on his best behavior. He needs to be, because, as a Staten Island native, I am fully aware that our borough has been a New York City punch line forever, and it would be nice to, you know, not be seen as a joke, for once.