This year’s Little League World Series, which began on Friday, is a lavish, nationally televised American sporting event. At the site of the series in South Williamsport, Pa., there is a tent for the tournament’s corporate sponsors to show off their products, an instant-replay system to decide close calls and a perfectly groomed, two-stadium baseball complex.

For all of the tournament’s seductive gloss, Little League was born in poverty. In 1938, Carl E. Stotz, a Williamsport oil company clerk, lost his job when the business shut down the plant where he worked. As Stotz explained in his 1992 autobiography, “A Promise Kept,” when he wasn’t working the odd job, he --at the urging of two baseball-crazy young nephews --devoted much of his time to planning the very first Little League.

And when he organized the first games in 1939, knowing firsthand how tough the times were, he refused to charge parents for the privilege of having their children in his league. He relied on donations from local businesses instead.

By the early 1950s, Stotz had turned Little League into an international organization, and he enshrined his no-fee policy as an official rule. Even though Stotz eventually broke with Little League after a bitter fight with the organization’s board, his rule remains. You can find it in on page 39 of this year’s 88-page Little League rule book.

“At no time should payment of any fee be a prerequisite for participation in any level of the Little League program,” the rule reads in capital letters. Although the rule permits individual leagues to request a fee of parents, “it is recommended that no fee be collected.”

The rule may come as a shock to parents who signed up their children to play Little League this year. Families routinely are required to pay fees that can range from $10 to, in one New York City league, $250 per child.

I examined registration forms from more than 400 Little League organizations around the country, and I found only a handful of leagues that do not charge a fee. Most of the fees were around $100. I could not find a single registration form disclosing the fact that a fee was optional. Several suggested the fee was mandatory.

“Any forms received without payment will be rejected,” reads the registration form for a league in Fair Lawn, N.J.

Officials at Little League headquarters in Pennsylvania said plainly that the rule remains very much in effect. But Little League is a decentralized organization, and in practice, local leagues are free to set their own budgets and mandate fees. Most leagues need tens of thousands of dollars each year to cover the costs of facilities, uniforms, equipment and field maintenance. In the Southern California league in which I have long coached, the $125 fee does not cover all expenses. Our league has to solicit donations to balance its books.

But as a condition of their charters, individual leagues are required to honor all the rules. It would be in Little League’s interests to advertise the rule widely. The organization faces competition from other sports and other youth baseball programs. While these programs sometimes offer financial assistance to poorer families, the promise of free baseball should give Little League a competitive advantage.

Parents who can afford the fees ought to contribute. Leagues such as mine should even consider raising fees to cover the true costs of their programs. But all leagues should make clear that children are still welcome even if their families don’t have the money. Parents and guardians who don’t pay should be strongly urged to volunteer their time, as the Little League rule book suggests.

And young ballplayers should feel free to remind their parents and Little League officials that there is no financial excuse for keeping them off the field. To insist on enforcing the rule is to fulfill the promise of the Depression-era clerk who made free Little League the right of every child.