The Taney Dragons don't cheat. They mostly just win.

They're the first team from Philadelphia to win the Pennsylvania Little League title and only the ninth team from the state to make the Little League World Series since 1957.

The success of this 2-year-old Little League program doesn't come without criticism. After the state title game in July, Taney players read Instagram comments accusing them of cheating.

"They said that the only reason they're still letting us go to [Mid-Atlantic Regionals] is that three-fourths of our team is black and that we have a girl on our team," Joe Richardson, Taney first baseman and pitcher, said just days before leaving for the regional tournament.

One opposing coach filed a protest with Little League over player eligibility. Defeated coaches, parents and players raised questions about the population base Taney draws from, the size of its charter and the eligibility of its players.

It's all Little League legal, but the organization can't or won't answer some of the questions.

The silence and confusion has stoked resentment toward the success of a Taney team that's otherwise charmed in its run to South Williamsport.

"I guess they want to boost Little League inside the inner cities, I don't know," Collier Township parent Dan Hendrick said. Taney beat Collier Township in the Pennsylvania championship. His son cried, Hendrick said, and continues to struggle to watch the Little League tournament.

The population of Collier Township is about 7,200. Taney's charter allows it to draw from almost all of Philadelphia — population 1.55 million.

The Collier Township Little League has three teams for a total of 36 players, according to Tom Meneskie, who managed Collier through the Little League postseason.

Taney's league has eight teams of about 12 players each, Taney manager Alex Rice said, for a total of about 96 players.

The South Marple team that Taney beat for the District 19 title draws from a league with 83 or 84 kids, South Marple manager John Sperone said.

After Taney beat Collier Township for the state title, Meneskie filed a protest with the state tournament and Little League assistant director of the Eastern Region, Patrick Holden. Meneskie claimed one of the Taney Dragons came from outside the team's charter area.

Taney Youth Baseball Association was founded as a non Little League organization in 1994. It was first chartered with Little League in 2012.

In an email obtained by PennLive, Holden explained to an official in District 4, where Collier plays, that children previously in the Taney program were approved to play for Taney Little League, consistent with policy on new charters.

Meneskie said he never received a formal response to his protest.

"I guess that that team was set to go and they had it planned for a couple years to do this," Meneskie said. "I just asked if they were going to follow up on the boundary and I never heard back."

"The problem is ... we draw from all over the city," Taney manager Alex Rice said. "And [Eastern] Regional encouraged us to try and include as much of our registry that we had prior to taking out a charter."

In 2013, at the suggestion of the Eastern Region's charter committee, that charter was expanded to reflect where Taney Youth Baseball Association members came from, Rice said.

This year's Taney team gained two players from that expansion, Rice said. Three players from the 2013 team chose to stop playing travel ball -- some decided to focus on soccer and another had to practice for his Bar Mitzvah.

A 2014 rule change allows all Little League teams to select kids who go to school within their charter boundaries, regardless of where they live.

"The other 10 kids were all Taney kids who have been in the league for years and years and years and years and years and lived within the [2012] boundary," he said. " ... The 2014 boundary, the boundary went around two children who previously had not lived within the boundary."

Rice also said that the charter modification states that if another league -- such as the Fairmount Sports Association in Northwest Philadelphia -- applied for a Little League charter, Taney would cede its expanded territory to a future charter.

When the boundaries were being expanded, Rice said, administrators in his district and surrounding districts were all informed of the change, and they all signed off on it.

However, an official in one of those districts — District 22 in southeastern Pennsylvania — in a July 10 email exchange obtained by PennLive asked Eastern region assistant director Patrick Holden what Taney's boundary was "trying to head off a problem before it gets started."

Holden responded with a Google map showing Taney's original charter boundaries and an expansion marked "proposed revisions to Taney Youth Baseball LL" nearly doubling the league's territory. But he had to clarify.

"The proposed and the existing are the areas," Holden's response read.

A PennLive email to Little League spokesperson Brian McClintock and the Eastern Region management asking how Little League decides to expand charters and under what circumstances Little League breaks up charters, went unanswered. An earlier email from McClintock stated that charter maps are proprietary.

While Taney continues to play and win by the rules set out by its original charter, its effective grandfathering and this year's expansion, those rules still aren't getting across to the Pennsylvania teams Taney has played and beaten.

Said Paul Greenberg, an assistant for the District 22 champs, Oreland-Wyndmoor: "I'm not pissed at Taney, I'm pissed at Little League."