Little league world series

[Russ Smith]

I tend to watch this every year just because at that age the kids still play for fun and it's enjoyable to watch. Being home all day I'm seeing a lot of games this year.

Some impressive stuff, there are 2 girls playing one for Canada and one for Saudi Arabia(she's US born). The Canadian girl is of Filipino descent, she plays first base and she has a terrific arm.

There's a kid on the California Chula Vista team, in the regionals he had 18 hits 12 of them were homeruns, I think they played 6 games? That team was averaging 7 homers a game until they were held to 1 or 2 last night.

Today I saw the weirdest thing I recall seeing. Team from Washington(State) was 0-2 so it's their last game, against Georgia who's 2-0. Washington leads much of the game. 2-1 going into the 6th inning(last inning). Washington's pitcher reaches his pitch count and comes out and another kid comes in for him. Throws hard but really wild, walks 2 hitters and then throws 3 wild pitches that score both runs so they're now behind 3-2.

He is behind the Georgia teams best hitter so the manager comes out to calm him down. He asks the kid if he wants to just walk this kid and go after the next kid and the 12 year old pitcher says "if we're going to walk him, can I just hit him instead?" The manager quickly said no and when he asked the pitcher if he wanted to pitch or not he said no. The pitcher asked to come completely out of the game but the manager put him at first base and the first baseman came into pitch. I think the kid was just furious at himself for all the wild pitches, realized they were not going to get to play anymore games anyways and just got mad.

And of course he struck out in the bottom of the inning to end the game, with the tying run at 3rd.

I actually thought the manager handled it well, you don't expect a 12 year old to ask a manager if he can bean a kid.

 

[MigratingOsprey]

i've always enjoyed this ....... as a kid I would make the yearly trip down to watch the finals

would be fun sitting in with the chinese taipei fans for a while and taking in all their enthusiasm and then wander out to the hill to get some shade and relax a bit

used to get killer kraut dogs for $.75 ...... couldn't beat it as a youngin'

 

[NMCard]

The TX vs CA game was a great game to watch. I loved all the pitcher coaching on the mound by the TX coach toward the end. Just a nice relaxed way to handle the kids.

 

[Russ Smith]

I don't know why but this year I'm cheering for the Mexican team and they're doing very well.

The interesting thing this year is in the past there was always 2-3 dominant pitchers that just carried their team to the title, there is no such pitcher this year. ESPN is saying the kids are training against faster pitching these days so a kid throwing in the mid 70's can't just dominate them like was the case just a few years ago. The games are much more competitive, Mexico has beaten both Chinese Taipei and Japan, and Curacao's team is really impressive too.

 

[Shzm13]

Ive been watching it at work, since its been on most mornings. I cant help but think that i enjoy it more than mlb :/

 

[Russ Smith]

I watched most of Chinese Taipei's win over Curacao. Admittedly I was cheering for Curacao, but I don't like the format. Curacao was 3-0, Chinese Taipei 2-1 but Chinese Taipei won and they advance to world final tomorrow against Mexico. I guess the first 3 games are round 1 and they don't count if you make it to round 2.

It could happen again in the night cap, Chula Vista Ca is 2-1 but if they beat Georgia tonight they're in the US final.

I definitely prefer it to MLB, the only scandals in little league are the occasional lying about age or where a kid lives, no steroids or HGH or any of that stuff.

 

[Russ Smith]

Of course after I comment on no cheating, ABC has to go and ruin it for me.

International final today is Chinese Taipei and Mexico. According to ABC before 1996, Chinese Taipei had 17 teams advance to the finals. In 96 due to heavy complaints, they changed the rules to more "strict enforcement of the residence rules", Chinese Taipei stopped participating. They rejoined in 2003 after meeting the stricter rules, and have not been back to the finals since.

Which is a polite way of saying before 96 the Chinese Taipei teams were cheating by drawing their players from a much bigger pool of talent by not abiding by the residency rules. Since they made the enforcement more strict and CT had to draw from the same size pool as everyone else, they aren't nearly as good. At least that's how I understood what ABC was saying?

Pretty glaring if true, from the dominant foreign team to just another team because they were forced to obey the rules.