Dan Wetzel: Pay the players -- at the Little League World Series

First-time poster who has been lurking for a couple of weeks. I'm a sports writer who served on a local Little League board of directors for a few years, so I can answer some questions.

Regarding the "postseason" tournaments and who is responsible for what expenses, it works like this:

District: Little League International will not pay for any expenses. Local leagues set their policies as to what they will pay for and what parents pay for. I know this caused an issue this past year because our league (a New Mexico league) was in a district with a league that was a two-and-a-half-hour drive away, and that league was hosting districts.

State: LLI will reimburse teams for one round-trip of mileage to the host site but leagues need to make a request to the district administrator, who then files the request with LLI. Teams are responsible for their own meal and lodging expenses, although the host site will usually hold a cookout one night.

Regional: LLI will pay for a certain number of motel rooms at the host site and the mileage reimbursement for traveling to the host site as is done with state. I don't know if LLI will reimburse for plane tickets or not, but if you drive out, LLI won't reimburse teams for any other lodging they need to stop at during the drive.

I can't speak directly about the World Series level but I've understood LLI will cover most team expenses related to travel and lodging.

But I do know that LLI won't reimburse teams for every expense they accumulate during "postseason" tourneys.

As far as the general topic of the thread goes, I agree it's time to stop televising the Little League World Series but I suspect LLI is going to insist on keeping that going because it's a major source of revenue for LLI. Given the nature of ESPN, I doubt the network would ever agree to not televise the games and just let Disney be a major sponsor of LLI. The genie probably needs to go back into the bottle, but good luck getting it back in.

 

A lot of big cities youth baseball programs aren't associated with Little League.

But, bigger towns/cities are at a bit of a disadvantage. So that they can't dominate as a result of their larger population, they have to split up into a number of smaller leagues in order to participate in the Little League tournament.

I used to coach, and serve on the board of my local Little League. We had one group of kids who were very good, and they got pretty far -- to the States I think -- though not all the way to the World Series.

The next year, we were told we would have to split the league in two in order to continue to participate in the Tournament. We declined, and instead entered the All Star team in various other summer tournaments, and hosted one of our own.

A small, well run program, with good local talent is in a better position to advance.

 

In the town I work, the local kidball group cut ties with Little League and affiliated with Ripken over the issue of boundaries, among other things. The town had grown and population had shifted, but Little League wanted to keep the same boundaries that were set when Little League was established here, just to maintain National and American Leagues. Under Ripken, the whole town is a league of its own.

 

I dont' know how it works for the lead ups to the LLWS, but these teams still left have played five games in eight days. The two finalists will have played seven in 11 days.