How did your paper play the Little League World Series championship game

And yet, the point could be made in about seven less posts. You would get on me about that in a heartbeat.

 

I doubt readers of the New York Times would love this ... every day.

 

Fair point.

 

Ripken, at least around here, is the same as Little League. Play your youth league season, pick an All-Star team and play as a community-based team. Ripken has very solid boundary lines that dictate that my son will, assuming we don't move, won't be able to play in the league where his school classmates will go, and the league whose coaches, board of directors, et al, are people I know. I assume LL is the same way. Because both are Ripken-affiliated, I have to put him in the league closest to my home.

All of the local leagues around here are affiliated with Ripken or not affiliated at all ... despite the fact that the Williamsport-affiliated regional headquarters are 3 miles from the county line.

Williamsport is a manufactured event. It represents a small minority of the community-based youth baseball leagues out there, yet it's completely blown out of proportion because it gives ESPN some easy, cheap programming that delivers enough ratings to support it (and, much like ESPN now showing high school games -- not because of the quality of games, but because of the recruits playing in them -- it's not going to get any smaller). ESPN has to fill time during the summer in-between the NBA Playoffs and the start of football season.

While I wish the boundary rules weren't as strict, I prefer that our community leagues are Ripken-affiliated. Caliber of competition is just as good, but the spotlight isn't run through the ESPN hype machine.

 

Williamsport is not a "small minority" of the youth baseball world. It's a "small minority" of where you are.

Look, we're 70 miles away, and about 35% of the local leagues are not LL-affiliated. That does not make Williamsport a "small minority."

It may not even be the majority. But there's nothing bigger out there. So "small minority" does not quite describe it.

 

I wouldn't say it's a small minority, but I'd be pretty confident in saying that LL is a minority of all the youth baseball associations out there. It may well be the largest, but by the time you get through counting all the Babe Ruths, Cal Ripkens, Dizzy Deans, Dixies, Pony Leagues, American Legions, etc., I can't imagine that Little League has anywhere close to a majority of the kids age 9-17 playing summer baseball.

 

It is kind of weird that the tradition has developed such that the 12-year-olds are a big deal, but no one cares about 10-year-olds or 13-14 year olds.

 

I bet LL does; it has that marketing force and place in the culture.

I also bet that if you take that California team that won the LLWS and convene a 32-team tournament of the best teams of 12-year-olds in the country, the California team would finish in the lower half and would probably finish 32nd. That's how many kids are being siphoned off to travel ball, Pony, academies, etc.

 

LTL,

That's not a fair comparison... Different rules mean the LL kids are at a disadvantage, especially pitching wise having to hold runners, balks, etc.

 

You could play it all by LL rules and the LL team would be blown away.

 

I used to be sports editor in a town that was into Babe Ruth baseball, so big that it would host the World Seris and reps from other towns would come in to learn how it was done. In order to get the World Series one year, our published had to guarantee for the paper to produce, free of charge, the game program as a special insert. As you would expect, he got all the glory and our huge two-man staff had to produce the program. Never mind that this came in summer when us sports guys had our only opportunity to take vacations, then get ready for the football tab. The turnaround time from the regional qualifying tournaments to the start of the World Series was so tight, we had to start to produce the tab before the regionals were over. We were directed to get team photos of each team that made the World Series. In order to secure this, I had to get in contact with folks from all the regions and get them to submit team photos of all their participants to make sure we had all the photos and then receive word of who actually made it to the World Series (this was long before the internet, etc.)

Of all we had to do, the one thing that really got under my skin was having to write the "economic impact story." We used to get stats from the local Chamber of Commerce. They had all this data about how much money was spent by a person who came to town, etc. It was a total bullshit story. One of the big things with Babe Ruth baseball at the time was "host families." These local families would take in the kids and their parents from across the country, house them and feed them. So at the crap about how much money these people were spending on hotels and meals was totally misleading. Plus, I hated the fact that kids under 12 were being used to spur economic development.

 

I don't know LTL, I haven't seen many 11-12 yo teams around that impress me...

Plus, if the travel teams couldn't recruit, pick up players when they're short, etc, it wouldn't be the same.