re: Little League World Series. Nevada Wins US Title. Play Taiwan for World Champ Sun 2pm ABC

From last night. It looked like Calif. was taking a page from Japan's playbook re: standing on home plate in the batters box. (minus all the usual armament as used by the Asians, to their credit). totally legal. didn't do any good though.

I really wish one of the man-child pitchers from Venezuela would send them a message or two. or three.

So that New Hampshire team lost to Mass with a ticket to Williamsport because the Coach didn't challenge a score at the plate which would've been an easy out call on replay.

Mass wins by 1 run in extra innings.

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Same thing with the CWS format now that we have two brackets. You can win yours with zero losses, the other team can win with 1 loss, and it’s all wiped out once you hit the title series.

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I think the CWS is pretty fair in resetting things to a 3 game championship series. The OLD format was like the LLWS format. In fact, 1993 LSU won the championship in just his manner. They made it to the finals despite losing a game. Wichita St made the finals without a loss.

Idk what it is but every single US team in this thing is weak as shite. Are all the young kids who are decent at baseball playing travel ball instead of little league? I’d throw it on tv in the past but it is absolutely brutal now

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Maybe. When I was kid our league "all star" teams would travel to other areas and win tournaments a lot of times. Our 7-8-9 hitters could go yard. One year we had enough talent for two teams.

I'm not familair with the rules. Are travel ball kids not allowed to play for their area little league? They can't be on more than one roster?

Maybe they should rename this the Rec Ball World Series.

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no they can but for many its a waste of time.

1) the birthdate cut offs are different and no longer match. to play 12u in travel you couldnt turn 13 before may 1st. There are grade exemptions and you could be in 6th grade too but only 2 per team and couldnt be born before jan 1st in PG.

For LL the cut off date is sept 1st. So you couldnt turn 13 before september 1st to be eligible.

This cuts out a lot of kids


2) The other thing is LL has very specific boundaries. sometimes they are huge other times small. Example East bank has a huge area it covers, many times though its only very small towns or sections of a city. This limits who can or cant play for certain leagues

but many of the travel kids look at LL as a waste of time. The field dimensions are the size the travel kids play on at 8 and travel kids have been playing on 50/70 for two years and many times playing up on 54/80 a good bit. They dont want to go back and fourth

then you get into the rules...no leads and no stealing closed bases BS. So stupid, then on top of that the no head first slides, no on deck, the dumb bat rules so then you have to buy a new bat, no choke up knob and all kinds of stupid arse rules little league has

But the biggest reason is the really good travel kids dont want to play and waste time playing with kids that can hardly catch or are just playing for the first time. Regular Season Little League caters to the lowest player and many times at the Little league majors division (11/12) you have 2-3 players per team that are just playing for the first time. Most of these leagues also have equal time rules and some even have mandatory infield outfield playing time rules.

The better travel kids look at it as a waste of time. The really good travel kids were seeing 60mph from 46' at 9u some and then pretty much every tournament at 10u. By 12u in travel the elite kids are seeing 70-80 consistently so why would they go play in rec where the hardest 12u kid is throwing 58-60 and cant throw strikes?

They see it as a waste of time and would rather work on development while playing with their travel team against better competition and by this time in 12u the drive is on to be ready for HS ball which has gotten stupid competitive at the big schools.

Unfortunately Little League and the Rec leagues did this to themselves by always catering to the weakest player. on top of that many leagues will have 5-8 practices then 10-12 regular season games, ~3 end of the season tournament games and then all stars where 95% of teams are done in sectionals which means a total of 20 games and maybe 8 practices. That isnt enough to develop. Then many leagues were requiring you to play 11u year to be eligible for all stars in 12u, almost zero of the really really good kids are going to do that. So they are in travel and are not going to go pitch in rec then turn around and not be able to pitch the weekend.


The other countries treat LL like travel on steroids. For example in elementary you play with your school. 2nd-6th grade. you practice 3 days a week 2-3 hours a day, usually only the 4-5th graders play in games. They only play ~10 fall games but practice year around then in spring they practice 4 days a week for 2-3 hours and play their LL season. All star practice is 7 days a week 4+ hours a day. Girls play with boys through this time but honestly by 6th grade you almost have 2 separate teams, the 12u team and the regular team. They play against the other schools and that is how they form the all star team.

then in 7th grade club ball starts and they are expected to practice 5 days a week year around coached by private coaches and they go play in stadiums all over including minor league parks. They play minimum 2 tournaments per month, many times more, year around.

Japan literally practices year around from 2nd grade on and many coaches still use corporal punishment although that is kind of dying. But they are expected to practice on their own too, 50k swings a year minimum. Ichori said he was expected to hit 100k a year (300 a day). They are also expected to be disciplined AF

high school ball is 7 days a week with the push towards making the Koshien.

everything people on here hate about travel ball(except cost) Japan does in spades.

God damn that is a huge wall of rules.

It is not that important.

refreshing not seeing marucci bats and gloves every where

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Easy to get a waiver tho

Eastbank uses all, or almost all travel ball kids

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you can only get a waiver if you go to school in the boundries.

and yea every team in the LLWS is all travel ball kids. But none of the top 20 or so kids in the 12u age group were playing at the LL state tournament.

last year the team from texas that made it, its was like 90% of the players from a AAA travel team. They would get smashed in 99% of majors tournaments in the houston area.

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last year the team from texas that made it, its was like 90% of the players from a AAA travel team. They would get smashed in 99% of majors tournaments in the houston area.

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I went to a tournament to see someone I knows kid play in the Houston area 3 years ago. I was vastly underwhelmed with what I saw. I thought the kids were going to be elite if they were doing all that traveling.

has the schedule come out for the world series yet?