Just cuz a hometown team, Maitland is playing. 
Now, I’m not one for sports much, but this is different. No steroids, few scandals (except for the Baby Bombers one a few years ago), just a bunch of boys playing for fun.
Go, Maitland!
I wish the Little League World Series wasn’t televised. That is just way too much pressure for these kids.
I really hope most are playing for fun. Fun doesn’t need to be televised on ESPN.
Wish I’d known that they were playing in Gulfport, I’d have probably gone to see the game.
I just wanted to chime in to this thread because I live right outside Williamsport and Little League World Series time is a massive pain in the butt. Yay for the kids, but… oy.
Although it does help when people from other places want to know where I live, it gives me at least something to reference other than, “Um… it’s in the north-central-ish part of PA…”
I wrote up a few Little League games for the paper this year, and some of them were LLWS qualifying. It seemed like a nice moment in the sun for the kids, and I’m told they enjoyed it.
Aluminum bats, however, are a crime. 
:ding:
Personally, i wish it wasn’t televised because it’s boring.
There’s about 750 guys in Major League Baseball being paid untold millions to provide the highest quality baseball in the world (there’s also the Kansas City Royals). Why do i want to watch a bunch of 14-year-olds?
Sure, it’s great for family and friends, but presumably those people are at the games anyway. Or they could run it on local channels. Why they need to show it on a national sporting network like ESPN is beyond me.
Of course, i now await the flaming that will surely follow. Reminds me of a fantastic David Sedaris essay, called “Front Row Center With Thaddeus Bristol,” in which he critiques childrens’ holiday plays.
As he says in that hilarious piece, “I will, no doubt, be taken to task for criticizing the work of children but, as any pathologist will agree, if there’s a cancer it’s best to treat it as early as possible.”
For the most part the kids that are there look like they are 3 years older than what they are listed at. There are plenty of kids that are 5’8-5’9 170+ at age 11-12! I was a fairly big kid and I didn’t reach 170 pounds until I was probably 15 or 16. Its simply nuts at how developed some of these kids are. The pitcher that struck out 18 the other day looked more like he was graduating from high school than entering it. I honestly think thats the reason why most of these teams are here rather than being more skillful than their peers.
Go Vista!
Just a hop, skip, and jump down the road from here (actually less than 5 miles). And to make it even more interesting for our family, one of the coaches of the SoCal team coached my oldest son when he played on the LL All-Star team 8-9 years ago. Pretty cool for the kids, and the Vista team is playing awesome baseball. 18 strikeouts to tie the LL WS record on Saturday, and the 2nd grand slam in 3 days to win a game.
BTW, I know some of these kids, personally, and they are nowhere near that big. In fact, it seems like TV makes them seem bigger than they really are. True, there are always a few 12 year olds who stand out because they started developing early. But I have noticed that for the most part, on TV you only see the kids next to each other, not next to adults. A large 12 y.o., going on 13, standing next to a little just-turned 12 y.o., can look gigantic. Wait until a coach comes out to talk to them, or greets them at the dugout. Then they all look small.
Well, Maitland got shellacked by Hawaii, 10-0, in a game that didn’t mean much because they both advanced to the semi-finals anyway.
Does anyone understand how the seeding works? I know Maitland played against Hawaii, Iowa, and Pennsylvania, but there’s another group which includes teams from Georgia and Louisiana that I haven’t seen (or paid much attention to, frankly) that must be playing each other to determine which of that group goes to the semi-finals. That doesn’t even begin to cover the international teams.
No, as a team they are huge. The 95th percentile for 12 year olds is 130 pounds. They have a kid 188 pounds, 170 pounds and a bunch 150+ pounds. The Davenport. Iowa team was pretty small and it looked like they were playing their big brothers.
There are 8 US regions, Northwest, Southwest, West, Great Lakes, South, East, Northeast ans Southeast I believe. Those are split into two pools and each team plays each other team in the pool. The top two teams out of each pool advance onto a single elimination tournament. The international bracket is set up the same way.
California beat Maitland. 
Ah well. They done good. There’s going to be a parade for them when they come home.