LLWS: The Perfect Game

The Little League World Series is one of my favorite sporting events of the year. There's something magical about it. And I don’t even like baseball that much. At least not on the professional level. I find it only slightly more exciting than mowing the lawn(unless my smoking hot neighbor is washing her car, then mowing the lawn wins out) I boycott SportsCenter from June to August because the mundane baseball highlights take up 90% of the show. Major League Baseball is dull; the players themselves don’t even seem to care. But the Little League World Series is different; the LLWS is sports in perfection.

Timing could have a lot to do with that. It falls perfectly between the time I need a break after the 3 month NBA playoffs and when football starts revving up and all I care about is my fantasy roster.

The atmosphere is electric. Almost every game is an elimination game creating a March Madness type of excitement. It’s not a best of 7, or even worse, 1 of 162. It’s win or go home. August madness!

I love that the games are 6 innings instead of 9 too. It cuts the length of the game down to about 2 hours compared to MLB’s average of 3.5 (or the 6 hour marathons that the Red Sox and Yankees play) The time between pitches is significantly less than in the pros too(with the exception of Cliff Lee. I love watching that guy pitch) keeping you interested without the need for camera tricks.¹

There’s also the nostalgia factor. Almost every kid grows up playing Little League Baseball. It’s easy to relate to. It takes you back to a time when sports were pure. No lockouts, holdouts or athletes going to play for a rival team for a few more bucks. It’s not a business at that level. Just a ball field, your buddies, and playing the drums on your cup. The good ol’ days!

All of those things play a part in making the LLWS great. But more than anything, I think it’s the passion that the little guys play with. The raw emotions that pour through your TV screen, into your living room like a shattered fish tank. It’s something you rarely get from sports-but it’s definitely one of the best parts. The exuberance after a big hit. The anguish on the pitchers face after giving up a run. It resonates with you. When grown men cry after a loss, we usually just call them soft and question their manhood. At 12 years old though, not only is it acceptable, it seems appropriate. When they cry, it shows how much they care. It’s kind of a double standard but hey, I just live in this world I didn’t make it.

ESPN does a wonderful job of bringing the youngsters into your living room. Telling you their favorite movies, foods and other interests during each at bat (Imagine if they did that in the big leagues. Wouldn’t you love to see what Nyjer Morgan’s favorite desert is?) By the end of the game, you feel like you know the kids. By the end of the tournament, you feel like they’re part of your family. When the winning team is running around with that Christmas morning excitement after the game, you get a warm feeling inside like it was your own kid that won. And when the losing players are sobbing with their faces in their gloves-like they do every year-it breaks your heart. I start to tear up almost every time. You feel everything the kids feel. Going back and forth every time they change cameras. It’s an emotional roller coaster. Everyone watching is bipolar during those first 10 minutes after the game. It’s not just the game itself, you’re hooked on an emotional level.

While I’ll concede that the hardest thing to do in sports may very well be hitting a 98 mph fastball, that doesn’t mean it’s the most entertaining. Professional baseball is like golf in that you only appreciate its technical difficulty if you’re currently playing it at some level. You have to change the recipe to spice things up. In golf, the captivating energy that surrounded Tiger Woods was really the only thing that made the PGA tour more entertaining than the celebrity events. In baseball, it’s going back the youth level.

I don’t think it would translate with any other sport. In football, basketball and soccer, you want to see the elite athletes doing something you’ve never seen before. When was the last time you watched a baseball game and said “holy shit! I’ve never seen that before!”? For me, it was the ball that bounced off Jose Canseco’s head for a home run in 1993. A fluke play from 20 years ago that belongs on the blooper reel not the highlight reel. Other than that, it’s just the same old stuff over and over again.

At 12 and 13 kids are on the cusp of their coordination primes. There’s just enough clumsiness in them that when they make an amazing play, it somehow seems cooler than when an MLB player does the same thing. That doesn’t work with other sports. If less coordinated basketball was enjoyable we would all love the WNBA.

The Little League World Series is the perfect storm. The game in its purest and most entertaining form. The emotional attachment. It’s simply the perfect game. 

  

1 In the 1990’s Fox revolutionized televised baseball forever by cutting to different cameras between pitches. Showing players in the dugout, position players, the crowd and various things to make it appear as though a lot was going on. Before that it was pretty much just a view from center field as you waited for the next pitch.