Monday May 28, 2012

JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

BASEBALL

Japan beats Saudi Arabia 13-4 at Little League World Series

Sports Aug. 23, 2011 - 02:55PM JST ( 5 )

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

Order by Time Order by Popularity

5 Comments

0

BurakuminDesAug. 24, 2011 - 12:34AM JST

I must be missing something. Surely entire nations are not playing individual small American Counties? Japan v Clinton County, Pennsylvania, for example, just seems a bit of a mis-match.
0

jeffreyAug. 24, 2011 - 12:52AM JST

BurakuminDesAug. 24, 2011 - 12:34AM JST I must be missing something. Surely entire nations are not playing individual small American Counties? Japan v Clinton County, Pennsylvania, for example, just seems a bit of a mis-match.

Nope. The Little League tournaments begin here as state regional, then state, then U.S. regional, then the elimination rounds that include foreign teams. I work with the father of a, now, middle-aged man, whose team won it all in 1979. A lot of these American teams are comprised of kids that play baseball almost year around.

BTW, the Saudi team is comprised of mostly ex-pat U.S. kids.

http://www.littleleague.org/series/2010divisions/llbb/teams/mea/team.html
0

John BeckerAug. 24, 2011 - 01:55AM JST

Also worthy of note: the Japan team isn't an all-star team drawn from all over Japan, it's a single local team that won the Japan Little League tournament. Same thing for every other country, except for the U.S. All the U.S. regional champions go to Williamsport, while only foreign national champions are invited. A bit of an inequity that was introduced after a string of years that the U.S. champion team wasn't competitive.

I'm glad to see that Japan bounced back after the loss to Mexico.
0

lostrune2Aug. 24, 2011 - 05:14AM JST

The reasoning for the make up of the teams is population and density. It has always been the US vs. International in the Little League (LL) finals.

Because of its huge size and thus greater # of LL baseball-playing towns, the US has a lot more LL baseball town teams (basically, one town = one team) than any other nation, so they are divided into regional champions.

Then the population density factor was put in after teams from Taiwan won the LLWS for 17 years in a row. Basically what was happening was a given population-dense town in Taiwan had its pick of players from some hundreds or thousands of kids, which made it unfair since most other LL towns aren't as dense and thus don't have nearly as many kids to choose from. So in those population-dense towns, they have to further divide into separate teams. Part of it to make it more fair, and part of it so that as many kids as possible get a chance to play for a LL-eligible team. After all, that's the main mission of the LL organization - to have as many kids playing the sport.
0

jeffreyAug. 24, 2011 - 09:12AM JST

lostrune2Aug. 24, 2011 - 05:14AM JST The reasoning for the make up of the teams is population and density. It has always been the US vs. International in the Little League (LL) finals. Because of its huge size and thus greater # of LL baseball-playing towns, the US has a lot more LL baseball town teams (basically, one town = one team) than any other nation, so they are divided into regional champions.

Not entirely correct.

My son plays in Little League. He was on the league Minors (9 and 10 year old) All Stars. These teams are selected from the best players in the league to play in the state-wide LL tournament. The Majors team (11-12 year old) All Stars from whichever league they play in are typically the kind of teams competing in the LL World Series.

Typically, the successful teams are from suburban areas because they have larger pool of athletes to draw from. Very rarely do small town teams make it beyond local play. Clinton County, PA has a population of only about 37,000, so they've done quite well for themselves. In contrast, Langley, BC, a suburb of Vancouver, has a population of more than 93,000, thus a lot more players to choose from.