The Little League World Series Is 75 and Still Growing

The most widely watched youth sporting event in the world is more than just summertime programming for ESPN—it’s a competition spreading baseball across the globe.

It’s slightly overcast around 3:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 15, and the 20 teams that will play in the 75th Little League Baseball World Series later this week are gathered at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport for a picnic. Dressed in their full uniforms, each team enters the campus’s main courtyard and grabs burgers and dogs. From there, they head under a different pavilion and sit at one of the large picnic tables with their teammates. It feels much more like a regular lunch for pre-adolescents at summer camp than it does a picnic for some of the best youth baseball players in the world. So it doesn’t take long for the players to get up from their tables and mingle with the other teams.

“Hey, bro!” Curaçao first baseman Kyshore Hinkle says as he unsuccessfully tries to get the attention of the Australian players. “Hey, bro!”

After the third “Hey, bro!” a few Australian boys look over, and they strike up a conversation.

Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

“You have any of those cards?” asks Hinkle.

“Huh?” one Australian boy responds.

“Those cards with players!” Hinkle says.

The Australian doesn’t know what Hinkle is talking about, but Hinkle persists in explaining. Each player was supposed to receive a pack of baseball cards featuring the likenesses of pros. Alas, this player, and Hinkle, hadn’t gotten theirs. So Hinkle moves onto the next group of players. “Hey, bro!” he says, with three of his teammates surrounding him like hype men. They laugh every time he opens his mouth.

It turns out, quite a few of the players at this point haven’t yet received their pack. When I mention to the Curaçao Quartet that I have a pack in my car, Jaylliard Emperador, the team’s right fielder with a sweet lefty swing, looks at me and asks if he could have it. How could I say no?

Moments later, I return to the group, which has since become a quintet, and hand Emperador the pack that came with my media kit. He thanks me, rips it open and sees the first card, Gavin Sheets of the White Sox. Woof. He quickly flips to the next one, stops for just a second and then lights up.

“Ohtani!” Emperador beams. “I got Ohtani!”

Naturally, he has to show it off to everyone within earshot. He prances around the table revealing the Shohei Ohtani card with panache. When he shows me, I look at him sternly and say, “Maybe I should take my pack back.” For maybe a half a second, his face goes blank. Then he laughs, shoves my shoulder and lets out a dramatic, “No!”

Shortstop and pitcher Jay-Dlynn Wiel turns to me and says, “I’m gonna get Aaron Judge!” “Oh yeah?” I say, “Why’s that?” Without missing a beat, Wiel says, “Because he’s my favorite.” He walks around with Emperador, and as if to one-up the right fielder, Wiel says to all of his teammates and coaches that he's going to get Judge. He’s convinced, even if the rest of us aren’t.

Two days later, Curaçao beats Nicaragua, 2–0, in the first game of the tournament behind a 14-strikeout performance from ace Davey-Jay Rijke. Emperador stroked an RBI double, and Wiel flashed all the tools of a great Little League shortstop: smooth footwork, soft hands, quick release, strong arm, confidence.

Few could have imagined that any of this would’ve been possible when the first Little League World Series was held in 1947. And yet, the picnic and the pitchers’ duel give us a pretty good sense of the state of the World Series at 75 years old. Taken together, the two moments highlight the joys of the LLWS and provide the key to understanding Little League’s evolution from a three-team local league into an organization that puts on the most popular youth sports event in the world. The desire to take part in that experience is the reason more than 300,000 people attend the World Series each year and millions more watch the event on television and online. It also offers a glimpse into where Little League is going, and where it might fit in the plans for baseball at large.

After playing stellar defense at shortstop in Curaçao’s win over Nicaragua, Wiel pitched 4 2/3 scoreless innings over his next two games :: Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

From reading Williamsport newspaper archives on the early days of Little League, you’d think there was a widespread juvenile delinquency problem in the middle of the Keystone State, and that the local baseball league for 12-year-old boys was the only thing that could fix it.

“Carl E. Stotz, organizer and president of the Little Baseball League, will be honored at a community testimonial banquet for his work,” reads the beginning of a two-column article published April 13, 1944. The recap of the banquet in the paper the morning after that event says that 225 people attended to pay their “glowing” respects to the man whose “idea of league baseball competition for youngsters between the ages of eight and 12” six years earlier “has played no insignificant role in helping to curb juvenile delinquency.”

While it’s true that the league that Stotz founded in 1939 had a positive impact on the Williamsport community, the depiction of the league’s purpose isn’t entirely accurate. Stotz first thought of starting a boys’ baseball league in summer of ‘38, when he was playing catch in the backyard with his two nephews, Jimmy and Major. Stotz ran to catch a throw from Major, scraped his ankle on a lilac bush and sat down on the steps of a neighbor's porch. That’s when the idea hit him. “I said to them, ‘How would you like to play on a regular team, with uniforms, a new ball for every game and bats you could really swing?’” Stotz recalled years later in an interview, according to Play Ball! The Story of Little League Baseball by Lance and Robin Van Auken.

Organized baseball leagues for teeneagers had existed across the country for decades, and occasionally a few for younger boys would pop up, but those were almost always connected to local churches or professions, such as firefighters’ leagues or the Y.M.C.A. Stotz’s vision was a whole new concept, a league for boys that was run by parent volunteers.

“I think it was just a way for parents to get kids out to play,” says Lance Van Auken, who was been involved with Little League for nearly 30 years, most recently as the executive director of the World of Little League Museum, before retiring in 2020. “It was mostly run by dads, and in a lot of cases, dads who were coming home from war, sometimes not having seen their sons for months or even years. This gave them a way to get reacquainted.”

Stotz’s league added a fourth team in 1940 and didn’t expand further for years. Little League started to gain recognition beyond the Williamsport area, but it took until the end of World War II before other branches started popping up. “Throughout the United States, leagues patterned after Carl’s brainchild are springing up like weeds in a flower bed,” the Sun reported on Dec. 31, 1946. The idea for a tournament at the end of the regular season for all known little leagues across the country was discussed and approved by Little League’s board of directors in ‘47 and scheduled for the end of the summer. At the time, the event was named the “Little League National Tournament,” and featured 12 teams, with only one team, from Hammonton, N.J., that wasn’t from Central Pennsylvania. The Maynard Midgets, from the Maynard section of Williamsport, won the championship over the Lock Haven All-Stars, 16–7. Two years later, the “Little League National Tournament” was renamed the Little League World Series.

The popularity of Stotz’s league gained national exposure in the spring of 1949, when the Saturday Evening Post published a story, by writer Harry T. Paxton, headlined “Small Boy’s Dream Come True.”

“The fastest growing thing in baseball today is the Little League setup, in which youngsters of 8 to 12 play with all the trappings of the major leagues. In three years the idea has spread from Williamsport, PA., through eleven states,” writes Paxton. “Williamsport has started something pretty remarkable in the way of baseball for small boys. It is known as Little League baseball, and it is a scale model of the major-league game.”

“Already the idea has captivated thousands of boys and men in hundreds of communities,” Paxton says in his kicker for the story. “This is probably only the beginning.”

It didn’t take long for Paxton’s prediction to come true. The Post had 4 million subscribers across the country, and many of them became interested in starting their own local Little Leagues. Each year from 1949 to ‘53, “the number of leagues or players in Little League doubled,” according to the Van Aukens’s book.

Little League first went international in January 1950, when two leagues on each end of the Panama Canal were chartered. Canada, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i and Alaska (the latter two were not yet states) formed local Little Leagues later that year. In ‘52, a team from Montreal reached the World Series, the first non-U.S. team to do so. In 1957 Monterrey, Mexico, became the first international team to win the LLWS before repeating in 1958. By that point, the World Series had outgrown Memorial Field in Williamsport, the site of the first Little League game and the location of the first 12 LLWS. The following year, the event moved across the Susquehanna River to South Williamsport, where it is still played today.

Over the next four decades, Little League continued to expand to new communities within the U.S. and in other countries, but other than the first tournament in 1947, the World Series field was capped at just eight teams.

“Dad’s dream was not a World Series,” Karen Stotz-Myers, Carl’s daughter, told the Van Aukens. “He believed that the benefit of the Series was to showcase Little League and to excite men all over the country so that they would have a desire to start leagues in their own towns.”

That remains Little League’s top priority today, even after it finally expanded the tournament field from eight to 16 teams in 2001, and then again this year, from 16 to 20. The latest expansion gives 60 or so more kids a chance to play in the World Series each year, and for thousands of others, it provides them with a realistic opportunity to make it to South Williamsport, even if they end up falling short in the various district and regional tournaments that come before the LLWS.

“In Nicaragua, all of the newspapers are talking about this event because Nicaragua has a team here,” says Carlos R. Pagán, Little League International’s Latin America regional director. “They haven’t come here since 1970. That’s a national thing. Everybody is watching TV. I get emails and WhatsApp messages asking me when Nicaragua is playing and on what station they can see the games. Everybody wants to see the baseball games. That means it’s an honor to represent their country. This is the best sporting event, they say. The Little League World Series is the best event of all sports for kids.”

Typically, local Little Leagues see a participation surge in the years after a team from their town, state or country reaches the World Series, says Stephen D. Keener, the president and CEO of Little League International. Kids watch members of their communities play and they want to experience it, too.

“I can’t guarantee it, but I can tell you, there’s a pretty darn good chance that we’ll see growth in our program in those areas,” says Keener. “Because people see it, and they hear it, and they say, ‘How can we be part of it? We want to be part of it.’”

Keener has a story for me. Well, actually, he has about a dozen of them.

It’s about 5:10 p.m. on Thursday, one day after the Curaçao-Nicaragua game, and we’re sitting at a table usually reserved for three Little Leaguers and their manager in the press conference room beneath the Lamade Stadium stands. He has seen a lot in his 42 years working for Little League International, including nearly three decades as the organization’s president, and he seamlessly moves from one anecdote to the next, his only transition being an occasional apology for rambling.

There’s the one from 2009, when then Vice President Joe Biden attended the Little League World Series for his induction into the Hall of Excellence, the organization’s version of a Hall of Fame for former Little Leaguers who grew up to be notable figures. After the ceremony, Keener and Biden were walking to their seats when a man standing about 15 rows up from them started waving an old buttoned-down jersey with “Hank’s Hoagies” stitched across the front. “Hey, Joe! Hey, Joe!” the man yelled down. “Do you remember Hank’s Hoagies?” Biden looked up and shouted, “Not only do I remember ’em, ya beat us in the championship game!” The man beamed proudly, “Yes we did!” Moments later, when Biden and Keener sat down for the game, Keener says, “The Vice President turned to me and said, ‘I can’t believe that guy had a Hank’s Hoagies jersey!’”

That story leads right into another one about former President George W. Bush’s visit for his Hall of Excellence ceremony. “It’s funny, we found his Little League roster in our archives, so we got it out, and we framed it for him.” Keener says. “We greeted him under the stadium, and I gave it to him down there.” Upon receiving it, Bush called over Donald Evans, his Secretary of Commerce, and showed him the roster before going down it player by player. “He remembered every kid on the team and what position they played and had a little comment about each one of them,” Keener says. “It wasn’t staged. It wasn’t prepped. Right off the cuff. It was like it was yesterday that he remembered it. Anyway, I’ve rambled on enough.”

As Keener, 65, rattles off story after story, though, it becomes clear that he isn’t just wandering through the catalog of memories he’s gathered over the years and selecting them at random. Instead, he’s making a point. Each of these stories “reinforces what the Little League experience means to people.”

With another story, he preemptively addresses the main criticism of the World Series, that the adults at Little League are exploiting the kids playing for financial gain. A number of years ago, a writer for The New York Times called him “to talk about the commercial nature of the World Series and the fact that kids were playing under a lot of pressure by being on television, blah, blah, blah,” Keener recalls. “I said, ‘I’m not going to change your mind over the phone. But to really be fair, you really ought to come out and spend a couple of days here. And if you still feel the same after you’ve been here for a day or two, then fine, we haven’t changed your mind.’”

“Television shows what happens on the field,” Keener continues. “You see the game, you see the end of the game, you see some emotions when the game’s over. And then that’s it. You turn the channel. What you don’t see by not being here is that 15 minutes or so after the game, the two teams that just played each other very often are back up in the grove in the swimming pool, playing silly games with each other and having pizza and laughing and carrying on, and it’s like you couldn’t tell who won or lost. That’s the value of the whole event. And that’s what I tried to tell him.”

Still, there is no denying that there is a financial benefit to the World Series. More teams means more games, which means more fans tuning in to watch, which leads to more broadcast revenue. In 2013, ESPN and Little League announced an eight-year deal for $60 million, or about $7.5 million per year, according to the Sports Business Journal. In August ’20, the only summer without a Little League World Series, Little League and ESPN agreed to another eight-year rights deal for an undisclosed sum. A Little League spokesperson declined to comment on the financial terms of the new deal, which will go into effect next season, after the current one expires at the end of this year. It’s also true that some of Little League International’s 90 or so full-time employees are highly compensated; Keener was paid $490,719 in the 12 months through September ’20, according to Little League Baseball Inc.’s most recent 990 form. Each of the four vice presidents earned just above $287,000 in that span.

But a lot of that money goes toward subsidizing the costs of its local leagues. For example, the charter fee, which every local Little League affiliate pays each year to Little League International, was lowered from $16 to $10 per team in 2014, the first year of the current rights agreement with ESPN. Little League also provides every league with free background checks, which are mandatory for all managers, coaches, members of the local board of directors and anyone else who interacts with the players on a regular basis. The revenue Little League earns also helps it to cover the travel costs for teams to play in the various regional tournaments and the Little League World Series. That is especially important for the teams in the Latin America and Caribbean Region, which Pagán oversees.

“We get a lot of help from [Little League],” Pagán says. “Travel, all the teams that win in our regions, the travel is paid by Williamsport. That’s a very important thing because we have a lot of poor nations in our area.”

The Latin America region, specifically, is massive, covering all of Mexico and Central and South America. Countries like Nicaragua are the ones that stand the most to gain from the Little League World Series. Fortunately, Managua, where this year’s Nicaragua team is from, hosted this year’s Latin America regional tournament. But the team still has to travel to and from Williamsport. The cheapest one-way flight from one of the New York City airports, roughly a four hour’s drive from the Little League World Series Complex, that doesn’t take more than 18 hours, costs $620 without fees. That’s more than twice the average monthly wage in Nicaragua, according to Take-Profit.org.

“It’s a poor nation,” Pagán says. “It’s not organized like a Little League here in the United States. There might be one or two people in charge of the league. The problem with baseball is it’s a sport that costs a lot for baseballs, gloves, bats, and things like that. It’s a little more difficult for them to organize in a league. But they love baseball. They try to do their best to organize it. We are focusing on trying to see how we can help them.”

Before beating the Red Sox, 5–3, in this year’s MLB Little League Classic, the Orioles enjoyed all the perks of being at the Little League World Series, including sledding down the hill behind Lamade Stadium on cardboard boxes :: Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

One of the additions to the World Series experience that Keener is most proud of is the annual MLB Little League Classic, which began in 2017. The first Sunday of the LLWS every year, two MLB teams spend the day at the World Series Complex watching the tournament, and then at night everyone heads over to Bowman Field in Williamsport, where the Sunday Night Baseball game is played that week. For many of the Little Leaguers, this is their first and only opportunity to see a major league game in person.

For as much fun as the Little Leaguers have at the Classic, its purpose is greater than just bringing joy to those who attend it. The Classic is a part of a broader push by MLB and Little League to grow the game’s audience at a time when baseball’s place in popular culture has diminished, particularly among younger people, as games have gotten longer, the pace of play has slowed and the entertainment landscape has gotten far more crowded. The hope is that special events like the Classic help kids form a connection with baseball, and as a result, increase MLB viewership and Little League participation.

The Little League Classic prompts yet another Keener story, one that takes place back in 1988, when Tom Seaver went to the Little League World Series with William Shea, the New York lawyer who brought the Mets to Queens and is the namesake of their old home, Shea Stadium. At the time, Shea was the president of the Little League Foundation’s Board of Trustees. Seaver’s visit led to the creation of the Little League Hall of Excellence; Seaver was its first enshrinee.

“While he was here, he was up in what’s my office now, he’s looking out over Lamade Stadium,” Keener says. “And Tom turned to us. And he said, ‘Every Major League Baseball player ought to have to come here once. It would remind them where we started and why we played this game in the first place. And that even though we're getting paid for it and playing it at a high level, we’re still playing the same game that we played when we were on a field like that.’”

Keener smiles as he looks back, and then he jumps ahead 29 years to conclude the story. In the summer of 2017, before the first Little League Classic, Keener decided to call Seaver to tell him the Cardinals and Pirates would be in Williamsport for a game during the LLWS.

“Remember when you said every major league guy should come here?” Keener asked.

“Yes, they should,” Seaver replied.

“Oh, how happy he was to hear that two teams of major league guys were going to come in every year to see the place,” Keener says now. “His thoughts back in 1988 were coming true 30 years later.”

Panama is one of the four teams to receive a direct entry to this year’s Little League World Series as part of the tournament’s expansion from 16 to 20 teams :: Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Only once has Little League ever considered leaving the Williamsport area.

When Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley moved his team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, he offered Ebbets Field to Little League. Even though Little League was not adding teams to the World Series, the popularity and size of the event was expanding rapidly, and Memorial Park in Williamsport was no longer a viable home for it. The Williamsport community fought to keep the tournament, and in the end the solution was to move the World Series to its current location in South Williamsport. No matter the changes still to come to Little League, it is never going to leave.

“You had mentioned, ‘What’s Little League’s future going to be like in 2047?’” Van Auken says, “And I think in 2147, the Little League World Series is still going to be in Williamsport.”

Next year, for the first time, a team from Cuba will play in the Little League World Series. The country is part of the latest expansion that includes Panama and Puerto Rico. As part of a three-year rotation, two of the three regions will earn a direct entry to the LLWS, with the other having to play in a different regional tournament for the chance to make it. In 2023, the two teams will be Cuba and Panama, with Puerto Rico competing in the Caribbean regional; in ‘24, Panama will play in the Latin America regional, and Puerto Rico and Cuba will get automatic bids.

Little League has no plans to make the World Series bracket any larger than the one it uses now. Logistically, it considers 20 teams the optimal format with respect to scheduling and housing. But it is always looking for creative ways to increase participation, and if additional shots at the World Series incentivize that, the organization is open to including more teams in a direct-entry rotation down the road. Panama, Cuba and Puerto Rico were selected as the three teams because in recent years those three areas have seen a surge in player participation and the number of local leagues. If other regions experience a similar spike over the next decade or two, they similarly could be rewarded with automatic bids.

It’s almost time for me to leave Williamsport when I wrap up my conversation with Keener. I walk out on the concourse and decide to stay just a little bit longer. Mexico and Puerto Rico are playing over at Volunteer Stadium. I stop and grab a vanilla ice cream cone and head to the entrance. When I get to the gate, I see a 12-year-old in a turquoise jersey standing there, looking at me with a big grin on his face. It’s Jay-Dlynn Wiel, the Curaçao shortstop and pitcher.

“What are you smiling about?” I ask. He looks down and pats his pocket and says, “I got Aaron Judge.”

He gives me a fist bump and walks to his seat. I stand there for a few moments watching the game and think about something Keener had just told me. “Little League for millions and millions of people is a memory that they’ll cherish for the rest of their lives.” Then I finish my cone, walk down the hill to my car and drive away, grateful to be one of the millions.

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