Anyone watching? Right now on ESPN, Southern California is playing Hawaii. That SoCal team is from my neighborhood and most of the boys go to school with my son. Go Bobby and Joey!
It's always cool when these teams are in the area. Knew half the kids from the sweet water team a couple back. But I haven't really watched since that Chicago team got busted cheating. I was really all behind them and in the end, it just got shit on.
Greed? Nah. I also know quite a few from the HB champions some years ago as they were friends/neighbors with my nephew. None of them will attend college and they've signed their MLB contracts but they have never been greedy and they still aren't. I can't help but watch cause I've seen this kids grow up since Kinder. And I know several of the moms in the stands.
Thats cool. The greed is there you just dont see it. I dont know a single kid that played in that thing that is in the show today. Even that pitcher from the DR a while back that lied about his age. None of them ever amount to anything in the big leagues. Its a shame really.
39 players have but statistically that is a very small number and most are not recent. Gary Sheffield played in the LLWS. The boys playing at this point in the season are part of great teams, not necessarily just great individual players. It's not much different than the NFL. Lots of players who never made it to the final few games, bowls, etc. They are no different BTW, than just about any other youth sport. Organizations build in layers of bullshit to extract money from parents with dollar signs in their eyes and kids who have a dream.
I get it, its just different for baseball. Unless you are a purist you wouldn't understand why its a sham.
Very few LLWS alum have made it to the show but it's amazing to watch the skill of these 11 and 12 year olds, especially in the infield ante the way some of the kids execute the double play. The old kid from Dr was Danny Almonte
