This is no earth-shaking rant. Just a little thing that bothered me from last week. I live in Georgia, not terribly far from Peachtree City, a team from which made a strong run at the Little League World Series – getting all the way to the national title before losing to a team from Hawaii.
So it’s been in the news here lately. But they said something last week that I at first didn’t think about, but then I started thinking about it and it began to bother me.
The line was something like this – the team from Peachtree City will play a team from Hawaii for the National Title, then will go on to face the winner of S. Korea or Japan for the World series. (S. Korea won against Japan, then losing to the Hawaii team)
Something began nagging at me though when I heard that. I wonder if you can spot it. And again, it’s not really a big deal I suppose, but it annoys me nevertheless.
The winner of the US National title will go on to play the winner of S. Korea vs Japan.
It seems pretty clear to me that this implies that S. Korea and Japan had made it to that spot by playing other international tournaments and winning against the competition, right?
What the hell does this tournament structure look like? At what point did the Hawaii or Georgia teams play against an international opponent? What, does the winner of the US national tournament just get an automatic spot at the very top of the World Series tournament because… what, because we’re the USA?
That just smacks of wrongness to me. Japan’s team and S. Korea’s team apparently played against other NATIONS. Even if they didn’t, they still had to play against each other first, before they got the PRIVILEGE to play against the USA?
To be fair, I’m sure we invented Little League. And even in Pro baseball we call something the World Series that only involves US teams and one (or two?) from Canada. It’s a small World after all. But still, something about that tournament structure still feels wrong to me.
It’s not that I’m anti-US really. But shouldn’t we first have our own tournament THEN begin playing in the international tournament?
Ah, not a big deal. Just seems weird.
I worked out this apparent tournament structure for the Little League World Series based on a Wikipedia list of participating countries. Anyone see any problem here?
bluedraggy 