“Hello everyone, from the WEEZ Sports Desk in beautiful Williamsport PA on this memorable August evening, where the team from backwoods but burgeoning Beaver City, Tennessee has won the 2045 Little League World Series, defending the title it won in dramatic fashion last year and with many of those same champs, ages10-12, on its roster.
“The ice cream and root beer is gonna flow up here and down in Beaver City tonight, friends! ’Merica!
“The day was a winner from the moment President of the United States Rebekah Jones threw out the first pitch — looked like a 4-seamer that got up there at about 97, right down main street — until Racoon City centerfielder Junior Junior Smith, Jr. hauled in the final flyout off the bat of the Curacao catcher Homer Johnson, who’d homered twice in the game, to preserve a 4-2 win for the Southeast team and the U.S.
“Coincidentally — and this is one of those ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ deals, folks — Johnson was born in the Beaver City fire truck (which we’re told is more of a fire VAN) while headed to the county hospital 12 years ago November and had starred for Beaver City during the 2044 championship season. But the young man was coaxed to transfer over the summer to Curacao, which as many of you know is a whole other country than Tennessee or even the United States. After his spectacular season at age 11, Johnson was given an NIL deal worth a half-million dollars to attend the 7th grade at Curacao Middle School in Boka Sami and play for Curacao. He told the American press at the time that he had “always wanted to live in Curacao my whole life,” even though his whole life had been only 11 years at the time. In a forced accent that might or might not have been Dutch Caribbean Tennessean, Johnson said he also enjoyed making the commercial for “that pimple cream.”
“While the stalwart Curacao collective came up with the loot to lure Johnson away, the Beaver City Booster Club LLC Inc. jumped into action with the speed of a road lizard on hot pavement. Everyone on the team got a new Schwinn, the infielders got new dogs, the outfielders got duck blinds, the pitchers and catchers got deer leases, and heroic, otherworldly centerfielder/3-hole hitter Junior Junior Smith, Jr. was given an insurance business, a car wash, full dental, and his parents’ mortgage was paid in full. ‘Junior Junior Smith Jr. has always been a model citizen,’ Beaver City mayor Skeets Morgan said of the 11-year-old baseball prodigy.”…
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While “amateur” sports are changing faster than an All-America cornerback can pack his travel bag and race to a richer campus, the Little League World Series is managing to hold the attention of millions even though the players are playing for peanuts — and Cracker Jack and bubble gum and Gatorade.
The Little League Softball World Series, televised of course, was won by a Pennsylvania team last week. And the Little League Baseball World Series is to conclude this weekend, the semifinals Saturday and the finals Sunday. ESPN has had the tournament, beginning with regional competition, covered for the past month like stink covers a possum’s butt (or “Butt-TOCKS,” as they’d say in mythical Beaver City). The LLWS has always had charm, and now ESPN covers it with as much or more forethought and production that the networks give the “other” World Series.
Good for a sport on 60-foot bases. It’s still the most pure form of the game there is.
And good for late-summer baseball, good for the joy it brings, good for the patient people who make it happen, and good for the boys and girls who know how to turn a double play and where to get a good Frito Pie but don’t yet know where Boka Sami is.
Or the transfer portal.
Or the bank.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu