Columbus team defeats Kawaguchi team to win Little League World Series
Japan may have topped America in the World Baseball Classic, but America is still number 1 where it counts: little kids’ baseball teams. Here’s what an Associated Press article said about it:
The chants of “USA! USA!” spread through the crowd when the kids from Columbus, Ga., got the last out in the Little League World Series. How fitting.
Cody Walker hit a two-run homer, Ryan Carter struck out 11, and Columbus beat Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1 on Monday, giving an American team the championship for the second straight year.
I know what many of you readers are thinking. “How fitting??? The Associated Press seems to have stooped to a new low in its AmeriKKKan nationalism!!” That “how fitting” line is pretty lame, but what’s wrong with an American audience cheering on an American team?
Lame writing aside, Japan has always fielded strong teams in the Little League World Series. Japanese teams won the 1999, 2001 and 2003 Little League World Series. I credit their strength to their hardcore training and commitment to the sport. At an elementary school I used to teach at, their baseball team seemed to practice almost every day, regardless of weather. I recall seeing them out there in the rain and snow, running laps around the field. You just don’t see many American kids engaging in brutal training routines these days, they’re too busy playing their X-Boxes.
While it isn’t actually relevant to this story, I’d like to point out the case of the Taiwanese Little League team that was invited to a South Korean tournament and subsequently banned from competing in the final round because the organizers did not want to see a foreign team win. Let’s hope the Little League World series never turns into an ultra-nationalist sham like that.
