It would seem that the Little League World Series follows the same philosophy as the NCAA when it comes to their big tournaments:
Ladies First
It seems to be that the men's sport of baseball is just about a week or two behind women's softball when they play the college world series in late spring, early summer. Just about the time the ladies are getting ready for bracket play, the men are just starting their conference tournaments hoping to snag themselves a seed in the next step of their journey.
The same is true with the Little League Softball World Series. While the young ladies are in the heart of bracket play right now, the boys are still playing their regional qualifying games. It's interesting to watch those baseball games and see so many tears being shed on the field with each win and loss. It's also easy to forget that these kids are just at most 12 years old probably, so a few tears here and there are totally understandable.
It's still always a bit rough to see a young pitcher heartbroken that they may have cost their team the game. I've never been in that position and I can't imagine I would handle it much better.
I think we left of yesterday with something like Game 8 in the softball world series. Game 9 too place and the Northwest division had a commanding 10 to 0 victory over the West division which is honestly pretty crazy. The southern west coast is pretty well known for their softball programs, so I would have thought they might do better.
Meanwhile, in game 12, the Southeast division team took down the New England division team 9 to 0. I can't say that one surprises me too much. The south has some legit softball teams. All the way from the rec to university level.
That gives us a Northwest versus Southeast loser bracket showdown in Game 14 today. Sadly, New England and the West division are bounced out of the tournament. The winner of the Northwest/Southeast game will wait to see who they are going to fact after the Southwest and Mid-Atlantic face off in game 15 tomorrow. The loser will drop down to that game 14 and the winner will advance to the "Purple Championship" game (AKA game 20). This is a double elimination bracket, so whoever wins game 17 on Friday will have to beat the winner of game 15 twice to punch their ticket.
Meanwhile, on the "Orange" side of the bracket, Latin America whooped all over Canada 10 to 1 in the loser bracket game 10 to knock our friends to the north out of the tournament. Meanwhile, the Central Division ousted Europe-Africa from the tournament in a 4 to 0 game 11 victory.
That means Latin America and the Central division will meet up in game 13 today. As with the other half of the bracket, the winner of that game will face either North Carolina or Asia-Pacific in game 18 after those two teams play game 16 tomorrow. The winner of game 18 goes on to face the winner of game 16 in game 19 on Saturday.
I have a feeling by the time we get to the Saturday and Sunday games they will probably start airing the games on one of the major networks without having to pay for a subscription. That is the hope anyway.
You know I will keep giving you the updates here on HIVE.
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