LITTLE LEAGUE

The idea for Little League Baseball was conceived by Carl E. Stotz, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in August of 1938. Originally, Stotz's plan was to create a youth league for his two nephews and their friends that was a miniature version of major league baseball, and as such each player was outfitted with a team uniform and each game started with a brand new baseball. To make the game competitive and fun for the children between the ages of nine and twelve, Stotz made changes to the size of the regulation major league baseball field.

Through trial and error, Stotz determined that the distance between bases should be sixty feet and the distance between home plate and the pitchers mound would be thirty-eight feet from home plate. Later, in 1943, a home run fence was added to the field, which was 175 feet down the left and right field line and 188 feet to centerfield. Over the ensuing years, changes were made to the field dimensions, and as of 2003, the pitchers mound was forty-six feet from home plate, while the four-foot-tall home run fence stood 205 feet from home plate to left, center, and right field. Comparatively, a standard Little League baseball field is roughly two-thirds the distance of a Major League baseball field.

In further effort to make the game of Little League baseball an enjoyable experience for all children, Stotz instituted rules that encouraged more participation by the kids playing the game, and less participation from the adult coaches. Some notable rules are that each child on a team must have at least one at-bat or one inning in the field during the game, and that at least one base coach must be a player from the team.

Expansion

The first Little League consisting of three teams started in the spring of 1939 amidst much local fanfare, but the onset of World War II curtailed any large growth during the organization's formative years. However, soon after the war ended, curiosity about Stotz's youth league started to rise. New Jersey became the second state to charter a Little League team in 1947, and a season-ending eight-team, single-elimination tournament for eleven- and twelve-year-olds was held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in August. The 1948 tournament was sponsored nationally by U.S. Rubber and largely contributed to the growth of Little League, so much so that by 1951 there were 776 leagues, including one from outside the United States in British Columbia, Canada.

Worldwide expansion of Little League became a continuing effort of the organization, and in 1957 the first international champion at the Little League World Series hailed from Monterrey, Mexico. Starting in 1959, the World Series tournament moved from Max M. Brown Memorial Park located on the west side of Williamsport to Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport, where the tournament has been played ever since. Taiwan entered the international tournament in 1969, and they would go on to win the World Series title seventeen times between 1969 and 1997, at which time they revoked their membership in Little League due to an inability to conform to zoning eligibility rules (twelve leagues from Taiwan reentered Little League competition in 2003).

Between 1971 and 1991, the structure of the Little League World Series remained the same: four teams from international regions and four teams from U.S. regions would play in a single-elimination tournament format resulting in a final pairing of one team from the international division and one from the United States. Two important changes in 1992 brought about the first major expansion in the Little League World Series. The first was that the Series changed from a single-elimination tournament to an eight-team Olympic-style pool-play tournament, where everyone in the International pool and National pool played each other once. The top two teams in each pool then advanced to play each other in the International and National championship games, and the winner from that round would play for the World Series championship, for a total of fifteen games. The second change was the addition of lights to Lamade Field in order to accommodate the additional time necessary to play the games.

Nine years later, in 2001, Volunteer Stadium was erected 100 feet from Lamade Stadium so that the World Series could accommodate a sixteen-team, thirty-two-game tournament (eight International, eight National, split into four, four-team pools) that took ten days to complete.

Sponsorship

Since its inception, Little League Baseball has run solely on the sponsorship money donated from local companies and corporations. The first local sponsor of Little League, Lundy's Lumber, continued to sponsor many youth sports in Williamsport, including Little League, as of the early 2000s. As mentioned previously, the first national sponsor for Little League was U.S. Rubber, which owned the Keds shoe company. After a successful run sponsoring the international tournament, U.S. Rubber ended its relationship with Little League in 1956. Since that time many high profile companies like Pizza Hut and Mongoose Bikes have been a part of the event as corporate sponsors. In 2003 Honda, Bubbalicious, Oxi-Clean, Russell Athletic and New Era, Musco Sports Lighting, Active Team Sports, CNA Insurance, Choice Hotels International, RC Cola, Wilson Sporting Goods, MasterfoodsUSA, Snickers and Stouffer's were all corporate sponsors of Little League.

Media Coverage

Much like sponsorship, media coverage has been a part of Little League since its first game, with the inaugural game's box score appearing in the Williamsport Sun. Local coverage of the series continued to grow as Williamsport's local radio station, WRAK, covered the first championship game in 1948, and highlights of the game appeared on CBS television. Media coverage of the World Series intensified as Little League continued to grow. ABC's Wide World of Sports started airing the tape-delayed final on television in 1960, and further helped the proliferation of Little League. ABC started airing the final game live in 1985, and their sister channels, ESPN and ESPN2, began airing early round games in 1997. Little League programming was so popular that all three channels expanded their coverage of Little League as the tournament expanded. In 2003 ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 aired twenty-seven of the thirty-two games during the tournament, and the final game garnered a higher rating than game seven of the NHL Stanley Cup finals.

Participation

From 1939 to 1972, only boys were permitted to participate in Little League Baseball. However, with the advent of Title IX, in 1972, Little League was forced to allow girls to play. In 1983, Victoria Roche, a participant on the European team from Belgium, was the first female to reach the World Series. The influx of girls in Little League caused participation numbers to rise to new heights. As of 2003, 2.3 million children ages nine to twelve, in 104 countries and all fifty states, competed in Little League Baseball. Of those children, only those between the ages of eleven and twelve can compete on tournament teams with the hope of reaching the Little League World Series in Williamsport.

See also: Baseball, Amateur; Baseball Crowds

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frommer, Harvey. Growing Up at Bat: 50 Years of Little League Baseball. New York: Pharos Books, 1989.

Little League World Series Media Guide. Williamsport, Pa., 2003.

Little League World Series Souvenir Program. Lexington, Ky.: Host Communications, 2003.

Sundeen, J. T. "A Kid's Game?: Little League Baseball and National Identity in Taiwan." Journal of Sport & Social Issues 25 (2001):251–265.

2003 Tee Ball, Minor League, Little League Baseball, Junior League, Senior League, Big League Baseball: Official Regulations and Playing Rules For all Divisions of Little League Baseball With Tournament Rules and Guidelines. N.p., 2003.

Van Auken, Lance and Robin. Play Ball!: The Story of Little League Baseball. University Park, Pa.: The Penn State University Press, 2001.

Ryan E. White