Cuncel Da Little League World Series

Statement: After a thorough assessment of the impact the devastating COVID-19 pandemic has had on 6,500 community-based Little League® programs in 84 countries and based upon the direction of governmental and public health authorities, and in consultation with medical professionals and our Board of Directors, Little League International has made the difficult and disappointing decision to cancel its seven World Series tournaments and their respective regional qualifying events.

As we assessed the feasibility of including these tournament opportunities as part of that resumption of play, a number of factors went into the decision to cancel the World Series and Regional Tournaments, including:

  • The inability to play qualifying tournaments in many of our U.S. and International regions, coupled with direction from federal officials regarding the complexity of international travel restrictions and immigration requirements.
  • An indication from teams from around the globe that they will be unable to participate or travel to these tournaments.
  • The testing and mitigation protocols that would need to be in place at these significant public events should an individual participating or attending an event be diagnosed with COVID-19.

This news is not exactly a shock for anybody who has watched the news, read a newspaper, or has lived on the planet Earth over the last couple of months. But you had to figure that a tournament involving children from countries around the world in various states of a global pandemic playing a sport was almost definitely going to be curtains like everything else on the planet, unless the organization running it was the NCAA. Then nothing would surprise me. But Little League officially cancelled the LLWS. #Somethings may be bigger than sports but #somethings are bigger than the #somethings that are bigger than sports. I think that makes sense. 

It won't feel right getting that few weeks of electric LLWS content full of big hits, hilarious moments, and grown ups getting angry about something kids did while playing a kids a game. Then again, I don't think anything is going to feel right for a while. So lets go for a quick stroll down memory lane of great LLWS moments since it reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

#somethings