MLB continued its trend in recent years of having a regular season game at a neutral site, and this year baseball decided to bring The Show to the place where dreams of making it to The Show are made of: Williamsport, Pa., home of the Little League World Series.
The Little League Classic was great and should be an annual occurrence
Monday’s Say Hey, Baseball takes a look at the awesome collaboration between Major League Baseball and the Little League World Series.
Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images
Indeed, the Pirates and Cardinals made the three-hour trip from Pittsburgh to Williamsport to play a game on Sunday night, but they didn’t just show up, play each other, and then leave.
It’s pretty easy to imagine that the kids were absolutely thrilled to be playing baseball in front of actual big leaguers. It’s one thing to make it all the way to the pinnacle of youth baseball, but it’s another to make it there and rub shoulders with guys who play the game every day on TV. Seriously, just imagine coming all the way from Australia to play in the LLWS and also realizing that you get to dance to Bruno Mars tunes on the same bus as the St. Louis Cardinals. If you’re a kid, that memory is going to stick with you forever.
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Of course, there was still a big league baseball game to be played after all of the afternoon festivities were done. In front of a crowd of 2,596 that was mostly comprised of little leaguers and their families, the Pirates were able to pick up the “home” win against the Cardinals after former LLWS player Andrew McCutchen and Josh Bell helped push Pittsburgh to an early 3-0 lead in the first inning. Pittsburgh didn’t relinquish that lead and eventually won 6-3, but the result probably won’t be the most memorable moment for anybody who was in the building for the game.
What will be remembered is the fact that all of the kids involved made some memories that will be difficult to erase. Most of these kids won’t make it to the big leagues, but they definitely had a major league experience with this event. There’s no telling as to whether or not we’ll see MLB and Little League do this again, but I don’t think that anybody would object to this being a regular thing in the future.
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