September 29, 2017
The Little League World Series will give some love to the better eastern side of Pennsylvania next year.
This past August, the annual 10-day-long youth baseball tournament in Williamsport hosted its first regular-season Major League Baseball game, featuring a contest between the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals.
In 2018, it'll be the Phillies and the stinkin' Mets playing in what's been dubbed the Little League Classic. Per a press release:
The Mets and Phillies will play in the second iteration of the MLB Little League Classic at renovated Historic Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pa., on Aug. 19, 2018, the league and the Players Association announced Friday.
...
As it was in 2017, the 2018 version of the game will take place at Bowman Field, the home of the Phillies' Class-A Williamsport Crosscutters. Once again, participating players, coaches and families of the 2018 Little League Baseball World Series, as well as local Williamsport youth baseball and softball organizations, will fill a significant portion of the capacity at Bowman Field.
Big league players from the Phillies and Mets will attend Little League Baseball World Series games earlier in the day, as part of MLB and MLBPA's continuing effort to help grow the game at the youth level.
As a longtime attendee of the LLWS and a lifelong Phillies fan, it's kind of a bummer that there's really no way for me to attend, as the game is pretty much only open to players, coaches, parents and a few other organizations. That is, unless, I take over as manager for a Little League team and coach well enough to get into the tournament. Yeah, I think that's the move.
