TarponChaser said:

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aggiebrother33 said:

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I am still amazed every year how good these kids can be at 12 years old.

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They would destroy LLWS teams from 20 years ago. I wonder why though? #sarcasm

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Why? Steroids?

aggiebrother33 said:

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TarponChaser said:

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aggiebrother33 said:

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I am still amazed every year how good these kids can be at 12 years old.

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They would destroy LLWS teams from 20 years ago. I wonder why though? #sarcasm

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Bro stop, it's just like kids on the golf course/swimming/rowing etc. are better than 20 years ago. Just be happy for a good group of young kids and awesome coaches role models from a town of most HS sizes in TX. Some people I swear can't just enjoy life

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The lady protests too much.

I'm quite happy for the kids but bottom line is kids are better today because they're training more. Perhaps you'll recall the teams from Taiwan that dominated the late-80's and 90's up there and the commentary was how they trained year round and a lot more than American kids.

halfastros81 said:

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They also got caught playing 15 yr olds. And if not mistaken they select players from a 2.7 Mm population base … slightly more than Needville for example.

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I don't recall that from Taiwan. That was the team from New York with Danny Almonte and then with a team from the south side of Chicago. But I don't recall which of those happened first.

And one of the big things with LL is geographic constraints and leagues are all meant to be roughly the same in terms of numbers of kids. The Taiwan team is not picking from 2.7MM either- they have a ton of leagues and this team beat all the others on the island to advance.

If y'all think these kids on any of these teams are just magically better than they were 20 years ago you're being obtuse. They're playing select and training year-round even if they do play other sports too. Kids weren't doing that 20-30 years ago and that's all I'm saying.

halfastros81 said:

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Nope. The Japs ratted them out after 8 LLWS titles . They disappeared for almost a decade. The history is out there .

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You got a link on that? I can't find anything. What I can find is that they got in trouble for year-round practices (as far back as the early-70's) which was against LL rules and then for time where they wouldn't or couldn't adhere to residency boundaries but have since fixed that.

https://amp.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/little-league-world-series-scandals-at-a-glance

https://thediplomat.com/2013/08/what-happened-to-taiwans-little-league-champs/

This is a fantastic achievement for the Needville kids but to act they're some bunch of plucky misfits from a small town and not kids who are all playing year-round while training & competing in select tournaments is just false. A number of the kids on their select roster also show to have last played for other 12U major select teams like the Fulshear Chargers, Fort Bend Texans, and Texas Twelve in Katy.

Like somebody else said earlier, the all star teams that aren't made up of a bunch of select kids go 0-2 & BBQ.

I'll link it tomorrow. Watching the Stros.

halfastros81 said:

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I'll link it tomorrow. Watching the Stros.

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So am I.

TarponChaser said:

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This is a fantastic achievement for the Needville kids but to act they're some bunch of plucky misfits from a small town and not kids who are all playing year-round while training & competing in select tournaments is just false. A number of the kids on their select roster also show to have last played for other 12U major select teams like the Fulshear Chargers, Fort Bend Texans, and Texas Twelve in Katy.

Like somebody else said earlier, the all star teams that aren't made up of a bunch of select kids go 0-2 & BBQ.

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I think you're missing the point. No one is claiming these kids don't play a lot of baseball...but they are 4-0 at the LLWS and just made the U.S. championship game from a small town with a LL that has around 20 total 12 year olds. Those odds are extremely slim.

It's great that some of y'all have kids on select teams in areas where you can throw a rock and hit a 6a high school, but this ain't that.

MooreTrucker said:

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Hi, Im Brett said:

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TarponChaser said:

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This is a fantastic achievement for the Needville kids but to act they're some bunch of plucky misfits from a small town and not kids who are all playing year-round while training & competing in select tournaments is just false. A number of the kids on their select roster also show to have last played for other 12U major select teams like the Fulshear Chargers, Fort Bend Texans, and Texas Twelve in Katy.

Like somebody else said earlier, the all star teams that aren't made up of a bunch of select kids go 0-2 & BBQ.

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I think you're missing the point. No one is claiming these kids don't play a lot of baseball...but they are 4-0 at the LLWS and just made the U.S. championship game from a small town with a LL that has around 20 total 12 year olds. Those odds are extremely slim.

It's great that some of y'all have kids on select teams in areas where you can throw a rock and hit a 6a high school, but this ain't that.

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Some folks just gotta denigrate kids' experiences, can't just be happy for them and excited that a Texas team is in the championship.

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The fact you or anybody else thinks that's what I'm doing needs to brush up on their reading comprehension.

Things have changed big time in the past 20-30 years (oh man am I about to date myself). We played pony league and made it to the world series (we smoked the little league rule teams in the area) and we consisted of all stars from a city league. I think in the world series we played Tampa (home team that paid off the umps) Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and some other teams I can't remember. Competition was pretty good and we beat almost every select team we scrimmaged. Select ball almost 30 years ago is a lot different than today, back then it was a lot of kids that could not make the all star team or kids that had parents with the ability to afford another team to get more reps. I played a few games for select teams where as soon as I walked on the field I was the starting pitcher and batting clean up.

The AAA and highly competitive select teams are a lot different than select teams today. They practice almost every day of the week, have elite level coaches, and better programs. I have been offered to help coach and they did offer me money to do so (which to me is crazy for an assistant level coach). Programs have budgets, tryouts several times a year, and bring in college coaches for camps.

In the DFW area most of the elite kids go to select teams so there is a big difference between city league and select, at least on the better select teams. There are a lot of select teams just out there to make money but there are some legit ones

Can one of these little league teams now beat one of the AAA select teams in the same age group? Doubt it but you can catch lightning in a bottle.

that is how our league has done it for years (West U). When my son was 9, we (Dads, not the league itself) organized two teams from within our LL and started playing the summer/fall circuit. Then we shut it down once rec league started. In West U the Little League is a HUGE social deal.

We did this each summer leading up to their 12 year old years. Once LL was over each family went there on ways as far as "select" ball afterwards. Kids who wanted to play high school kept it up, those that decided to play other sports did those sports.

I will say that after that 9u summer it was very obvious once Rec League started as to which kids had been playing travel ball all summer and fall. Reps and more reps were the difference.

We had a successful All Star run for the most part. Came in second in state for 10U, won State as 11U, then won district 12U, but ran into a Pearland buzz saw in sectionals. That Pearland team was made up of a bunch of kids who had never played LL before. They joined the league that year to make a run. The previous year we run ruled them both times we played them in sectionals. The next year an entirely new team showed up. But no hard feeling - those are the rules. That team should have made it to Williamsport but they crapped the bed in fantastic fashion in the SW regional championship game.

As a postscript. From our league that year - that 12 year old class had six kids play D1 and two kids play D3. Four of those kids also played pro ball (two still in pro ball, and another one recovering from TJ and planning to head back). None of those Pearland kids played college (that I'm aware of) or pro ball.

It's a crap shoot at 12 years old.

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aggiebrother33 said:
I am still amazed every year how good these kids can be at 12 years old.

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TarponChaser said:


They would destroy LLWS teams from 20 years ago. I wonder why though? #sarcasm

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Bro stop, it's just like kids on the golf course/swimming/rowing etc. are better than 20 years ago. Just be happy for a good group of young kids and awesome coaches role models from a town of most HS sizes in TX. Some people I swear can't just enjoy life

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This is where it seems to have gone off the rails.

@aggiebrother33 seems to think I was denigrating these kids after he talks about how good they are when there's zero judgment whatsoever in my post.

Like you noted- it's reps & development. Kids today, even in LL or any other sport spend 1000 times more time and effort on all their sports and activities and it produces kids who are so much more technically skilled than we were 20, 30, and 40 years ago.

That's it and that's all.

Like my all star team when I was 12 lost in the Texas state championship tournament in the summer of 1989. We had 4 kids on that team who played D1 baseball and 2 more who played D1 football (including myself). We were thought we were pretty damn good but ran out of pitching in the tournament. Anyway, these kids from Needville (or any team in the LLWS) would have destroyed us. Why? It's not because they're any more athletic, it's because they spend way more time developing and getting reps than we did.

A strong 14U major team today would beat the vast majority of HS teams from 20 years ago (at least in a 3-game series because a team could always have a stud pitcher).

Same goes for any sport- kids are way more advanced because of more and better training.

The idea I'm taking anything away from these kids and not celebrating their success is asinine. I'm just pointing out that these kids are better at baseball than teams from our youth because they work at it more because of a system which is not this supposedly sacred Little League system.

Not sure about other parents but more kids are specializing in sports at a much earlier age than they used to. There are a lot of kids playing whatever year round. When we were growing up it was baseball season in the spring, football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and we dabbled in track. My biggest fear is burning kids out and by the time they get to high school it feels more like a job than a sport that is supposed to be fun.

Would I have been better playing year round baseball? Heck yeah, but in almost any sport by the time the season was about to be over I needed a break from that sport.

I think you're overlooking the "strong 14 major" and "vast majority" caveats of what he said.

The truly strong 14 majors teams have at least one kid sitting at or close to 90 nowadays. Sure, there were good baseball teams in 2000, but just that was enough to intimidate most teams back then.

Four Seasons Landscaping said:

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I think you're overlooking the "strong 14 major" and "vast majority" caveats of what he said.

The truly strong 14 majors teams have at least one kid sitting at or close to 90 nowadays. Sure, there were good baseball teams in 2000, but just that was enough to intimidate most teams back then.

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This.

When I say "strong 14U major" I'm talking about top-100 national teams or so. There will be the odd kid on these teams touching 90 but most will be in the low-80s. Kids on these teams have seen 80mph at 50' when they were 12 so even 90 from 60'6" isn't intimidating to them at 14. Plus, the technical skill (ie- being fundamentally sound) and the baseball IQ of kids is so much higher today because of the amount of work they put in.

I'm not saying they'd beat the top HS teams in the state from back then but there were a whole bunch playing bad baseball. Hell, there are 6A teams in our current HS district that just a decent 14U team (like a AAA team) would beat most of the time- namely Beaumont West Brook, Beaumont United, and CE King. Maybe even Humble HS.

He said they would beat the vast majority of those teams back in the day. What am i overlooking? Just because some overgrown 14 year old can touch 90 with a full out radar gun session trying to pump his velo videos doesn't he mean he can pitch. That's what throwers do.

Clearly the kids are more focused and trained these days, but let's no be hyperbolic about what they can do.

aggiederelict said:

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He said they would beat the vast majority of those teams back in the day. What am i overlooking? Just because some overgrown 14 year old can touch 90 with a full out radar gun session trying to pump his velo videos doesn't he mean he can pitch. That's what throwers do.

Clearly the kids are more focused and trained these days, but let's no be hyperbolic about what they can do.

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Have you seen these teams play? I used to be in the same camp you are but the last several years around it changed my mind.

I may be helping kill a thread but I'm not being hyperbolic.

Have though multiple times that the "8th grade" teams my kid played would have at least severely challenged our 1999 4a team that made it to the 3rd round

It's hard to believe some of these guys were gathered by us

TarponChaser said:

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aggiebrother33 said:
I am still amazed every year how good these kids can be at 12 years old.

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TarponChaser said:


They would destroy LLWS teams from 20 years ago. I wonder why though? #sarcasm

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Bro stop, it's just like kids on the golf course/swimming/rowing etc. are better than 20 years ago. Just be happy for a good group of young kids and awesome coaches role models from a town of most HS sizes in TX. Some people I swear can't just enjoy life

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Like you noted- it's reps & development. Kids today, even in LL or any other sport spend 1000 times more time and effort on all their sports and activities and it produces kids who are so much more technically skilled than we were 20, 30, and 40 years ago.

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I disagree with this. They play more games. My 10 yr old played ~80 games last year, which is probably more than I played in all my years combined until HS. What they don't do is play some kinda ball outside from sun up to sun down with the neighborhood. Kids now only practice at practice. Yes it is more specialized training, but is it better?

I've said this before on here about LL. I don't think the good kids are any better than we were, but the bad kids are really, really bad. We had 12 yr olds that didn't know what hand to put their glove on playing LL. We didn't have that. Our bad players were outside in the neighborhood playing all day also. Now they are sitting in the room on the Xbox.

My HS team and most the teams in our district from 20+ years ago, would wipe the floor with our HS teams now. Not sure what happened, but numbers are way down. I haven't seen that many freshman playing varsity ever for 5a playoff teams.

These 'players/teams are better today' ate always stupid to me. What is the point? If players from 20-30 years ago had access to the same systems, facilities, "supplements" (and I am talking more college/pro with "supplements") etc it would be a more sensible argument.

Anyhow, kind of stupid that the losers bracket team is the home team in a win or go home game in this Curacao/Taiwan game.

Impressive downward action on the slider from the 12 year old Taiwan pitcher!!

Nolan Ryan got screwed by the ump there. Let the catcher line up like a pitch out and catch the ball a foot off the plate and call it a strike.