Bassmaster said:
I'm not suggesting it does, but you already know that. What I'm saying is that playing open bases, and then moving on to 50/70 fields after 10u, and then reverting back to 46/60 at 12u is pretty ridiculous and doesn't meaningfully contribute to a kid's development on the field. It has nothing to do with the MLB or select baseball, but it has everything to do with ridiculous LL rules and field dimensions.
Flipping channels this morning and the Needville game is on. My oldest comes by and asks what age is playing so I tell him and explain about Little League vs. select and other youth baseball governing bodies.
He was completely ignorant of the LLWS and his first thoughts in 12-year olds playing 46/60 with 200-225' fences was "that's stupid for 12-year olds to be playing on those tiny fields." He even said he wouldn't want to play baseball with these weird rules (ie- no leads, steals, etc) and that it wasn't real baseball.
The point of all this is that kids know what their parents expose them to and to an extent what their friends and community do as well. My kid and his buddies don't know or care about Little League or the LLWS- it's adults that do. So you can pretty well surmise that the kids care because the parents do and not some traditional goal of boys all over.