Ocean View captures Little League World Series championship

Orange County Register ^ | 8/28/11 | DAN WOIKE

[SoCal Pubbie]

Ocean View got its usual stellar pitching and added in the timely hitting it needed to do what no other team from Orange County had done.

It won the Little League World Series championship.

[Sarah Barracuda]

Thanks for the info, had no idea it was 7..I think they said on the news this is the 2nd Cali team in the last few years who has won a title

[SoCal Pubbie]

I’m actually not that big of a baseball fan, but I do root for the Dodgers. Except when they are playing the Angels.

[Hot Tabasco]

The population of Huntington Beach is about 189,000 and Billings is about 100,000, so there’s not THAT big a difference.

City population has nothing to do with it, Huntington Beach represented California's 800 + leagues from a state population of over 37 million people which gave California a larger pool to draw from while Billings only had the 29 leagues from a state with only 970,000 people in which to choose a team.........

[SoCal Pubbie]

Yes, the second in the last three years. However, Cali has won more than any other State. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut have each won 4. It goes down from there. Taiwan has won 17! Of course, they used 20 year old players too :-)

[Sarah Barracuda]

Yeah I’ll root for the Dodgers when they play the Rangers, since they are in the Angels division. I hate seeing the Dodgers suffer like this, I’d like to see Vince Scully get a ring one day, he is a class act and a great broadcaster. He is in the same category as Chick Hearn was to the Lakers

[SoCal Pubbie]

The players from the Ocean View team are not drawn from all over California, just Huntington Beach. It IS more likely that ONE California team will be better than the others around the country because of the greater population, which translates into more teams to win, and therefore more chances to field the best team. But it does not mean that any ONE league is California has more players than one from another area necessarily, though it might in come cases.

[Carling]

Billings has 9 separate Little Leagues. How many does Huntington Beach have? In order to make it be close in population, it should be about 17 separate leagues, shouldn’t it?

[Carling]

Brent played in the same Little League (it’s had many different names, it was Rose Park Little League when I played in Burlington LL) as the Billings team. His dad brought Little League baseball to Billings.

I think he was kind of wiped out after being on an emotional high being able to call some games for the LL he played in as a kid. While that’s not a valid excuse, and while Brent did give a great call of Pratto’s final hit, it’s understandable to me.

I imagine calling that US championship game was a very surreal career moment for Musburger, and it took a lot out of him.

[Carling]

Plus, didn’t Long Beach somehow win back-to-back when Sean Burroughs played in the early ‘90s?

That was impressive.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Looking at both websites, the Montana District 1 LL has 39 teams in it’s 11/12 year old division.

http://www.eteamz.com/MtDistrict1baseball/teams/

Since they all appear to play in Billings then they are all in the same city.

The Ocean View LL consists of 7 teams in the “Majors” which is 10-11-12.

http://www.eteamz.com/ovll/teams/

I will be happy to stand corrected if someone can point out my error.

[Yaelle]

Yay OC! Yay Surf City, my home away from home!

[darkangel82]

That is a bit more understandable. I just wish he would have showed the enthusiasm he did for the 2007 Series and that dramatic walk-off HR that won it. Anyway, I won’t criticize because in my own LLB days, we never got anywhere close to Williamsport.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Perhaps someone with more complete knowledge of how these teams are formed can add to this discussion. It is my understanding that the Ocean View team, for example, consists of players drawn only from the teams in that league. So the size of the city really doesn't matter, except for the pool from which that team has to draw, assuming they actually cut kids at tryout time. As long as the leagues have roughly the same number of teams on them, then it shouldn't matter. New York City might have lots more leagues and lots more teams than Huntington Beach, but if a team from New York City represents say 8 teams in one league and Ocean View seven, it's pretty even.

That's not to say that some areas of the country don't have advantages. They do. But as far as I can see State lines are a little bit of an artificial division in this case.

[Carling]

Billings has 9 leagues of it’s own, though, in Montana’s LL structure.

Huntington Beach has 7 teams with almost 2x the population.

My tip-off was when I visited the Ocean View website and saw 14 “minors” teams with only 6 “major” teams.

It’s a great win for Huntington Beach, but the Billings leagues are truly neighborhood leagues, and not drawing from almost 25k of a population. I think Billings beating them one game is a bigger upset than anything that happened in this WS.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Look a little further. Majors are ages 10-11-12. The minor teams are different age groups.

http://www.eteamz.com/ovll/divisions/

[Carling]

No, minor teams also take on the kids that don’t make the “majors”.

I’m happy Huntington Beach won, but they have 2X the number of “minor” teams as “major” teams. I understand the reason for it, and I wish Billings would go to a similar system and cut their leagues in half to better compete with the CA teams.

[Hot Tabasco]

The players from the Ocean View team are not drawn from all over California, just Huntington Beach.

I never said that. Each league provides an Allstar team and from over 800 leagues in California, as compared to only 29 from the states of Montana and Idaho (yes, they had to be combined), the ability to field a championship team from California are far, far greater than the chances of Montana. Thats all......

The fact that little Montana made it there was a tremendous accomplishment for that team and state.........

[SoCal Pubbie]

Did you look at the link I posted?

Here’s the breakdown:

Majors
Ages 10-11-12

Juniors
Ages 13 - 14

Minor A
Ages 9-10-11

Minor B
Ages 8-9-10

Minor C
Ages 7-8

Farm
Ages 6-7

Tee Ball
Ages 5-6

Wee Ball
Ages 4

[SoCal Pubbie]

And did I post anything shortchanging the kids from Montana? Hell no! They did great and deserve all the kudos in the world.

Me point is that although California is a big place, the Ocean View kids represent only seven teams. Do they still have numbers on their side? Probably, but it’s not as big as comparing the two States.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Billings has minor teams too:

http://www.bigskyll.com/divisions/divisions.htm