I suppose the demographics of the recruiting base might be a factor. Youth baseball in the U.S. is now primarily a small town and suburban sport, so the teams and players will be spread out. If baseball is still a city game in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, clubs would tend to have inherently larger player pools even without recruitment fun and games.
Back in the day Taiwan just cheated. Now I think the dominance simply comes from discipline.
Little League will never compete with club teams and traveling teams - I think they know that. Little League is more about community than it is about future scholarship/draft possibilities, and some people still like it that way.
This township in PA has 365 residents. Something to think about.
If Japanese LL is anything like JHS and HS baseball here , these kids practice all-year round inc. winter .
The same things that put them at the top of all educational categories: dedication and discipline......
Look at the influx of Asians into the sports of golf and tennis.........
After the first inning, they were down 10 - 2 and now they're up 13 - 11?????? Just Wow!
This a great game!
Yes and no. The small towns with only 6 or 8 teams do not have a pool of talent to draw from and thus will never make it to Williamsport.
It's the larger metropolitan areas with the larger league teams who are consistantly making it to the finals.
Make no mistake about it, the US team from Red Land is a major youth baseball area.......
Can’t speak to the other countries, but in Japan sports are essentially club teams. Once you pick one, your involved year round. Most have two tournaments a year leading to national championships at the High School level. During “off season” there is still practice and such. A lot more focus on single sport vs multi-sport athletics.
Sometimes school teams will share athletes where the club doesn’t have enough to make a tournament. So for example if the volleyball team has a good jumper he might help out the track team in a meet long jumping or high jumping, but only for that specific tournament or meet. The track team might then provide some assistance back if the volleyball team has injuries or can’t quite scrap up enough folks to field a full team.
With baseball - it is by far the most popular sport, though tested by soccer in the 90s/00s it has regained prominence. I see it as the dedication to the single sport as the driver though.
Can’t speak to Taiwan’s cheating (though we’ve had our own scandals there with overaged, etc) but the culture there regarding sports is similar to japan with dedication toward a single sport. In both it is rare to find members leaving for another sport, usually if they leave they get out of sports all together and just figure it isn’t for them. At least based on discussions I’ve had.