God damn, this is absurdly cheesy even for the LLWS.

SO the American team automatically has an advantage in the finals since they play on Fri and have an extra day off when it comes to pitching rest days?

Or does it kinda even out since they had to play the semi a day early?

?

They're playing the US Champ. game right now. The International game was earlier today. Final is tomorrow.

For the Love of God, Man. Have Mercy on these poor Texas boys.

Ask and it shall be done.

Have to say this is not the result I saw coming.

I couldn't have been anymore wrong....Yikes... Thanks to the books for putting a limit on these games.

I've looked into this on Wikipedia. This is has been the format of the finals since 1976: effectively separate tourneys for US and international squads, meeting in a final. In 1975, only US teams were invited. In 1974, and apparently in all the years before that, the tournament was randomly drawn w/r/t country. It looks like the format kinda grew ad hoc as Canadian, then Latin, then overseas teams got added.

As for comparative strength, it seems to run in cycles. The international teams seem to have waffle-stomped all the US teams throughout the 1970s, which may explain the one US-only year. But now the US teams have won five in a row since 2005.

With all that said, I'm sure sportsjefe is right--marketing is the biggest determinant of the format.

[politics]
I find it super annoying that they call the team from Taiwan "Chinese Taipei".
[/politics]

I call shenanigans on Team Hawaii. I've never seen a team with NO weaknesses since the old Taiwan teams in the 70s-early 90s.

Hawaii has like 10 pitchers who can throw 65mph.. got guys coming off the bench hitting like .500.

I think there's some residential eligibility bull**** going on here. This many great players coming out of the same player pool just doesn't happen.

Fat Taiwanese kid to hit a homer, for sure.

Taiwanese Panda

Don't let the facts get in your way. They have one player hitting .444, no one else is above .400.

LOL, the kid from Japan was like halfway to first for the walk by the time the ump called it a strike.

Enrico Pallazo approves of the home plate ump

Pearl Harbor imo

just an awesome experience even though we got destroyed by the #1 seed from california who featured a 6' 5" dude named stewie

lol exactly what I have been thinking

Okay, that kid on the Hawaii team they interviewed looked like he was at least 16.

Do these kids Bunt?

Who bunts on 3-1 and not 0-0?

USA!!!!!!!!

The fix is in imo

HUGE strikeout from the Jap pitcher there. I can say Jap right?

was waiting for that, seems like a no brainer to steal second there.

................................. strike?

WTF that was outside