Zach Miller

zmiller@GameTimePA.com

The internet can be a funny place.

Not long after I wrote about Hanover Little League's unique decision to eliminate a majors division — the division that crowns its national champion in Williamsport every summer — and focus on an intermediate division, I got a note from an online reader out in California.

The one-sentence note let me know that there's another league doing the same thing: University City Little League in San Diego.

Last week, I finally got in contact with Sean Dunne, the president of University City Little League. And I think his league might be onto something.

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It turns out all of California's District 32 agreed to eliminate a majors division in favor of the intermediate division shortly after that new division came into existence in 2013. Unlike the decision in Hanover, which groups all players between the ages of 11 and 13 into the intermediate division, those leagues limited the intermediate division to 11- and 12-year-olds. Thirteen-year-olds play in the juniors division, played on high school-sized fields, with 14-year-olds.

The prevalence of travel baseball influenced the decision, just like here in Hanover. So did the idea of better preparing players for high school baseball.

“We started talking to parents about ‘what do they really want for their son as far as their baseball career?’ Was it just Little League World Series or were these kids who wanted to play baseball moving forward?” Dunne said. “What we have found is that players who move up to juniors now, we see a huge different in tryouts. We see kids who come out for tryouts, and they can all make the throw from third base. A couple years ago, hardly any of them could make that throw.”

It hasn't all been perfect, though. One of the larger leagues in the district brought its majors division back this year and is gaining an unfair advantage in the intermediate division by playing only 13-year-olds, Dunne said. Other leagues have started leaking 13-year-olds back into the intermediate division as well to stay competitive, he said.

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My conversations with Dunne left me with one prevailing thought: if every Little League operated the way University City Little League does, we could put this whole majors division vs. intermediate division debate to rest.

The biggest issue bothering many parents in Hanover — in addition to the fact that Hanover Little League's approach eliminates any dream of achieving what Red Land Little League achieved — is that some fifth-graders are stuck playing in the same league as eighth-graders. It's not a fun position to be in if your son is one of those fifth graders.

But that wouldn't be an issue if the intermediate division was limited to 11- and 12-year-olds.

That move would render the majors division useless, but most coaches believe the intermediate division lends itself more toward kids improving and preparing to play at higher levels of the game.

"The thing that we’ve found is that once kids start playing at the intermediate level, they don’t want to go back to the smaller basepaths, they don’t want to go back to not being able to lead off and not being able to steal," Dunne said "It’s a completely different baseball game for them and once they experience it, they don’t want to go back.”

Right now, the Little League World Series includes the lure of playing on ESPN. But there's a little-known Intermediate League World Series, currently played in Livermore, California, that showcases the top intermediate league teams every summer.

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“If you ask me, ‘should (the Intermediate League World Series) be a bigger deal?’ I think it should," Dunne said. "I think it’s a better level of baseball. I think you look at the World Series right now and it looks like a bunch of big kids playing on a field too small for them.”

Why not expand the basepaths in Williamsport, move the Intermediate League World Series there and let it fill in the ESPN programming slots held by the current series? You can even keep calling it the Little League World Series.

Nobody in Livermore will miss it, and kids still have the chance to live out the Williamsport dream. The millions of ESPN viewers also get to enjoy a version of the game more closely resembling major league games.

More importantly, the men and women in charge of every Little League can stop arguing about divisions and worrying about gaining a competitive edge. The spotlight can finally go back on the 11- and 12-year-olds who play the game.