Chiba City Little League Wins Japan’s National Tournament, Advances to 2009 Little League Baseball World Series
Monday, July 20, 2009
Category Sports
By Communications Division
SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, PA.
July 13, 2009
Chiba City Little League won Japan’s national championship on Sunday and earned the league’s second berth in the Little League Baseball World Series.
In the Japanese National Championship Game, Chiba City Little League defeated Izumisano Little League, from Izumisano City, 17-4; and finished the 16-team tournament with a 4-0 record.
Chiba City Little League, located near Tokyo, joins Asia-Pacific Champion Kuei-Shan Little League from Chinese Taipei; and Latin America Region Champion Coquivacoa Little League of Maracaibo, Venezuela, as participants in the 63rd Little League Baseball World Series.
Teams from Japan have won the Little League Baseball World Series six times, the most recent in 2003 when a team from Tokyo defeated East Boynton Beach (Fla.) Little League, 10-1, in the world championship game.
Chiba City Little League’s only other appearance in the Little League Baseball World Series came in 2005, representing the Asia Region. In that year’s tournament, Chiba City Little League advanced to the International Championship Game, before losing to Caribbean Region Champion, Pabao Little League of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, 2-0.
The 2009 Little League Baseball World Series for 11-12-year-olds will be played in Williamsport, Aug. 21-30. Sixteen teams from around the world will take part.
The World Series championship game can be seen live on ABC at 3:30 p.m., on Sunday, Aug. 30. ABC also will televise the International Championship Game on Saturday, Aug. 29 at noon, followed by the United States championship at 3 p.m.
The 2009 World Series will be the third operated under the eight-year television contract agreement with ESPN/ABC. Five games will be televised on ABC. This will be the fourth year that all of the World Series games will be televised in high definition. For the eighth year since the tournament expanded from eight to 16 teams in 2001, every team will have games on national television.
All 32 games of the World Series will be televised again this year. Thirteen World Series games will be televised on ESPN and 14 will be televised on ESPN2. In addition, the ESPN family of networks will carry all eight of the U.S. Regional Championship finals in the Little League Baseball division. The U.S. regional finals have been televised by ESPN and ESPN2 every year since 1997.
For the second consecutive year, the New England Sports Network (NESN) is scheduled to televise four early-round games in the New England Region Tournament. The Madison Square Garden Network (MSG) is scheduled to televise four early-round games in the Mid-Atlantic Region Tournament. Each tournament is to be played at Little League’s A. Bartlett Giamatti Leadership Training Center in Bristol, Conn.
The next berth in the Little League Baseball World Series is expected to be decided on July 26, when the Caribbean Region Tournament in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles is expected to end.
The U.S. region finals, which will be televised live, are: Thursday, Aug. 13 - Southwest (Waco, Texas, 8 p.m., ESPN2); Friday, Aug. 14 - Southeast (Ceredo-Kenova, W. Va., 8 p.m., ESPN); Saturday, Aug. 15 - Midwest (Indianapolis, noon, ESPN); New England (Bristol, Conn., 2 p.m., ESPN); Great Lakes (Indianapolis, 7 p.m., ESPN); Northwest (San Bernardino, Calif., 9 p.m., ESPN); Sunday, Aug. 16 - West (San Bernardino, Calif., 8 p.m., ESPN2); Monday, Aug. 17 - Mid-Atlantic (Bristol, Conn., 8 p.m., ESPN2).
Little League Baseball and Softball is the largest organized youth sports program in the world, with 2.6 million participants in all 50 states and scores of other countries.