Seguro Social Little League Wins Mexico Region Championship; Qualifies for 2007 Little League Baseball World Series

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WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (July 22, 2007) – A team from Mexicali earned a berth in the 61st Little League Baseball World Series by winning the Mexico Region Tournament on Sunday in Mexico City, Mexico.

The Seguro Social Little League of Mexicali, Baja, defeated Beto Avila Little League from Boca Del Rio, Veracruz, 11-0 in four innings to win the region championship. Seguro Social Little League finished the 12-team, three-phase tournament with a 9-3 record.

Teams from Mexico have won the Little League Baseball World Series three times, the most recent in 1997 when a team from Linda Vista Little League in Guadalupe defeated South Little League of Mission Viejo, Calif., 5-4, in the world championship game.

Seguro Social Little League, which made its only other World Series appearance in 2005, joins Li-Shing Little League of Taichung, Chinese Taipei; and La Victoria Little League of Maracaibo, Venezuela, as participants in the 2007 Little League Baseball World Series. The Little League Baseball World Series for 11-12-year-olds will be played in Williamsport, Aug. 17-26. Sixteen teams from around the world will take part.

The World Series championship game can be seen live on ABC television at 3:30 p.m., on Sunday, Aug. 26. ABC also will televise the International Championship game on Saturday, Aug. 25 at 12:30 p.m., followed by the United States Championship game at 3:30 p.m.

The 2007 Little League Baseball World Series will be the first operated under the new eight-year television contract agreement with ESPN/ABC. Five games will be televised on ABC. This will be the second year that all of the World Series games will be televised in high definition. For the sixth 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 are expected to be televised again this year. Sixteen World Series games will be televised on ESPN and 11 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.

The next berth in the Little League Baseball World Series is expected to be determined when the Japan Region Tournament concludes in Tokyo.

The U.S. region finals, which will be televised live, are: Thursday, Aug 9 - Southeast (St. Petersburg, Fla., 8 p.m., ESPN); Friday, Aug. 10 - Southwest (Waco, Texas, 8 p.m., ESPN); Saturday; Aug. 11 - Midwest (Indianapolis, noon, ESPN); Mid-Atlantic (Bristol, Conn., 2 p.m., ESPN); Great Lakes (Indianapolis, 7 p.m., ESPN); West (San Bernardino, Calif., 9 p.m., ESPN); Sunday, Aug 12 – Northwest (San Bernardino, Calif., 10 p.m., ESPN2); Monday, Aug. 13 – New England (Bristol, Conn., 8 p.m., ESPN2). All game times are Eastern U.S. time.

Little League Baseball and Softball is the largest organized youth sports program in the world, with 2.7 million participants in all 50 states and more than 75 other countries.