Pairings Announced for 2004 Little League Baseball World Series

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For the second year since the tournament expanded from eight to 16 teams in 2001, every team will have at least one game on national television as ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 team up to bring Little League Baseball into millions of homes.

“Televising the Little League Baseball World Series is significant in so many ways,” Mr. Keener said. “Through the commitments of ABC and ESPN, viewers watching the World Series each August become active supporters of Little League Baseball and Softball, while at the same time Little League has been afforded a valuable tool for communicating its philosophy and purpose to all who tune in.”

The world championship game of the Little League Baseball World Series (for 11-12-year-olds) can be seen live on ABC at 6:30 p.m., on Sunday, Aug. 29. For the third year, ABC also will televise the U.S. championship game in primetime, on Saturday, Aug. 28 at 7:30 p.m.

Eleven World Series games will be televised on ESPN and 14 will be televised on ESPN2, bringing the total of televised games to 27. Last year, 26 games were televised.

In addition, ESPN2 will again 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 ESPN2 every year since 1997.

Three games of the Little League Softball World Series in Portland Ore., will be televised in August on ESPN2, along with the final game of the Junior League World Series in Taylor, Mich., and the final game of the Big League World Series in Kalamazoo, Mich.
That’s a total of 40 Little League games that will be televised nationally this August.

In the Little League Baseball World Series, a modified Olympic pool play format will be used for the 13th year to determine the champion. Each team in the two U.S. and International Pools will play the other three teams once in the tournament’s first five days. At that point, single-elimination begins and pool-play records are disregarded.

The two most successful teams in each of the four pools cross over to play the second-place teams in the other pools on Wednesday and Thursday (Aug. 25-26) in the quarterfinal round. The winners of those games meet Saturday (Aug. 28) for the U.S. and International championships. The winners of Saturday’s semifinal games play for the World Championship on Sunday, Aug. 29.

Most of the games of the 2004 Little League World Series will be broadcast on radio station 1200 and 1400 WRAK-AM in Williamsport and via the Internet at Chilitech.com. WRAK is the flagship station for the English-speaking radio broadcasts of the Little League World Series.

Note 1: EMEA refers to the Europe, Middle East and Africa Region champion (EMEA). Formerly this regional winner was designated as the European champion.
Note 2: Opening Ceremonies will be on Friday, Aug. 20, prior to first game