Pairings Set for 2003 Little League Baseball World Series

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WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (June 12, 2003) – The pairings for the 57th Little League Baseball World Series were announced today by Stephen D. Keener, president and chief executive officer of Little League Baseball.

For the first time since the tournament expanded from eight teams to 16 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.

“This is something we have worked toward for many years,” Mr. Keener said. “The televising of these games gives Little League a powerful vehicle for communicating its philosophy and purpose to more people every year. The expanded commitments by ESPN and ABC demonstrate that viewers enjoy the opportunity to watch Little League Baseball and Softball.”

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. 24. For the second year, ABC also will televise the U.S. championship game in primetime, on Saturday, August 23, at 7:30 p.m.

Twelve World Series games will be televised on ESPN and 13 games will be televised on ESPN2, bringing the total televised games to 27. Last year, 20 games were televised, which was up from the record of 19 the previous year.

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.

Six games (double last year’s total) 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 Baseball World Series in Taylor, Mich., and the final game of the Big League Softball World Series in Kalamazoo, Mich. That’s a grand total of 43 Little League games that will be televised nationally this August – also the most in history.

In the Little League Baseball World Series, a modified Olympic pool play format will be used for the 12th year to determine the champion. Each team in the two U.S. and International Pools will play the other three teams once in the first five days (Aug. 15-19). At this 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. 20-21) in the quarterfinal round. The winners of those games meet on Saturday (Aug. 23) for the U.S. and International Championships. The winners of Saturday’s semifinal games play for the World Championship on Sunday, Aug. 24.

Most of the games of the 2003 Little League World Series will be broadcast on radio station 1200 and 1400 WRAK-AM in Williamsport. As the Little League World Series flagship station for English-speaking radio broadcasts, WRAK’s coverage of the event is heard in dozens of U.S. cities.