Little League World Series Champions, Lake Mary, Florida. Photo: Lake Mary Little League
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His name is Teraj Anderson, and in his yellow-and-black uniform he vaguely recalls Smokey Burgess, the rotund catcher who helped the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the New York Yankees in the 1960 World Series. He's a 12-year-old African-American boy who plays in the bullpen and as a backup catcher and bats ninth for the 2024 Williamsport Little League Championship team in Lake Mary, Fla. He drove in the decisive run and stole home plate in the team's 10-7 win over Texas in Saturday's American Championship Game.
Teraj said the bond between teammates is key to winning. His three favorite baseball players are Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson, in that order. His team manager, Jonathan Anderson (no relation), made a speech in the dugout late in the Lake Mary Little League team's 2-1 win over Chinese Taipei on Sunday night, a walk-off home run in the top of the eighth inning that sealed the win.
Jonathan Anderson, in a dugout speech, told the Little League players that a man had prayed for him earlier in the week, and then told Anderson's father that God had already written Florida's victory in His book. Anderson explained, “It was already written.” All they had to do was play the rest of the game and experience it. In a postgame interview, he elaborated that the players just believed and did what they had to do.
The 2024 Williamsport Series once again proves why this is arguably the premier American sporting event of the year, with 38 matches played over 12 days from Aug. 14 to 25. Twenty teams of boys ages 11-13 will travel from as far away as Australia and the Czech Republic to Central Pennsylvania for the return of the summer classic.
The Australian team is the first set of triplets to play on the same team in Williamsport and is also the only women competing this year, the 23rd woman to do so in 40 years of participation. The Czech team brought a 12-year-old Ukrainian refugee for the second consecutive year. Other countries representing the international region were Aruba, Canada, Taiwan, Cuba, Japan, Mexico and Venezuela.
Puerto Rico was automatically designated the International Regional Representative this year and will rotate annually with the Dominican Republic and Panama. The 10 International Teams will play simultaneously against the 10 U.S. Regional Representative Teams, with the winning International Team and U.S. Team ultimately meeting in the Finals.
The tournament was a double-elimination bracket, meaning a team was eliminated if they lost their second game, resulting in some dramatic second games, with Venezuela eliminating Aruba and Mexico eliminating Cuba, both with walk-off wins, and Cuba playing their second game in Williamsport, which became a story in itself.
Baseball and Diplomacy
Due to current diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba being weak, family and friends of Cuban players were not eligible to obtain travel visas to support the team this year. The Biden-Harris Administration's State Department, under the direction of Deputy Secretary Richard Verma, a former Williamsport Little League player in 1981, worked hard to invite the Cuban team, while trying to rebuild the baseball cooperation with Cuba that was initiated by President Obama.
Toward the end of his term, President Obama visited Cuba and, along with Raul Castro, watched a special game between the Cuban All-Star team and the Tampa Bay Rays in the stadium where Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers held spring training in 1947. Because, ahead of the first year of baseball integration in Florida, they had received death threats if they came to Florida.
Under the Obama administration, Cubans had begun to be allowed to play in major league baseball in the United States without defecting. The Trump administration has effectively repealed that, along with other restrictions imposed on Cuba.
This year, there was only one Cuban parent who came to watch his son play, and he happens to live in the U.S. One of the highlights each year in Williamsport is watching family and friends enthusiastically cheer and chant for their favorite team from the stands. In addition to the usual English coverage from the stands, there are also interviews with interpreters and features showcasing the thoughts and reactions of Spanish-speaking fans.
The cheers of parents, brothers, sisters and other relatives often seem to be what sparks a team's victory. This year, Cuba had none of that. In contrast, Mexico's Little League team had dozens of fans in the stands when they rallied in their final at-bat to beat Cuba in a walk-off victory.
Little League games can be just as thrilling as major league games. That was the case in the final international qualifying round, when Venezuela beat Japan by one run until the last out of the final inning.
Major league players were in Williamsport, too. For the eighth straight year, as has become tradition, major league players came to play in a local minor league stadium on the first Sunday night of the tournament, Aug. 18, to play in the local minor league stadium. The opponents were the Yankees and the Tigers. Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who has already hit 52 home runs this year, was surrounded by children from the moment he stepped off the team bus from the airport.
A media highlight of the past two weeks was Judge's interview on the bus by 14-year-old African-American female journalist Pepper Pursley as part of the ESPN2 Kids television broadcast. Judge's adoptive parents were honored as the George and Barbara Bush Little League Parents of the Year prior to the major league broadcast for their support of their son throughout his youth as a baseball player.
The championship game was one of the most exciting games ever played, lasting longer than the required six innings and into the bottom of the eighth. Little League rules mean that there is an automatic runner on second base at the start of the eighth inning. Both teams had the bases loaded multiple times, and the 1-1 game featured some great pitching and defense, making it the only game Chinese Taipei had ever played that lacked patience and tenacity.
In the bottom of the eighth, with an automatic runner on second, Florida bunted on the first pitch. The first baseman caught the ball, but the pitcher gloved it and threw it to the uncovered, now vacant first base. The ball flew to right field, scoring the winning run from second.
Before the Lake Mary players and coaches spontaneously celebrated, they hugged and comforted the distraught and tearful China team in a remarkable display of sportsmanship and compassion that became an enduring image at this year's Williamsport Little League World Series.
