BANGOR, Maine — Changes are looming as the Senior League World Series approaches its 14th year in the Queen City.
Already announced is a move of the Little League Baseball world championship tournament for 15- and 16-year-olds from mid-August to early in the month beginning next summer.
Also being discussed is a possible change from the round-robin tournament format that marked the first 13 editions of the SLWS at Mansfield Stadium to a modified double-elimination event that still will lead to a televised winner-take-all championship game.
“It is not a done deal,” SLWS Executive Director Mike Brooker said recently of the proposed format change. “But at this point I’d say it’s more likely than not.”
The advancement of the tournament dates by nearly two weeks — the SLWS in Bangor concluded as late as Aug. 22 in 2009 but will run Aug. 2-8 next year — stems from at least two factors.
One involves periodic conflicts for the athletes involved between their participation in the baseball tournament and the start of the school year and fall sports back home.
“One reason that was a contributing factor in some regards is that Little League is an educational foundation,” Brooker said. “That’s what their federal charter is based on, and it has presented an issue where we have two, three or sometimes four teams missing the first week of school.”
Teams that have qualified for the SLWS from Hawaii, Texas and Georgia have been among those that have missed school time to compete in the tournament. Those teams and others — including the host Maine District 3 champion on occasion — have faced additional scheduling conflicts between the Senior League World Series and preseason fall sports practices.
“Where it really impacts kids at our ages is that a lot of times kids don’t come because at the high school level they have to stay home because high school football or soccer has started,” Brooker said.
In 2007, for example, nearly all players on the Rose Capital East American/National Little League all-star team from Tyler, Texas, missed the first week of their high school football practices to compete in the SLWS, a decision that caused some local consternation.
“We’ve got nine football players, and they’re all missing two-a-days, and it’s not a good thing right now back home,” Tyler, Texas, manager Bobby Rushing said at the time.
Another reason for the move involves television coverage of the event.
Little League Baseball has a television contract with ABC/ESPN to air selected games of its world championship baseball and softball tournaments, and while most of that coverage focuses on the 11- to 12-year-old Little League Baseball tournament, the Senior League World Series championship game has been televised live for the last few years by ESPNU.
Moving the tournament up by a week or more increases the likelihood that the game might be broadcast on a higher-profile outlet, such as ESPN or ESPN2, while eliminating scheduling conflicts with the 11-12 baseball tourney, which next year will be held Aug. 20-30.
“One of our concerns has always been how much notice do we get when we’re conflicting with the 12-year-olds,” said Brooker. “This past year when our championship game was on at 2 o’clock on ESPNU, there were 12-year-old games at noon and 3 on ESPN or ESPN2.
“This way, by playing it earlier, we won’t have those conflicts any more, and the potential is there that we’ll be on ESPN or ESPN2 as opposed to the U,” he continued. “And while we love the people we’ve worked with at the U, the difference is 70 million homes for the U and 170 million homes for regular ESPN, so it would increase our exposure.”
Television exposure also is behind the proposed switch to a modified double-elimination format similar to that used for the 11-12 baseball tournament.
Under the proposal under consideration, the SLWS would have two five-team pools playing in separate double-elimination brackets from Sunday until Thursday, when the final undefeated team and the last one-loss team in each pool would play a winner-take-all pool championship game for the right to advance to Saturday’s world championship game.
Rather than the practice of the Thursday games being the predetermined final matchups of pool play with varying degrees of importance, the two remaining games essentially would be semifinals set for designated times, making them much more attractive for television.
“That possibility exists, which is one of the reasons for this modification to the tournament format,” Brooker said.
Under the proposed format, the tournament still would feature four games daily from Sunday through Wednesday. One team in each pool would have a first-day bye, likely determined by blind draw, with that procedure continuing annually until each region has received a bye and a rotation would be determined for subsequent years.
“We would need to do the blind draw no later than the first of June, because international regions typically crown their champions in June or early July and they need to have time to get visas and make other travel arrangements,” Brooker said.
The two pool championship games likely would be held Thursday night, preceded earlier in the day by two consolation games involving teams that lost their first two games of double-elimination play, ensuring each SLWS entry would have a minimum of three games.
Having the pool championship games at night also could lead to larger crowds for those games, Brooker said. SLWS semifinals in Bangor traditionally have been held at 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Friday.
Friday would become a rain date under the proposed format, though Brooker suggested the possibility of re-instituting an all-star game featuring representatives from the eight teams that did not advance to the world championship game.
Adding two consolation games and an all-star game to the revised format would give the tournament 22 games, down just one contest from the present format.
The proposed format and its blind draw would eliminate the tournament’s traditional opening game pitting Maine District 3 against Team Canada. Those rivals have met on the first day of pool play since the tournament was moved to Bangor in 2002 and have played in the first game of the event since 2005.
The teams still could meet during the tournament, but that would depend on the luck of the draw and how those teams advance during the event.
‘With pools the way they have been, we did have a little latitude in how we could schedule the first few days,” Brooker said. “This is going to be catch as catch can.”
