It’s slightly overcast around 3:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 15, and the 20 teams that will play in the 75th Little League Baseball World Series later this week are gathered at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport for a picnic. Dressed in their full uniforms, each team enters the campus’s main courtyard and grabs burgers and dogs. From there, they head under a different pavilion and sit at one of the large picnic tables with their teammates. It feels much more like a regular lunch for pre-adolescents at summer camp than it does a picnic for some of the best youth baseball players in the world. So it doesn’t take long for the players to get up from their tables and mingle with the other teams.
“Hey, bro!” Curaçao first baseman Kyshore Hinkle says as he unsuccessfully tries to get the attention of the Australian players. “Hey, bro!”
After the third “Hey, bro!” a few Australian boys look over, and they strike up a conversation.
