Let the games begin!

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If you haven't been following my blogs from this account (not many people do...), you might not know that the Little League World Series officially starts today. Yeah, there have been regional games being played through the past couple of weeks, but today starts bracket play and this is where things really get interesting.

Up to this point, teams from all over the world have been fighting to earn the right to represent their country or region in the next phase of the contest. I really love this time of year much for the same reason I enjoy the World Baseball Classic.

As much as I have pride in my country and I want the teams from the US to do well, it's also nice to see teams from around the world show the US that they can excel at a sport that is generally attributed to our country.

It's also part of what makes the Olympic games so amazing. You might not remember the Russian who won the gymnastics medal, I bet everyone still remembers the Jamaican Bobsled team!

We start things off today with four games in the early stages of the bracket. In game 1 we have Puerto Rico versus Latin America. You have to remember, these are just regions and there is a specific team from a specific region that made their way through the early rounds to represent either Puerto Rico or "Latin America".

In future posts I might reference the actual name of the team versus the region, just in case you get confused.

The second game pits the Mountain region against The Great Lakes Region in this case the Great Lakes team hails from Illinois and the Mountain team hails from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Game 3 sees Panama facing off against Australia. Tell me how cool that is!? If I had to put money on it, I would probably go with Panama, but the fact that Australia has a team in the little league world series is pretty neat if you ask me. Talk about a summer to remember for these kids! Or is it actually winter right now for them? @blanchy?

Finally, game 4 is the Southwest region versus the Metro region. That's basically Texas versus Connecticut in case you wondered. I'm guessing Metro is similar to the North-Atlantic region in the softball world series.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for the results of those games as well as the roster of games that will be played on Thursday. Games five, six, seven, and eight are on the schedule for tomorrow.

I do think it is interesting that they have basically broken the bracket down into a US side and an International side. I guess I understand why they did that, but it would be cooler if they mixed things up a bit more through the tournament so it is less of a "us versus them" sort of thing.

What do you think?

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My Sports Account - @bozz.sports

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced