In the game between, Staten Island, NY and Urbandale, IA, each team is looking to do its best.  All players have taken a vow to not cheat and this vow is memorialized by the patch on each player's uniform.  In bold letters it says "I WILL NOT CHEAT."

!http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-51106/NY1.jpg?blogID=8913|height=320|style=padding:10px;|align=left|width=180|src=http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-51106/NY1.jpg?blogID=8913!However, the coaches take no such vow.  Maybe some thought ought to be given to having the coaches also understand the words of this vow.

The third base coach for New York is Manager Michael Zaccariello.  He appears to communicate more than the usual information to his batters while he was coaching.  He was able to tell them the type of pitch.  How?  Was he cheating? You be the judge.

Each time the Urbandale Iowa pitcher Trae Cropp prepared to pitch he would place his fingers on the ball in the proper way to throw each type of pitch.  Curveball one way, slider another and fastball a third way.  The New York coach appeared to lean way in to see the method of holding the ball prior to delivery (see picture 1) and then would signal the pitch to his team via hand signals (see picture 2).  The New York batters put this information to good use as they pounded out 6 hits and scored 4 runs, 3 earned, while Trae was pitching.!http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-51105/NY3.jpg?blogID=8913|height=324|style=padding:10px;|align=right|width=180|src=http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-51105/NY3.jpg?blogID=8913!

Players often will steal pitch signals by looking around the pitcher while standing on second base.  A hand signal to the batter helps him understand when the pitch is expected to be delivered. Sometimes a batter will look back and steal the signals while standing in the box.   So is this cheating.  Most people would say no as this is common practice in baseball.  But coaches stealing pitches by looking at the hands of the pitcher.  That's new to most of us.

So, was this cheating by the Coach?  There is no rule against it.  There is also no precedent for this behavior.  Perhaps the operation committee of Little League ought to investigate whether this violates the spirit of the no cheating vow taken by the players.  In a conversation I had with the Director of Communications for Little League International, Lance Van Auken, who is also a memeber of the Rules Committee, he indicated that this type of behavior may be discussed for further action in future rules.

My partner here in Williamsport and co-worker at Active Greg Lopez sent me a text message during the game between Park View Little League (Chula Vista, CA) and Logan County/Russellville Little League (Russellville, KY). The text said simply, "What'd I tell ya?"

!http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50994/GL-West2.jpg?blogID=8913|height=432|style=padding:10px;|align=left|width=288|src=http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50994/GL-West2.jpg?blogID=8913!Now Greg is a little prejudiced. It's not just because Chula Vista is located close to San Diego where our Active offices are located that he's excited about this team. Greg went to Chula Vista High School and also played Little League for Chula Vista American Little League. He told me that when he played (a long time ago), Park View Little League didn't even exist.

Before coming to the Williamsport, Greg had gone to the Western Regional tournament in San Bernadino, CA and watched Park View play there. He told me that the team had scored 98 runs in the 6 games they played in. But the most impressive part of those 98 runs? 38 of them were from home runs! Center fielder Kiko Garcia hit 12 home runs and First Baseman/Pitcher Luke Ramirez hit 4. And unfortunately for Russellville, Chula Vista continued the trend.

Things started out looking good for KY as starting pitcher Barrett Croslin took down the first two CA batters. But with two outs Chula Vista had a pair of singles and then a two-run triple from right fielder Bradley Reberto and they took an early 2-0 lead and never looked back.

Luke Ramirez lead off the third inning with a shot over right field that landed up the hill. As you may recall, Little League extended the outfield fences a few years ago to 225 feet. This was to help increase the doubles and triples and reduce the number of home runs. It just didn't matter to Chula Vista. To Russellville's credit, they hadn't allowed a hit since the first inning and Chula Vista's lead was only 3-0 and it looked like we were going to have a pretty close game. Boy was I wrong.

The Park View team did what they do best in the fourth and fifth innings. Things were still looking good for !http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50995/GL-West1.jpg?blogID=8913|height=432|style=padding:10px;|align=right|width=288|src=http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50995/GL-West1.jpg?blogID=8913!Russellville with only one out to get... but they didn't get it until Andy Rios and Bulla Graft both got singles and Ramirez had his second home run of the game.

Starting with the first pitch in the fourth inning to the final out in the fifth, the California team had six home runs and scored 12 runs while batting around the lineup twice. Every Chula Vista batter had at least one hit while Rios, Ramirez and Garcia had two!

In the press conference following the game, Russellville manager Kevin Kettings said, “After the fifth inning, it got to the point where it was comical to them (his players). "They were having a good time with it. The trainer came in and asked if we needed to ice any pitchers arms, but, of course, they didn’t throw hard enough to get iced down. So we told her we needed our necks iced down from watching all the home runs being hit over the fence.” And this from the losing team. I think it says a lot about this small team from Russellville, KY.

When I was at the Central Region tournament, I had a chance to interview Kettings and he told me that their total town population was about 28,000 and they only had three Major Baseball teams during the regular season. This gave them a total of 33 players to try and chose an all-star team from and they chose these 10. The team may be small but they have big hearts and are still having a great time in Williamsport.

Unfortunately, they lost their second game as well to the Southwest team from San Antonio, TX 12-0. With two losses, this will eliminate them from moving on to the championship round.

But the kids are not hanging their heads down. They are the champions of the Great Lakes divison. They survived thousands of teams trying to get to the Little League Baseball World Series and only sixteen got here. Congratulations Logan County/Russellville Little League. You are a class act!

It might have been just Opening Day jitters for the losing teams and just another day at the ball park for the winners

There were four games played yesterday and all of them were pretty much blowouts. In the three United States games, the Mid-Atlantic team, South Shore National Little League from Staten Island, New York defeated the Northwest team, Mercer Island Little League from Mercer Island, Washington, 10-2 and the Southeast team, Warner Robins American Little League from Warner Robins, Georgia beat the Midwest team, Urbandale Little League Urbandale, Iowa, 11-3. In the night game, the Southwest team, McAllister Park American Little League from San Antonio, Texas took out the team from New England, Peabody Western Little League from Peabody, Massachusetts, 10-1.

In the International game, Asia-Pacific from Kuei-Shan Little League from Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei, beat the Europe team, KMC American Little League from Ramstein AFB, Germany, 16-0.

After each game the Manager of the winning team and a few players and the losing Manager without players present, hold a press conference to discuss their respective games. I think these quotes are a good representation and helps put into perspective what it means to play in the Little League Baseball World Series.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to the kids yet, but what I did get to say was 'It's pool play, one loss doesn't put you out'". "We're not out of it and hopefully this is the game where we worked everything out." New England Peabody Manager David Batchelor

“You have no idea what this week is like. I was pulling my hair out while the kids were sitting there making friends. I wanted to get a win and get it out of the way. I was tired of waiting.” Southeast Manager Randy Jones

"He pitched a great game. He was just nailing the strike zone. We pride ourselves on being patient hitters, but, patience works well when you can get ahead in the count. But he got himself in a favorable position, 70, 80 percent of the time it felt like." Northwest Manager Steve Stenberg talking about Mid-Atlantic Pitcher Angelo Navetta who threw 87 pitches - 68 were strikes (78.2 percent).

“There were kids talking in the dugout that it’s only a couple runs, we can get this. We were in position late to steal a game we had no business being in, to be honest. Their pitcher did a fantastic job keeping us off balance. We looked like we hadn’t seen a curve ball before. Our boys are a little down, but we'll bounce back quickly. We always have with this group." Great Lakes Manager Scott Grau

"The big thing with us is we need to rest up and get a good night's sleep because we have a few kids who are under the weather right now. That's no excuse, either. We just have our backs to the wall now and have to win two of our next three to advance, but I'm confident they'll bounce back. When we went to regional's we were just pinching ourselves because we could not believe it, so anything after that is gravy. The great thing about kids is that they'll be up in the dorm five minutes from now having a great time and they will have forgotten about all this. It's the coaches who will struggle with the loss and rehash it in our minds over and over again."  Northwest Manager Steve Stenberg

Greg Lopez, our Industry Manager for Active Sports and his son Gabe are with me here in Williamsport. We have our Active booth setup and are handing out trading pins, pin towels, taking pictures that will be posted on www.pictureu.com/eteamz and meeting some great Little League folks. It's been a very busy Opening Day and I haven't been able to do many tweets or Facebook updates. I wasn't even able to do many videos but hopefully that will change.

There are five games scheduled for today and it should be another great day at the World Series... as long as the rain holds off!

We have about a half hour until the scheduled start of 7 PM. As with the Midwest Championship game, ESPN is in charge of the actual start. Maybe we should say that TV coverage starts at 7 and the game will begin about 10 minutes later.

Iowa held off the stubborn team from Missouri to become the Midwest champion earlier today, winning 7-6. It was a great game with back-to-back home runs, a grand slam home run and combined hits between the teams of 16. When looking at the game stats, both teams were pretty close. Missouri had 6 runs on 9 hits and 2 errors. Iowa had 7 runs on 7 hits and had 1 error. The costly error for Missouri was in the bottom of the 5th that allowed the go ahead 7th run. Iowa then put Missouri down for the count in their last at bat.

Tonight's game between Logan County Little League from Russeville, Kentucky and Bartholomew County National Little League from Columbus, Indiana should be another great game of baseball.

Earlier today I spoke with John Roll, the Little League District Administrator that Logan County ALL belongs, and he said that the league only had 33 players to chose a team from and these are the top 10. That's pretty amazing.

The game has started and we're in the top of the first and the score is already 2-0, Kentucky. A hit batter and a home run.... not a very good start for Indiana. But there's a lot of baseball yet to be played.

In the first game today, the Iowa state champions from Urbandale defeated the N/S Dakota state champion, Harney Little League 3-2. Iowa's left fielder Spencer Sturges helped with the win with a two run shot over the left field fence in the second inning.

Iowa's lead held until the top of the fifth inning when South Dakota's Dmiitri Bledso tied the game with his own two run shot over center field fence. The game remained tied until the bottom of the sixth when Jake Grau hit a long single into center field and Trae Cropp scored from second.

In the second game, Daniel Boone National Little League from Missouri defeated the Nebraska team from Blair Little League also by a score of 3-2.

Nebraska game into the game undefeated and Missouri was 2-2 but that didn't bother Missouri who came out hitting and scored 2 runs in the bottom of the first inning. Missouri was led by winning pitcher Connor Brumfield who went 2 for 3,

As one of the team hosts for Nebraska it was a sad ending to a great run. The kids were great and a lot of fun to be around.

Blair Little League from Blair Nebraska ended their pool play games today with a win over Cherokee Community Little League from Cherokee Kansas by a score of 14-8.

Nebraska went into the game without having a single defensive error and not allowing a run in the three !http://www.eteamz.com/llbcentral/images/Nebraska-medals.jpg|height=200|style=padding:10px;|align=left|width=268|src=http://www.eteamz.com/llbcentral/images/Nebraska-medals.jpg!previous games... but all of that meant nothing to the team from Kansas as they scored 8 runs on 12 hits including 4 homeruns. Considering that Nebraska had only allowed any runs before, this was quite the slug-fest by the Cherokee team.

Blair will now go up against the fourth-seeded team from Missouri in the semifinals at 1:30 p.m. today. Daniel Boone National Little League, from Columbia, Missouri., comes into the game with a record of 2-2. Both teams have everything on the line with the winner of today's game advancing to the regional final against the winner of the Iowa-North/South Dakota semifinal. Considering that team Nebraska has already beaten both the N/S Dakota and Iowa teams in pool play; allowing no runs or errors, the odds should be on their side. But this Little League... and on any give day, anything can happen.

ESPN will arrive tomorrow to begin setting for the finals on Saturday. The Midwest Championship game will begin at noon.

Last year Canyon Lake Little League from South Dakota became the first team to ever make it to the Little League World Series from the Dakota's. This year, Nebraska may also reach the pinnacle baseball event too.

!http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50054/Nebraska.jpg?blogID=8913&blogPostID=15029|height=216|style=padding:10px;|align=left|width=288|src=http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50054/Nebraska.jpg?blogID=8913&blogPostID=15029!Blair Little League is currently 3-0 in the Midwest pool with only one game remaining against Kansas who are 0-2 and play later today against 0-2 Minnesota. Nebraska has the day off and then will meet Kansas tomorrow in the final pool game for each team If Nebraska defeats Kansas they will be the number one seed in their pool and would play the number four seed in the semifinal game on Thursday, August 13.

If Nebraska wins the semifinal game, it would put them into the Midwest Championship game on Saturday, August 15 against the winner of the number 2 and 3 seed semifinal game. If the superior play and pitching continues and with a little luck, Blair Little League would represent the Midwest team in Williamsport and be the first from Nebraska to do so.

Nebraska's number one pitcher, Jackson Petersen is 2-0 in tournament play with a 0.00 ERA in 12 innings. While allowing 11 hits his teammates have had his back allowing only 2 runs in the three games played thus far. Offensively, the Nebraska team's combined batting average is .269 led by TJ Loudner and Cal Adamson both batting at .500. Loudner has also had four hits with two of them being homeruns and 3 RBI's. Defensively, the team has had no fielding errors which over all, is a pretty good statistic going into game four.

I almost didn't write this blog post not wanting to, in the words of one of the volunteer scorekeepers Bob Monday, "Black Cat" them. But it is a great story and I wanted to share it.