This is not a surprise, but Steve Keener, the president and CEO of Little League, announced this afternoon that the 2020 Little League World Series, to be played, as usual, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, is canceled.
The statement from Little League:
This is a heartbreaking decision for everyone at Little League International, but more so for those millions of Little Leaguers who have dreamt of one day playing in one of our seven World Series events. After exhausting all possible options, we came to the conclusion that because of the significant public health uncertainty that will still exist several months from now, and with direction from Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, as well as senior public health officials and government leaders from locations where our other six World Series are held, as well as the their qualifying regional tournaments, it will not be possible to proceed with our tournaments as we’ve hosted them for nearly 75 years.
The Series is inherently international -- there are Little League organizations of some size or another in 84 countries, and the setup of the whole tournament is “North America vs. the Rest of the World” -- so it’d likely be impossible to stage it even if things got somewhat back to normal in the United States by this summer.
This also, obviously, cancels the annual Little League game which, this year, was to feature the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles. It will resume in 2021.
