A summer ritual will unfold next week in Williamsport, Pa., when the 58th Little League World Series gets underway. Sixteen teams from nine countries will compete for the most prestigious championship in youth sports.
But in the United States, where the game was born, fewer young people will notice. Coaches and youth sports organizations say a lot of American kids are losing interest in baseball.
"Every year, it gets tougher and tougher to keep kids on the field," said Mike Hirschman, administrator of the Little League in Northern Delaware that appeared in last year's World Series. Even with that success, Hirschman has struggled to recruit players.
"It's really getting disheartening," he said. "I don't think Little League will ever fade away. But ... kids are just spread so thin. There's so many more options."
Some youngsters are lured by the speed and individual glory of such extreme sports as skateboarding, inline skating and stunt bicycling. Others are riveted to their chairs by computer games, including some that simulate real baseball games.
And many are simply choosing other team sports with more action and faster play. Once America's signature sport, amateur baseball now ranks sixth behind basketball, soccer, softball, football and volleyball in number of players, most of whom are youths, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn.
Since 1987, when amateur baseball attracted more than 15 million players, the number has plummeted 27%, while soccer, ice hockey and lacrosse are swelling with new players.
This is not to say baseball itself is suffering. Major league baseball is thriving, with attendance up 10% over last season. And travel ball, baseball played by youths who go on the road to compete, also is growing in popularity, siphoning talented players away from Little League.
But the kind of baseball played on urban sandlots and glossy suburban diamonds since early in the last century is fading.
The effects are most obvious in Little League, an association of baseball teams in various age divisions for boys and girls 5 to 18 that guarantees all participants time on the field. It was the training ground for major league stars Tom Seaver, Doc Gooden and Gary Sheffield -- and a rite of passage for American boys.
