Looks like Aaron Judge has got some company.
From Bryce Harpers’ 150th home run and Giancarlo Stanton’s dinger against ace Max Scherzer to Andrew McCutchen’s diving catch in center field, this week was packed with incredible highlights.
Perhaps the greatest baseball highlight came not from the professional stage, however, but from a small Little League park in Georgia, where 13-year-old Jayce Blalock smacked a grand slam so far that it got lost in the trees beyond the park’s left-field fence. As ESPN announcers estimated the homer to be “probably 375 feet,” Blalock rounded the bases with a confident smile after briefly admiring his grand slam.
If any Little Leaguer deserves a bat-flip, it is most definitely Jayce Blalock.
Blalock’s grand slam might be one of the most impressive Little League World Series stories since the 2014 LLWS, when pitching sensation Mo’ne Davis threw a shutout inning for the Taney Dragons. Her success drew extensive media attention, so much so that Davis was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. To this day, she draws flocks of young athletes to athletic events, begging for autographs.
While Davis has expressed her desire to pursue a career on the basketball court rather than on the pitching mound — an understandable switch given that there is no baseball equivalent of the WNBA — the LLWS represents the first big stage and a stepping stone into the world of professional recruiting for many young baseball players. Since its establishment in 1947, the LLWS has become an international tournament.
Hall of Famers such as Cal Ripken Jr., Randy Johnson, Wade Boggs and Joe Torre made appearances in the LLWS during their early baseball careers. Today, Dodgers Cody Bellinger, Yankees Todd Frazier and Orioles Ruben Tejada are all well recognized MLB faces who also participated in the LLWS. In fact, it is surprising that there are not more youth players who reach the LLWS and also make it all the way to the Majors. It is just as surprising that there isn’t more of a push from the MLB to keep LLWS players in baseball.
The incredible amount of attention Davis’s and Blalock’s stories have received proves how appealing the LLWS can be to audiences beyond the average baseball fan. The LLWS seems to be an untapped source of material to pique young sports fans’ interest in baseball — and the MLB should take full advantage of it this season.
To the MLB’s credit, there are already a couple ways that professionals are planning to engage with the LLWS. On Aug. 20, for example, the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals will face off in a regular season game played at BB&T Ballpark in Williamsport, Pa., where the LLWS is played. The game will be televised on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball; ESPN is also providing coverage for many LLWS games on ESPN’s affiliate channels and WatchESPN.
As a “demonstration of their passion and commitment to helping grow the game at the youth level,” both the Cardinals and Pirates will attend LLWS games earlier in the day Aug. 20 — an event which will no doubt provide some great footage of MLB players engaging with young baseball players and fans.
But these promotions are no more than a continuation of the slightly outdated, television-based strategies that have landed the MLB behind in ratings for much of the professional sports viewership. There is so much more that the MLB could do to capitalize on the LLWS to engage young fans.
Streaming on social media platforms, such as Facebook Live and Twitter — as the NFL did last season — would encourage younger fans to watch the in-game content that the MLB, ESPN and LLWS already plan to create.
In addition, the MLB should use this opportunity to master social media. Blalock’s home run footage was largely distributed via short clips that landed themselves alongside online articles on Twitter, Instagram and sports threads such as those on Bleacher Report and Reddit. More LLWS highlights need to be distributed in these short, easily accessible packages — let’s see some GIFs of 13-year-olds hitting homers and snagging web gems.
Or, better yet, MLB social media accounts should produce clips and GIFs of professional players engaging with the LLWS players in unique ways. Someone send Andrew McCutchen to run outfield warm ups or have Dexter Fowler help make up celebratory home-run handshakes with Little Leaguers.
The baseball world is already enamored with the likes of Mo’ne Davis and Jayce Blalock — but will the MLB take advantage of this opportunity to snag some younger fans?
