Little League to road test larger field dimensions for 12- and 13-year-olds

Anyone who’s watched the Little League World Series recently is aware that Homo sapiens are quickly evolving into a race of storybook giants. Our children are taller and bulkier than ever before; as if Mark McGwire was tampering with the National School Lunch Program. The kid pictured here, for example, was an actual Little Leaguer: A 12-year-old who checked in at 6-foot-8, 256 pounds, in 2006. That’s the top of the scale, of course; but every LLWS team seems to have a slew of 6-footers at its disposal these days, clouting ridiculous homers and pitching BBs past the terrified Hobbit children.
So Little League baseball has snapped into action, announcing an experimental “transitional” division for 12- and 13-year-olds, in which the larger kids would play on fields with bigger dimensions. This is a huge step for Little League Baseball, Inc.; an organization so staid and conservative that their rules have remained virtually unchanged since 1949.

The pilot program for 12- and 13-year-old players is designed to ease the transition into playing on professional regulation-size fields with pitching distances of 60 feet, 6 inches, and base paths of 90 feet.

Currently, the Little League division — mainly for 11- and 12-year-olds — is played on a field with a 46-foot pitching distance and 60-foot base paths.

The next level up, mainly for 13- and 14-year-olds, uses regulation fields.

The main knock against Little League is that it isn’t really baseball; baserunners can’t lead off, so the defensive nuances are forsaken. And at a 46-foot pitching distance, a muscular 6-foot-1 12-year-old can be more dangerous and intimidating than Randy Johnson in his prime. Another turnoff: A 200-pound Little Leaguer hitting a weak popup, which clears the 200-foot outfield fence by about 50 yards.
So collecting all the youth behemoths and placing them in a division with slightly larger field dimensions makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure how things are set up in your neck of the woods, but in California there’s something called Bronco League, in which 11- and 12-year-olds play on a field with 70-foot basepaths (Little League is 60), and leadoffs are allowed. But it’s tough to carve out enough fields in those dimensions, even in California. Little League baseball has an iron-fisted monopoly on playing facilities.
But now that may change. The 12-year-old whose hormones kick in a bit faster than his friends will now move up a level, and play against kids his own size; in effect ending the Terror of Tiny Town. Little League will once again be left to Tanner Boyle. And if the Yankees don’t like it, they can take their trophy and shove it up their ***.
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Little League to test new baseball division [ABC News]