Lake Mary, Fla.'s Chase Anderson, right, slides past Taiwan catcher Yu Chia-Jui as he scores on DeMarcos Mieses' double during the sixth inning of the the Little League World Series championship game in South Williamsport, Pa., on Aug. 25, 2024. (AP file photo)

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — The road to Williamsport was filled with more drama than usual for a couple Little League World Series participants this year, including a Venezuelan team that needed visa exemptions to make the trip and an American club that narrowly knocked off a defending champ.

Baseball’s pre-eminent youth baseball tournament resumes Wednesday in central Pennsylvania. The festivities begin with a look at what makes the 20-team event special.

ESPN was set to air a documentary called “Big Dreams: Little League World Series 2024” on Tuesday night. The filmmakers had great raw material. Lake Mary, Florida, defeated Taiwan 2-1 in eight tense innings last August to win the title. But director Rudy Valdez wanted to go deeper than wins and losses.

“These are kids, you know, I want you to remember that,” Valdez said. “We’re showing them how to navigate life, and we’re showing them how to take wins and take losses and be good sports and how to get back up when you fall.

“We have to give them the space to learn and I wanted that to be the feeling of this, that you were really navigating this year of the Little League World Series through the eyes and experiences of them.”

The film was also to be available for streaming through ESPN+.

The Negaunee All-Stars made it to within one round of the World Series, bowing out in the Great Lakes Regional last week in Indiana. The Great Lakes representatitve is from Illinois, the Chicago suburb of Clarendon Hills.

Venezuela makes it

Cardenales Little League from Barquimesto, Venezuela, will represent Latin America for the second straight year, but this time the team required a special exemption from President Donald Trump’s travel ban. The team only learned of the exemption less than a week before the event’s opening game at 1 p.m. today against Yabucoa, Puerto Rico.

The Venezuelan team declined to comment.

Cardenales’ exemption came after a different Venezuelan team was denied entry into the United States for the Senior Baseball World Series last month.

This year’s Cardenales team has a different roster and coaching staff than the 2024 group. Last year’s team survived two rounds in the elimination bracket to advance to the international final. It lost 4-1 to Taiwan but beat Texas for third place.

Venezuela only has two Little League World Series titles, the last 25 years ago.

Notable US upset

Defending champion Lake Mary was one out away from making its return to central Pennsylvania, but there will be a different team representing the Southeast Region this year: South Carolina’s Irmo Little League.

In the regional final, Irmo trailed 4-0 in the bottom of the sixth — the last inning in Little League ball — with the bottom of their lineup headed to the plate and the goal of getting Joe Giulietti, the team’s best hitter, to bat.

Irmo succeeded but Giulietti never swung at a pitch. Lake Mary intentionally walked him with the bases loaded to make the score 4-2. Brady Westbrooks was up next and, down to his last strike, he found the fastball he was looking for, hammering a three-run double.

Players were running around the stadium, carrying the Southeast Region champions banner, while their manager, Dave Bogan, was brought to tears.

“While we had confidence, we were the underdog,” Bogan said. “When this team was forming, there was a lot of local excitement about our potential and our possibilities. But with that excitement comes pressure and it was a sense of relief that we did it.”

Lake Mary previously defeated Irmo 14-0, and before the regional final, Bogan told his players they needed to believe they were “going to shock the Little League baseball world.”

Taiwan looks for return

Taiwan’s 17 Little League World Series championships are the most by any country other than the United States, which always gets a team in the championship because of the way the LLWS brackets are set up.

But it has been nearly 30 years since Taiwan won its most recent title in 1996.

Ten years ago, current manager Min-Nan Lai’s club went 2-2 in the tournament, losing its second game in the double-elimination tournament to Mexico.

Now, Lai is back with the Tung-Yuan Little League team after defeating South Korea in the Asia-Pacific regional final. The 2025 LLWS marks Taiwan’s fourth consecutive and 33rd appearance in tournament history, and its first game will be against Mexico on Thursday.

The Little League World Series first-round bracket matchups were announced not long before the Asia-Pacific regional tournament, something Lai and his team noted. They wanted to get another chance at the team that ended Taiwan’s chances 10 years ago.

“A famous Taiwanese saying is you always want to do hard work for 10 years for one minute to shine,” Lai said through an interpreter.

___

Amanda Vogt is a student in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports