Pirates face Cardinals in first ever MLB Little League Classic

The Pirates and Cardinals will play their Sunday Night Baseball game at Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in the MLB Little League Classic.

Major League players on the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals will get a taste of childhood on Sunday when they face each other in the first ever MLB Little League Classic. The game will be played at historic Bowman Field at 7 pm Eastern time on ESPN as part of their Sunday Night Baseball rotation. It won’t be your typical Sunday Night Baseball game, though, because Bowman Field is not a stadium in a big city so much as a ballpark in a small town.

Bowman Field, the home of the Williamsport Crosscutters of the New York—Penn League, is the second-oldest ballpark in minor league baseball. It is also the home field of the Pennsylvania College of Technology Wildcats. The ballpark has a seating capacity of just 2,366.

Thirty years ago, Bowman Field was the ballpark of the 1987 Williamsport Bills, who had a catcher named Dave Bresnahan (grandnephew of Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan). During one game, Bresnahan pulled the old potato trick. With a runner on third, he caught the pitch, then attempted a pick-off with a shaved-down potato that he’d secretly snuck into his catcher’s mitt. The potato flew into left field and the runner headed for him where a waiting Bresnahan tagged him out with the real ball. The incident got him banned from the Eastern League, but he was lauded for his creativity by the citizens of Williamsport. They retired his number.

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Before the Sunday night game, players, coaches and umpires will watch some of the games being played in the Little League World Series. They’ll also interact with the Little League players at Play Ball Park. When the Pirates take on the Cardinals on Sunday night, the stands will be full of Little Leaguers. Hopefully, notorious foul ball scavenger Zack Hample won’t weasel his way in.

Another fun aspect of this game will be the uniforms of the players. On the last weekend in August, all MLB players will be allowed to wear their nicknames on their back as part of Players Weekend. The Pirates and Cardinals will be allowed to wear their Players Weekend uniforms one weekend early when they suit up for the MLB Little League Classic on Sunday. The Cardinals will have players named Tsunami, Café, and Big T. The Pirates will counter with Super Nova, Frenchy and, of course, Cutch.

The players are looking forward to the festivities on Sunday night. Pirates pitcher Trevor Williams tweeted: “I’m excited we get to show off our #MLBPlayersWeekend gear tomorrow at the LLWS. I’m also excited to convince a LLWS coach to use a shift.” He also tweeted this GIF:

The LLWS has four games scheduled on Sunday. On the U.S. side of the bracket, the New England Team (Fairfield, Connecticut) faces the Southwest team (Lufkin, Texas) and the Southeast Team (Greenville, North Carolina) faces the West team (Rancho Santa Margarita, California). On the International side, the matchups are Latin America (Maracaibo, Venezuela) versus Canada (White Rock, British Columbia) and Japan (Tokyo, Japan) versus Asia-Pacific (Seoul, South Korea).

Many good stories come out of the LLWS. On Friday, the Southeast Team tossed a perfect game in their 6-0 victory. During a game on Saturday, the Dominican Republic team only had one set of parents in the stands so parents from the Mexico team filled the stands to enthusiastically root on the Dominican team.

Two Cardinals players, Randal Grichuk and Lance Lynn, played in the LLWS when they were kids. Grichuk played for the team from Lamar, Texas, in 2003 and 2004. Lynn played for Brownsburg, Indiana, in 1999. The Pirates have one former LLWS player—infielder Max Moroff played for Maitland, Florida, in 2005.

There’s also a Pittsburgh connection to one of the greatest LLWS performances of all time. Lloyd McClendon played for the Pirates for five seasons from 1990 to 1994. After his playing career ended, he managed the Pirates from 2001 to 2005. Many years before becoming a big league player, McClendon dominated the 1971 LLWS as a member of the team from Gary, Indiana. He homered five times and was walked every other time up, setting LLWS records for batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and homers.

He also pitched in the championship game and held the Taiwan team to three runs through eight innings, with his own three-run homer accounting for all of his team’s runs. It fell apart for him in the ninth inning when Taiwan scored nine times. McClendon struck out 12 batters and his catcher had 10 passed balls. The Taiwan pitcher, Chin-Mu Hsu, struck out 22 batters in the final game. You can only imagine how many pitches he must have thrown.

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While the Pirates and Cardinals will definitely enjoy all of the activities based around participating in the MLB Little League Classic, the game is also important for both teams in their pursuit of a playoff spot. The Cardinals are just 2.5 games behind the Cubs in the NL Central. The Pirates are 6.5 games back.