Costa Mesa plays host to Tee Ball World Series
At the end of March, Todd Cowley received an email from someone in Taiwan. Cowley, the president of Costa Mesa American Little League, didn’t ignore it because the message was about baseball.
Kevin Huang emailed Cowley, asking if Costa Mesa American Little League was interested in playing his start-up baseball league from Taipei in the summer. The timing made sense, a couple of Huang’s teams planned to vacation in the United States and Cowley knew his T-ball and coach-pitch level teams would be free in July.
The two baseball programs will meet on the field Sunday, when the Costa Mesa Tee Ball World Series takes place on the Costa Mesa American Little League fields at Costa Mesa High. Opening ceremonies are at noon and each of the seven teams from Costa Mesa American Little League, one from Costa Mesa National Little League, and the two from the Taipei Young Youth Baseball League will make their way onto the field.
Players will exchange pins before the competition begins. The Costa Mesa Tee Ball World Series is a three-day event, with games starting at 1 p.m. on Sunday and at 4 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday.
“The kids are totally stoked,” Cowley said. “We started practicing a couple of weeks ago and they kept asking, “When do we get our new uniforms?”
Cowley said the Costa Mesa Little League teams will sport uniforms with the names of minor-league teams in California like the Storm, the Blaze, the Quakes, the Rawhide, the Mavericks, the 66ers, the Giants and the JetHawks because the Taipei Young Youth Baseball League isn’t chartered by Little League. The Costa Mesa teams will face the Taipei Young Youth Baseball League’s Black Bears, as well as each other.
The Taiwanese teams were on their way to Los Angeles International Airport on Friday afternoon. Huang said the trip to the states is a first for many of his players. Their president used to live in Irvine, Huang graduated from Irvine High, before he studied computer science at Cal State Fullerton.
After he graduated from college, Huang moved back to Taiwan, his home country, to launch a business with a friend in 2000. Fourteen years later, Huang started a baseball league in the capital of Taiwan and it now has a total of 100 players and five teams.
Eighteen players flew over for the vacation and baseball games. Huang said his two teams are staying in San Gabriel during the Costa Mesa Tee Ball World Series.
“They’re very excited,” said Huang, adding that his players plan to watch the Dodgers play the Milwaukee Brewers at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, and after the Costa Mesa Tee Ball World Series ends, they will travel to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and visit Disneyland and Universal Studios.