For one day, anyway, the Little League World Series looked as if it had been taken over by big leaguers.
The ultimate global baseball tournament for kids ages 11 and 12 produced a game in which a pitcher who stands 1.93m (6ft 4ins) and weighs 75kg was opposed by a pitcher who touches 1.90m and weighs 99kg.
No wonder Tom Mazzola spent extra time at the photocopy machine before his team headed off to play in the most important tournament of their lives.
Mazzola is the manager of one of the big kids, the 1.90m Chad Lorkowski, who at age 12 stands a head taller than most of his Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, teammates.
Mazzola made extra copies of his star pitcher’s birth certificate to hand out to sceptics suspicious that his star was over the age limit. Incredibly, Lorkowski is not the tallest kid in the annual tournament, held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Grant Holman from Chula Vista, California, is 3cm taller.
Holman and Lorkowski faced off in a battle of giants, and it was Holman who emerged victorious, 3-0, throwing a no-hitter in the six-inning game, with 13 strikeouts.
"That kid throws hard," Mazzola said of Holman in an interview with Sports Illustrated.
“He’s 6-foot-4, he has a nice curveball and he hits his spots. We haven’t quite faced a pitcher like that, but the same goes for our big fella.
“Chad for his size and weight is remarkable.”
Both pitchers intimidate the opposition, with fastballs clocked around 120kph – not as fast as professional pitchers throw, but the Little Leaguers stand 20 feet closer to the batters. Jimmy Mazzola, the Michigan manager’s son, said the reaction that Lorkowski prompts is always the same - shock and awe.
"You see other teams, and their eyes get really big and their mouths go open at the plate," the younger Mazzola told the New York Times.
Lorkowski has come to expect the gawking, and uses it to his advantage.
"I know all eyes will be on me, because that's the way it always is," Lorkowski told the Times. "I'm used to it by now and I like it. I like that it intimidates them."
The tournament includes teams from eight regions of the US, as well as an international division of eight teams from around the world, including the Asia-Pacific champion, Chung-Ping Little League from Taiwan.
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It's up to you to go green
Nils El Accad, chief executive and owner of Organic Foods and Café, says going green is about “lifestyle and attitude” rather than a “money change”; people need to plan ahead to fill water bottles in advance and take their own bags to the supermarket, he says.
“People always want someone else to do the work; it doesn’t work like that,” he adds. “The first step: you have to consciously make that decision and change.”
When he gets a takeaway, says Mr El Accad, he takes his own glass jars instead of accepting disposable aluminium containers, paper napkins and plastic tubs, cutlery and bags from restaurants.
He also plants his own crops and herbs at home and at the Sheikh Zayed store, from basil and rosemary to beans, squashes and papayas. “If you’re going to water anything, better it be tomatoes and cucumbers, something edible, than grass,” he says.
“All this throwaway plastic - cups, bottles, forks - has to go first,” says Mr El Accad, who has banned all disposable straws, whether plastic or even paper, from the café chain.
One of the latest changes he has implemented at his stores is to offer refills of liquid laundry detergent, to save plastic. The two brands Organic Foods stocks, Organic Larder and Sonnett, are both “triple-certified - you could eat the product”.
The Organic Larder detergent will soon be delivered in 200-litre metal oil drums before being decanted into 20-litre containers in-store.
Customers can refill their bottles at least 30 times before they start to degrade, he says. Organic Larder costs Dh35.75 for one litre and Dh62 for 2.75 litres and refills will cost 15 to 20 per cent less, Mr El Accad says.
But while there are savings to be had, going green tends to come with upfront costs and extra work and planning. Are we ready to refill bottles rather than throw them away? “You have to change,” says Mr El Accad. “I can only make it available.”
