How to watch the Little League World Series with your kid (like a coach)

The Little League World Series is on right now — August 19 through 30 in Williamsport, with games all over ESPN. If you've got a ballplayer in the house, it's probably already on your TV, and that's a good thing. Kids who watch baseball with intent get better at baseball.

The trick is with intent. Here's how we'd watch it with our own kids.

Point at the boring stuff

The highlights will take care of themselves — your kid doesn't need help noticing a home run. What they won't notice without you is everything that makes those plays possible:

1. Watch the hitter AFTER a swing and miss. The best 12-year-olds in the world step out, breathe, and reset the same way every time. That's a routine, and it's learnable. (We wrote about building one in the 5-second pre-pitch ritual.)
2. Watch infielders between pitches. Creeping into position, glove down before the pitch, first step on contact. Ask your kid: "where would you be standing right there?"
3. Watch the catcher. Nobody on TV talks about the catcher until a passed ball. Point out the setup, the quiet glove, the body blocks. It's the position that hides effort.
4. Watch what happens after errors. Somebody boots one on national TV in every single game. What they do next — flush it, ask for the ball again — is the most valuable thing your kid can copy.

What NOT to take away from Williamsport

A little honesty from a coach: the LLWS is the very best sliver of a percent of 12-year-old baseball, on the sport's biggest stage. Two cautions:

• The velocity is not the assignment. Your kid will see 70+ mph fastballs from 46 feet and want to throw like that tomorrow. Those arms are outliers, and some of them are already carrying workloads we'd never put on a developing arm. Admire it; don't chase it.
• The curveballs are not the assignment either. You'll see a lot of breaking balls this month. More on that in a few days — short version: fastball command and a changeup win at every level below TV.

Turn one game into one rep

The move that actually compounds: after a game, pick ONE thing your kid noticed and steal it. A pre-pitch routine. A two-strike choke-up. The way a shortstop's feet never stop moving. Then go run a 15-minute backyard practice around just that thing while it's fresh.

One stolen habit per week of the LLWS is four new habits by Labor Day. That's a better return than any highlight reel.

Want the pro-level version of this?

Watching film with intent is half of what we do in the garage — every session gets recorded, and we walk kids through their own swings the way the broadcast walks through Williamsport's. The first session's free, and fall is the perfect time to start.

Related: Failing 7 out of 10: what "good" actually looks like.