The Curacao Experiment The whole island jumped.

Lucio Anthonia, Curacao Little League parent THE EARTHQUAKE

Every August at the Little League World Series in Williams- port,

Pennsylvania, a team of eleven- and twelve-year-old boys from

Curacao stages a vivid reenactment of David versus Goliath.

Actually, it's more like David versus fifteen Goliaths. In a sixteen-

team tournament frequently domi- nated by hulking, flame-throwing

man-boys, this wiry, under- size team of nobodies from a tiny,

remote Caribbean island somehow keeps succeeding.* In a

worldwide competition where qualifying two consecutive years is

considered a re- markable achievement, the Curacao boys have

made it to the semifinals six times in the last eight years, winning

the title in * In 2007 the average player from the American Midwest

team stood five feet seven and weighed 136 pounds. Curacao's

average player was five feet one inches tall and weighed.

2004 and finishing second in 2005. As ESPN announcers have

christened it, Curacao is the Little Island That Could.

Curacao's accomplishments are even more impressive for the fact

that compared with the teams they beat, they have precious few

facilities. (There are only two Little League—regulation fields on the

entire island, and one batting cage constructed of tattered fishnet.)

What's more, the Curacao baseball season lasts but five months;

practices are held three times a week, and games are on weekends,

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a schedule that contrasts markedly with the year-round approach of

other places like Venezuela. When I saw them in Williamsport at the

2007 series, the younger members of the Curacao team were

bemused by the spectacle of the Japanese team doing drills before

breakfast. ("Why do they do that?" one player asked me, mystified.)

The most compelling element of this underdog story, however, is

that Curacao's success can be traced to a single moment of ignition

—actually two moments, lasting approxi- mately three seconds

each. They both happened at Yankee Stadium on October 20, 1996,

in the opening game of the World Series between the Atlanta Braves

and the New York Yankees. Like many moments of ignition, this one

fascinates because it hangs so heavily on chance, literally on the

postage- stamp-size area of contact created when a round bat

meets a round ball. One-eighth of an inch either way, and, if history

is any guide, the Curacao phenomenon would not have hap- pened.