The 19th Grand Slam Parade Tuesday will welcome the 2025 Little League World Series to Lycoming County. The parade, as always, will be held on the downtown streets of Little League’s birthplace before the games begin across the river in South Williamsport.

Hosting the Little League World Series is a special and blessed opportunity — an honor.

As we editorialized in 2023, “the impact of the Little League World Series — on our communities and their history and very identities and on a countless number of children learning to love the teamwork and dedication that comes with youth sports — is immeasurable.”

This event truly blesses our region, as we said in 2018, with “unforgettable sportsmanship … Players doomed to elimination by a grand slam homer cheering the hitter as he rounded the bases; a pitcher who hit a batter meeting the hitter as he ran to first base, removing his cap and bowing in respect and apology when he got to the base; parents of (a) team taking up a collection for the (one rival) entourage to take back with them to their hurricane-ravaged area. … And there were, it seemed like, dozens of other moments of entertainment and joy and spontaneous emotion that can only come from kids on a world stage, growing up before our eyes in ways that will pay dividends for a lifetime.”

“Williamsport or South Williamsport will be the dateline on hundreds of stories written, broadcast and televised worldwide,” we observed in 2015. “And the tone will be decidedly positive because this event embodies Americana … each chapter of the Little League World Series brings a set of relationships among these participants from all corners of the globe that will last a lifetime.”

We once again delight in celebrating the sense of community youngsters from around the world will bring to our region. We once again hope that we, in every corner of Lycoming County and its surrounding communities, can also share that sense of community with our visitors and spectators. The 2025 Little League World Series will be, as in years past, about community on the field, in the dugouts and bleachers and, we hope, well beyond South Williamsport.