The new darlings of the sports world are a group of 11 and 12-year-olds from Endwell, New York. They play baseball. And they are the new Little League World Series champions.

Endwell is but a pop fly from where I grew up in Binghamton, New York… home of carousels, spiedies, and (formerly) the B.C. Open. It didn’t take much to get everyone in America rooting for these boys, just a win here, a win there, and the backing of major league baseball’s commissioner, himself a native of upstate New York.

I have no connection to the team, of course, and how different is one group of kids I don’t know from another? Nothing. Yet still I felt good watching the boys from America’s “Mid-Atlantic” play South Korea in yesterday’s final.

What made it super awesome?

Everybody felt good about it.

Congrats, M-E.