BANGOR – Things were running far behind schedule Sunday afternoon when word came that the U.S. South team wouldn’t be taking infield practice before its World Series opener against the U.S. West squad.

Dade City, Fla., the South representative, wasn’t trying to speed things along. It’s just that the team never takes infield practice.

Manager Dale Maggard, who has been working with the team since most of the boys were 8, said the no-infield tradition started two years ago when the team was playing in a Junior League district tournament.

“They just said, Coach, let’s not take infield. I told them they were out of their minds,” Maggard recalled.

But Maggard agreed, and told the boys if they won the game they wouldn’t have to take infield again. The team won, and the boys haven’t taken infield since.

“They come out here and they’re ready to play,” he said. “They usually like to come out and just get pumped up. So far it’s worked.”

Maggard said the team doesn’t like to take batting practice, either. But the boys weren’t going to get out of that because they’d been off four days before the World Series started.

Oh, Dade City had two fielding errors Sunday but won the game 6-5.

“I say, hey, you have to pick your battles,” Maggard said. “Taking infield isn’t one of them.”

Dutch happy to be in orange

It was a pure coincidence that the team from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, is wearing orange this week. But it’s been an added bonus for the team representing the Europe-Middle East-Africa region.

There’s perhaps no country so associated with a color than The Netherlands is with orange. It’s the color of the nation’s beloved national soccer team.

And orange is the color given to the EMEA team each year at Little League World Series tournaments.

“After we qualified the boys looked on the Internet and saw that they’re wearing orange caps,” said manager Paul Roodenburg. “We’re happy to be wearing orange.”

The nickname of the Dutch national soccer team is Oranje, which is the Dutch word for Orange. The origin of the association, it is believed, is the principality of Orange-Nassau, which is where the Dutch monarchs originated from.