The Front Row with JASON ELLIOTT Aug. 24, 2011

Playing baseball as a kid, you dream of games that happened on Friday during the first round of games in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.

A crowd of 42,000 fans packing into a stadium, some wearing your team colors and others supporting your opponent, but nonetheless, all eyes are on you for the next two hours.

THE CROWD filled out the hill around the stadium and looked better suited for a rock concert at the Gorge in George, Wash., than a baseball game - but those fans packed into the stadium and watched what could be the best game of that tournament.

Kentucky may have beaten the sentimental favorite team from Pennsylvania 1-0, but does that matter?

With the game televised in front of a national audience, those baseball fans that tuned in got quite the show from both teams.

Kentucky was eliminated Monday and Pennsylvania remained in the title hunt on Tuesday.

Regardless if they advance, that setting won't happen again for a long time.

To get 42,000 fans to watch a Little League game, no matter where that game might be, is amazing.

I've been to a couple Montana Grizzlies and Idaho Vandals football games, and those crowds don't even compare.

To be fair, with Washington-Grizzly Stadium in Missoula capacity at 25,203 and the Kibbie Dome in Moscow at 16,000 - that's the big reason why.

BOTH SCHOOLS have taken steps to fix that problem, as expansion and renovation projects are being completed at Idaho, and were completed in 2008 at Montana.

The electricity around that baseball game was great to see.

Imagine 42,000 fans when the Vandals come running out of the locker room when they host Bowling Green in less than two weeks - kind of makes you get excited to watch football again, doesn't it?

Same thing for those fans of the Grizzlies. Who doesn’t want to buy a ticket when the time comes to have the defending national champion Eastern Washington Eagles come into your den to open the Big Sky Conference schedule?

WHILE IT may be a long way from seeing 42,000 fans flock into a high school stadium, that might make for quite the game between a couple schools like Coeur d’Alene and Lake City if they find a place to fit that many fans into a stadium.

As a kid, you dream of getting a big strikeout or making a big play to win a game, but most of the time, you’re lucky to have 700 fans there to see it.

But for one night, two teams had a ton of eyes on them.

And they didn’t disappoint.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com