Kudos to Lufkin, TX! One of the coaches of one of my son's former travel teams was born and raised in Lufkin and played AS baseball with them in the 70s. The 3B and pitcher for Lufikin was his second cousin and he went to 3 of their games in person. So, I was rooting for them all the way.
Although the infamous All-Stars strike zone did not seem as egregiously bad as it has been in the past, I still cringed at strikes called 6" off the plate and 8" off the ground. Yet belt-high, center-cut pitches were balls most of the time. Japan's catcher was setting up behind the empty batter's box! To their credit, their pitcher brought those pitches in when, thankfully, they were not getting strikes 9" off the plate as in past years. Japan was excellent, their pitcher kept the TX hitters off-balance, and they could HIT.