Day 2: Record Crowd Gets Heartbroken

In one of the wildest games in my Little League World Series experiences, North Oldham Kentucky blanket hometown favorites Keystone, Pennsylvania, 1-0.

More than 41,000 fans officially watched Kentucky's Griffin McLarty single-handedly beat Pennsylvania with a complete game shutout on the mound and a first inning homerun to win it. Most of the nerves on the field didn't seem to come from the players as the umpires converged, convened, were overuled, and just plain embarrassed themselves at one point.

The most egregious of the calls came in the fourth when Brandon Miller ripped a double down the left field line. The ball curved around the third base umpire (to the inside) and landed squarely on the foul line. The play broke up a perfect game and gave PA a runner in scoring position with no outs. Without looking at the ball land or remembering that he had a colleague behind him, the umpire called it foul. The call was first overturned, and then possibly even reviewed. In the end, once the umpires hands went up the play was dead and no amount of replay could change that. PA still got it's first hit that inning and had runners in scoring position, but the first of two really bad decisions by the third base coach killed Keystone.

By the sixth inning, PA was actually outhitting KY. A leadoff double by McCloskey was wasted when he was sent home on a bobbled play at first. KY's defender recovered in time to gun another PA player easily at the plate.

Alex Garbrick promptly ripped a single that would've tied it. McLarty settled down and struck out two more batters to end it. He finished with 12 K's.

I'm almost positive I've said it on this blog at least once while talking about PA. They ran themselves into so many outs in Bristol during the regional that it wasn't a coincidence. They are over-aggressive to a serious fault. It cost them a big one today.

In the first US game today, SoCal showed off it's pitching strength and then dinked and dunked it's way to an 11-0 victory over Rhode Island. Nothing about the game was surprising, but California still needs to hit more to win a championship.

I didn't get to watch too much of today's international action because of the rain delay and the 41,000 people wanting tickets to the PA game. I saw Canada-Saudi Arabia and they played as expected. Two of the weaker regions with both teams getting a gift to Williamsport equals average pitching and average defense.

Holland was better than expected supposedly, and Venezuela was "decent" from what I heard. To me, Mexico-Japan winner will take international championship.

So far, the biggest issue with Modified double elimination over pool play is that the two beat teams in each bracket aren't guaranteed to make the final. If Mexico-Japan are better than Venezuela-Canada it doesn't matter. Someone from Venezuela's pool has to be in the international championship.

Tomorrow is my final day on location. It will be interesting to see an old school Eastern Region championship game with New England vs. Mid-Atlantic. If I'm thinking correctly the last time the two Eastern teams played was in the 2002 semifinals. Worcester Mass beat Harlem NY on a walk-off homerun.