A big lead, a lost lead, a great bunt, poor defense = Vine-Ingle walks it off to win the Junior League Baseball World Series U.S. title, World Series championship left

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          The bunt was beautiful.

          The defense wasn’t.

          All Benton Wilson hoped to do was move up runners with no outs in the bottom of the seventh inning.

          He dropped a nice bunt in a no-man’s land between the mound and first baseline, and a poor decision by Texas’ first baseman allowed Bo Terry to speed around from second with the winning run and give Vine-Ingle a thrilling 7-6 win Saturday night in the Junior League Baseball World Series’ U.S. championship.

          Georgia will try to give the U.S. its first win in the Series since 2019 when it faces Asia-Pacific at noon on ESPN + in the winner-take-all championship.

          Asia-Pacific, based in Chinese Taipei, rolled to the International Championship with wins of 11-0, 13-0, 12-1, and 9-0.

          Winning pitcher Brady Molton led Vine-Ingle with 3 hits, while Jayden Cannon – who saw some mound action – drove in 5 runs on 2 hits, scoring twice, as did Kaiden Harvey. Terry added a 2-hit game.

          Terry led off the bottom of the seventh with a double to left which was slightly misplayed. Warren Easom, who was 1 for 2, was intentionally walked, bringing up Wilson, 0 for 2.

          On the first pitch, he squared around and got an inside pitch on the ground. First baseman Jayson Arispe charged and fielded the ball, looked to third, then turned around to look to first, where a good throw and catch would’ve gotten an out and kept Terry on third.

          But the throw to late-arriving second baseman Cash Roberson was off-target and squirted away to allow Terry to score easily.

          Gamechanger inaccurately gave the error to losing pitcher Brylan Williams.

          “I just saw the bunt down the third baseline, and then I was turning,” Terry said in an interview on ESPN +. “Then I saw that he made a bad throw, and I kept on going.”

          And his teammates had blasted through the chain-link fence door before he touched home.

          Both teams were undefeated entering the final.

          Southwest beat Central 4-1, West 9-4, and East 9-0 to reach the U.S. final, while Macon had a first-round bye, and topped host Michigan 7-4 and East 12-2. So

          Macon jumped out to a 4-0 lead after one on Cannon’s first-pitch grand slam to center, scoring Charlie Kemp, Cole Johnson, and Kaiden Harvey.

          That was mighty fitting, considering Cannon won the weekend’s home-run derby contest before the finale, winning the tiebreaker with three bombs to two for the other two finalists.

          The lead was 6-1 after four and then 6-3 after four.

          Texas took advantage of some control problems in the top of the sixth.

          Two walks and a hit batter loaded the bases, with two runs coming in on a single to left. A walk loaded the bases again before the first out, followed by a sacrifice fly for the tying run.

          Molton, Macon’s third pitcher of the game and second in the inning, came in and gave up that final walk, and then got the final three outs.

          Vine-Ingle got a 2-out single by Molton in the bottom of the sixth, but was stranded.

          Needville led off the seventh with a walk and then a two-out walk, but Molton ended the inning with a fly to center.

          Vine-Ingle survived eight walks to five strikeouts.