MIDDLETOWN – Two-and-one-half months ago, the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend Little Leaguers wondered if they’d have a baseball season at all.
They were able to belatedly play, once state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions were eased.
But 2½ innings into Wednesday night’s state championship game against Canal, MOT’s hopes appeared equally bleak. The hosts trailed Canal by four runs at Duke Field and were plagued by defensive miscues.
Then everything changed.
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Cole Blanton’s two-run triple keyed a three-run third inning and MOT rode the hitless relief pitching of Emmett Robinson to a 7-6 victory and the state championship in the 11- and 12-year-old Majors division.
Gavin Lindo’s RBI double highlighted a decisive two-run fifth inning as MOT won its sixth title in the tournament’s 64-year history. The others came in 1965, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2015.
“It is disappointing that we didn’t get to go [further] but just the fact I was able to help our team here is really exciting, probably even more exciting than going to the Little League World Series,” said Lindo, whose bases-loaded single up the middle had given his team an MOT championship last year.
There is no Mid-Atlantic Regional berth waiting in Bristol, Connecticut, however, as Little League International cancelled all competitions beyond the state level because of the coronavirus pandemic. MOT would have gone there hoping to join Naamans (2003) and Newark National (2013) as the only Delaware champions to reach the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
But MOT was quite content with its state championship banner. Canal had won 7-6 Tuesday night to force a deciding game.
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“It was a little bit disappointing way back when, when we knew the Little League World Series wasn’t gonna happen and you weren’t gonna get Regionals,” MOT manager Jeff Simpson said before players gave him a celebratory shower of wrapped bubble gum, “but at the end of the day when the guy yells ‘Play ball!’ it’s playin’ ball.”
In the end, he added, they got to “play good competitive baseball.”
MOT did take a 2-0 first-inning lead Wednesday on singles by Logan Peters and Cole Simpson, Robinson’s double and Blanton’s RBI groundout.
But Canal, which had scored 62 runs in five games since a 5-0 tournament-opening loss to MOT, took a 4-2 lead in the top of the second inning. Shane Klapinsky and Cam Black singled and Canal benefited from two walks and two errors.
RBI singles by Ben Haupt and Klapinsky then made it 6-2 in the third.
“We gave them all the momentum . . . but that’s Little League,” Simpson said.
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Robinson came on to pitch for MOT with one out in the fourth inning of the six-inning game. He struck out five and allowed just two base-runners on a dropped third strike and a walk.
“Emmett pitched a gem,” Lindo said. “ . . . He just pounded the strike zone. He is really what won us this game because they didn’t score any runs after we put Emmitt in.”
A called third strike on a curveball ended the game and unleashed a giddy celebration.
“It just feels good,” Robinson said, “when it’s championship game, lights, everybody’s watching, you’ve got two outs, bottom of the sixth, teammates cheering you up, parents cheering you up.”
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The Link LonkAugust 27, 2020 at 08:41AM
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/sports/2020/08/26/state-champs-mot-rallies-past-canal-little-league-title/3442979001/
State champs! MOT rallies past Canal for Little League title - The News Journal
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