Biloxi National Despite the early lead, Mount elected to leave Hart on the mound rather than removing him after one inning to keep him eligible for the championship game. 1 Or write about sports? Biloxi National (Mississippi) 4, Donelson American (Tennessee) 3 (8 innings) South Lake Charles clinched a semifinal round berth with the win, and then rode stellar pitching from Richard to defeat Grove Sports (Oklahoma) Little League 4-2 in the final round-robin game. Just days prior, Almonte had tossed the first perfect game in the 44-year history of the Little League World Series, whiffing 16 of 18, and now he was back again, in the United States semifinals, to face the tyke of all tykes: Cerda. 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet. He was 5-foot-9, bigger than his head coach, left-handed and master of four pitches. Matt Taylor and Parr keyed the rally with consecutive two-strike RBI hits. "We never want to push someone to switch positions like that, but he jumped in, hook, line and sinker," Wilken says. In the event of a three-way tie, the initial tie is broken based on fewest runs allowed per defensive inning played. Ruling: Almonte is 14 Questions have been answered, but the scandal is far from over. In his last 30 innings of high school ball, Almonte had K'd 60 and walked two. "Supa Myrio", as one sign in the stands proclaimed him, threw thirteen pitches -- twelve of them for strikes -- to escape the threat. W Ross Curet followed with an RBI double, and later scored on Richard's single. Almonte told friends he knew nothing about the fake birth certificate, but he was nevertheless fair game. - But to those carefully eyeballing him, Almonte seemed complacent. 0 His only issue was his shirt and pant size: XS. The team reached the Juco World Series, finishing 52-12 and fourth in the nation, and the lasting memory of the season was Almonte's toothy smile. He was a professional pitcher now, even though the Frontier League reeked of Barnum & Bailey, and he hoped, if he excelled, the Yankees or Mets would revisit his world. "Outside the Lines" revisits the battle between Danny Almonte and Matt Cerda in the 2001 Little League World Series. If she'd had to take a stab at it back in August 2001, Jo Marie Cerda would have guessed 17. It was a whirlwind 24 hours. 1 starter. E The Texas champions failed to score in the first two innings, but then tallied four runs when the top of their batting order came up for a second time in the third inning. By his junior year he was up to 5-6 and 140, and the baseballs started vaporizing off his bat. He would beg his parents to let him pump iron, but the Cerdas' family doctor had put the kibosh on it, telling them his body wasn't sturdy enough. 2001 Little League World Series The 2001 Little League World Series was won by the Japanese entry for the second time in three years. South Lake Charles 0 He's got good enough stuff.". 9 0 3 18 2 Grove Sports (Oklahoma) 4, ORWALL American (Texas) 3 0 All logos are the trademark & property of their owners and not Sports Reference LLC. ", Mike Cerda waved his kid down to the third-base coaching box, knowing what was coming. Late in the season, the team had wrapped up a road game, and while all the other players were on the bus, Cerda was alone in the dugout -- cleaning up. Qualification for the 2001 Little League World Series took place in sixteen different parts of the world during July and August 2001, with formats and number of teams varying by region. As a result, the fallout was more subtle and private than it would normally have been, and, for Almonte, the more pressing issue became coaching and willpower. They figured a Danny Almonte signing was the quickest way to a packed house and a full press box, so they gave him a contract, sight unseen, and handed him a baseball. A Royals scout named Lloyd Simmons -- the winningest juco coach of all time -- had told Russell a month before the draft that Almonte might very well be coming to Kansas City. Back in Southern California, a major league area scout named Denny Henderson, was watching on TV, his radar up. - Almonte's baseball career has been filled with more lows than highs since he burst on the national stage in 2001. But I remembered he was a catcher. Then they'd ask him what Almonte was doing these days. And that enabled two boys to go back to baseball, to see where it could lead them, to see whether they could go someplace huge. 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 In the fourth, Taylor delivered an RBI single, and Kirby Kirchner lined a two-run home run over the center field fence to widen the lead to 7-2. His Bronx team had ended up losing in the U.S. final, to Apopka, mostly because Almonte wasn't allowed to pitch in back-to-back games. They rode in convertibles, straight down to the beach, and if Matt Cerda ever managed to hit puberty, there were precocious California girls waiting for him on every corner. New York Mets infielder Ruben Tejada was a member of the 2001 Panamanian Little League team that represented the Latin American region at that year's Little League World Series. He studied Almonte, along with Russell, and noticed he was "dropping his arm slot" on his slider. ORWALL American (Texas) 7, Biloxi National (Mississippi) 4 Cerda stared at the enormous crowd of 60,000-plus, and rubbed his eyes. His body was clearly changing. 2 0 Grove Sports (Oklahoma) 4, Huntsville National (Alabama) 2 But a couple of weeks before draft day, Simmons told Russell he needed an angioplasty and wouldn't be healthy enough to sit in the Royals war room. The Little Big Unit was out of baseball -- another Musburger moment, if only Brent had been around. ", In another game, a big league cross-checker started ripping Almonte from the stands, on a day he was throwing only 84 to 86 mph. South Lake Charles One of those kids had been Paula himself, who'd been a teammate of Almonte's at Monroe High and who had gone out to Western in 2005 and hit .490.

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