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When it mattered most, Louis Lappe shined like a major league star.
In a tie game in the final inning of the Little League World Series championship game, the El Segundo, California, shortstop connected to send the ball past the left field wall for a walk-off home run to win the title in the moment of a lifetime.
It was a thrilling end to another magnificent tournament in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, as Curacao came back from a four-run deficit in the top of the fifth with a grand slam to tie the game at 5 apiece. Lappe, who recorded five RBIs and allowed one run in 5 1/3 innings in the U.S. championship win against Texas, entered Sunday as the home run leader of the tournament. Curacao had not allowed a home run all tournament, but Lappe led off the bottom of the sixth with his moonshot, the final inning in Little League, to hit his fifth home run of the tournament.
Lappe celebrated rounding the bases while its teammates mobbed him at home plate.
“My mentality was just get the next guy up and if we kept doing that, we would’ve won either way. But I’ll take the homer,” Lappe said after the game.
The championship for El Segundo is the eighth time a California team has won it all, the most of any U.S. team. It’s also the first championship for the state since 2011 when Ocean View Little League from Huntington Beach, California, brought home the title, and the fourth straight tournament a U.S. team won.
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