TOKYO, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The Fukuoka Hawks defeated Hiroshima Carp 2-0 in the sixth game of the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) Japan Series on Saturday to retain the title with a 4-1-1 series win.

Dutch pitcher Rick van den Hurk struck out 10 Carp players in six innings and Cuban Yurisbel Gracial hit a home run in the fifth on the way to victory.

Closing pitcher Yuito Mori secured three straight outs in the ninth innings to wrap up the win.

The Hawks clinched the best-of-seven series title with their fourth win on the spin, following a tie in the opening game of the series and a 5-1 victory for the Carp in the second.

It is the ninth time the Hawks have won the Japan Series and the fourth time in the past five seasons.

The result marks another crushing disappointing for the Carp, who topped the Central League regular season standings with .582 winning percentage.

Hiroshima have not won the title since 1984 and have now lost in the Japan Series five times. (Reporting by Jack Tarrant; Editing by Ken Ferris) </s> The Heisei Era in Japan is set to end when Emperor Akihito abdicates next year on April 30.

Pinning down the end of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks’ current era of dominance in Japanese baseball is going to take a little bit more time.

Because as they showed during this Japan Series, their grip on the throne is as strong as ever.

Rick van den Hurk shut out the Hiroshima Carp for six innings and the Hawks scored runs on a squeeze bunt and a home run to capture another Japan Series title with a 2-0 win over the Carp in Game 6 in front of a crowd of 30,723 at Mazda Stadium on Saturday night.

The Hawks poured out of the dugout after closer Yuito Mori retired Seiya Suzuki to end the game. They celebrated on the mound and tossed manager Kimiyasu Kudo into the air 15 times during the doage celebration.

“It felt great and it made me happy,” Kudo said. “Our players have been working relentlessly since the end of the season.”

Hiroshima native Yuki Yanagita, who won Game 5 with a sayonara home run, was the next to go airborne.

“I’m just really, really happy,” Yanagita said. “That was my first time (getting a doage toss) since I was drafted.”Catcher Takuya Kai, who threw out all six runners who tried to steal bases, a Japan Series record for consecutive runners thrown out, was named MVP of the series.

The victory gives the Hawks their second consecutive Japan Series title and their fourth in the last five seasons and fifth in the last eight. The franchise will go down as the final champion of the Heisei Era (which began Jan. 8, 1989), with its seventh crown during that period.

“It’s a winning franchise,” Van den Hurk said. “That’s what the mindset is here with everything. That’s something I’m very grateful to be part of and very happy that we did it again.”

They won this title after finishing second in the Pacific League, an unfamiliar position for the club in recent years.

“We all play with the same rules and you can win the title as the second-place team,” first baseman Seiichi Uchikawa said.

The Hawks played the Carp to a tie in Game 1 and lost Game 2. They then closed out the series by reeling off four straight wins, including all three at home.

“Hiroshima is a tough team and my heart was always pounding with worry,” Kudo said. “This is the first time we’ve won coming out of second place (in the Pacific League) and we tried to do the best we could do and win the Japan Series. We played with that mindset.”

Tetsuro Nishida drove in SoftBank’s first run with a squeeze bunt in the fourth and Yurisbel Gracial added to the lead with a solo homer in the fifth. Van den Hurk, relievers Shota Takeda and Shinya Kayama and Mori did the rest, limiting Hiroshima to just four hits.

“Johnson is a great pitcher and we had a hard time scoring against him,” Gracial said, referring to Carp starter Kris Johnson. “So it felt great to be able to contribute with my bat.”

For the Carp, it was more disappointment. The club has won the past three Central League pennants but has failed to finish any of those years off with a Japan Series title.

“Our players gave their best until the very end,” Carp manager Koichi Ogata said. “We had a very good chance to win.”

The Carp went down the same way they did in 2016 against the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters — by losing all three road games and then falling at home in Game 6.

Van den Hurk was the loser in Game 2 in Hiroshima and came back with a vengeance on Saturday night. The Dutch right-hander retired seven straight at one point and struck out 10 while allowing only three hits and a walk.

“I was looking forward to putting the team in a position to win and I was able to do that,” he said. “When you go up against the Carp lineup and Johnson on the mound, there not much room for error. In a tight game, we were able to continue to pitch well and we did that the whole game.

“That was great and obviously when you when the championship, that’s amazing.”

Kai, meanwhile, kept the running game of the Carp, who led the CL with 95 stolen bases, in check with his powerful and accurate right arm, which has been dubbed the “Kai Cannon.”

Kai threw himself into the record books in the first inning when he threw out Kosuke Tanaka trying to steal second for his fifth straight runner thrown out, which set a Japan Series record. Kai improved to 6-for-6 in the series when he threw out Tomohiro Abe in the second.

With Van den Hurk and Johnson, pitchers whose time in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization overlapped briefly, controlling things on the mound, the game was scoreless entering the fourth.

Yanagita drew a walk to start the frame and Akira Nakamura followed with a single. Uchikawa laid down a sacrifice bunt to move the runners over and Nishida dropped down a squeeze to make the score 1-0.

Gracial added to the lead in the fifth, connecting on a slider for a solo homer to left.

Pitching with the lead seemed to put a charge into Van den Hurk, who struck out seven between the fourth and sixth innings.

The bullpen took over from Van den Hurk to begin the seventh and pitched the Hawks to the title.

The game was the last for celebrated Carp star Takahiro Arai, who will retire.

Johnson, who was the winner in Game 2, took the loss in Game 6. The left-hander allowed two runs on three hits in six innings. Johnson struck out six and walked three.

Staff writer Kaz Nagatsuka contributed to this report </s> South Williamsport, Pa. — The crack of the bat, the gasp from the crowd, a fist pump on the trip around the bases and then a happy hop to waiting teammates at home plate.

Japan went through the routine three times in the fourth inning of the Little League World Series championship Sunday as Daisuke Hashimoto, Keitaro Miyahara and Natsuki Yajima homered, turning a tight game with Lufkin, Texas, into a 12-2 rout.

Tsubasa Tomii buckled down after allowing two first-inning home runs, finishing with nine strikeouts in a game that was stopped in the bottom of the fifth inning after Japan went ahead by 10 on Yajima’s single to right field to score Seiya Arai.

“We were thrilled after we won the Japanese region before we came here,” Miyahara said through an interpreter. “But now getting to this level and becoming the Little League World Series champions this year, it can’t get any better than this.”

The title marks the 11th time a team from Japan has won the Little League World Series, five of which have come in the last eight years. Tokyo Kitasuna, the club representing Japan this season, has won three of the last six.

Lufkin had a six-run comeback victory over Greenville, North Carolina, in the U.S. championship game Saturday to reach the final. And early on, it looked as though the team’s momentum would carry through the championship.

Japan had allowed only one run in the tournament heading into Sunday’s game, but that changed when Chandler Spencer crushed the first pitch over the left-center field fence.

Hunter Ditsworth cracked an opposite-field homer down the right-field line to put Lufkin up 2-0 with one out in the first. But Miyahara laced a two-run triple with two outs in the second to tie it at 2, and Ryusei Fujiwara fisted a single to right to bring Miyahara home.

Lufkin manager Bud Maddux, who has coached youth baseball for 41 years and won 10 total championships, came just short of the most coveted title in Little League. He blamed himself for the loss.

“Just like I told them, I’ll take full credit for that,” Maddux said. “We didn’t make some adjustments that we should have. You can’t hang your head because (Japan) beat you. They’re a great baseball team, but we are, too.”

But it was Japan’s day. After Arai slid across the plate with the 12th run, his teammates leaped out of the dugout to hug him near home plate, jumping up and down in celebration.

Miyahara’s home run in the fourth came after he fouled a ball off his left leg and was evaluated by the trainer before stepping back into the batter’s box.

“I was in pain,” Miyahara said. “But going through all that tough practice in Tokyo, I learned how to focus and forget about that pain and just focus on hitting the ball.”

Japan manager Junnji Hidaka also led the Tokyo team that won the Little League World Series in 2015. When asked to compare the two clubs, he gave the nod to this year’s group of players.

“This team is a little more of a tight-knit group,” Hidaka said through an interpreter. “A lot more happier team.” </s> A pitcher getting it done on the mound and at the plate helped the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters bring home a championship, just like everyone expected.

Not many had reliever Anthony Bass as said pitcher. What third baseman Brandon Laird did, that was pretty much business as usual.

The Fighters broke open a tense contest in the eighth inning, with a bases-loaded walk drawn by Sho Nakata, an RBI single by Bass and a grand slam courtesy of slugger Laird, and returned to the NPB summit with a 10-4 win over the Hiroshima Carp in Game 6 of the Japan Series on Saturday night at Mazda Stadium.

“We were on a mission this year” said Laird, who was named Japan Series MVP. “We had a long season, went through our ups and downs, but we overcame them. Look at us now, we’re Nippon champions, it feels great.”

The Fighters won their first Japan Series title since 2006, rebounding to win four straight games after dropping the first two in Hiroshima.

“We never got down even after losing the first two games of the series,” said manager Hideki Kuriyama. “We were able to win all three games at home and the momentum was with us when we came back to Hiroshima.”

Bass threw two scoreless innings to earn the win in relief. He struck out three and walked a batter. Bass finished the series with a 3-0 record, 0.00 ERA and eight strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings.

“I feel like I did my job, so I was happy with that,” Bass said. “More important is winning the championship. That’s why I signed here in Japan. I wanted to be part of a championship.”

The Fighters are champions for the third time in franchise history, also winning in 1962 and 2006. Their win continues the dominance of the Pacific League in the Japanese Fall Classic. Since 2003, PL teams have won 11 of the past 14 Japan Series titles. Nippon Ham accounted for the only losses in 2007, 2009 and 2012.

The Fighters got it right this time. Wrapping things up in Hiroshima was the cherry on top, as Nippon Ham entered the game just 2-11 on the road in the Japan Series since 2006.

“Definitely feel like we’re on top of the world right now,” Bass said. “Everyone put a lot of hard work in all season long, leading up to this. We faced a good team in the Carp. It wasn’t an easy series by any means. But we found a way to win, and it feels great.”

They won without calling on Shohei Otani again. Otani, who many thought would make another appearance in the series, either at the plate or on the mound, didn’t play Saturday. He was on deck in the eighth, but was called back to the dugout after Nakata drew his bases-loaded walk.

The Fighters would’ve likely started Otani in Game 7 had they lost. The team would’ve faced an emotional scene Sunday against retiring Carp hero Hiroki Kuroda. The veteran pitcher had mostly held Nippon Ham in check before leaving Game 3 with an injury.

“We faced Kuroda after we took the consecutive losses (in Games 1 and 2), but I was thinking that our players would’ve gone in the game on pure spirit,” said Kuriyama. “In a way, we took advantage of Kuroda’s energy. I really respect him. Maybe he wanted to pitch one more game, but if we were to play one more game, I’m not sure we could’ve won, so forgive me for that.

“I really don’t feel like we’ve actually done it. I need to sit back and reflect on it. But more than the Japan Series title, one of our goals was for the fans to have fun with each game.”

Laird’s grand slam was his third home run of the series. The Nippon Ham infielder, who had a tiebreaking two-run homer in the eighth inning that helped win Game 4, drove in seven runs during the Japan Series.

“I was just looking to have a good at-bat, just try to get a pitch I could hit,” Laird said of Saturday’s grand slam. “To get a big hit like that was unbelievable.”

He dedicated his performance to his grandfather.

“I’m just trying to do my best each and every day,” he said. “I’m playing for my grandfather right now, and I know he’s looking down proud. So thank you, grandpa.”

Laird gave his trademark sushi pose after the game and was joined during the award ceremony by Bass, Nakata and Haruki Nishikawa, who earned outstanding player honors. The Carp’s Brad Eldred was given the Fighting Spirit Award as the best player from the losing team.

Nippon Ham did all its damage in the eighth with two outs. Nishikawa, Takuya Nakashima and Hiromi Oka each singled to load the bases against Carp reliever Jay Jackson with the score knotted at 4-4.

Jackson walked Nakata to force in the tiebreaking run. Bass then hit for himself and delivered a single to center that tacked on another run.

“He walked the previous guy, so I was taking a strike and then looking for the fastball,” Bass said. “I haven’t swung in a long time, so I was just trying to start as early as I could. He left a fastball over the plate, and I just hit it.”

Bass pumped his fist wildly in celebration when he reached first base.

“I don’t know what came over me there in the eighth inning,” Bass said. “But it’s been fun. It’s a long season, and that’s why we work.”

Otani, who was 6-for-16 with four doubles during the series, was on deck during Nakata’s at-bat with Bass’ spot due up. But Bass said the plan was for him to hit for himself.

“The plan was, I was hitting 100 percent,” Bass said. “It was kind of like a fake out, I think.”

Laird then connected on a 135-kph slider to put the game away. His home run in Game 4 was also off Jackson, who was charged with the loss on Saturday.

The Carp, who won the Central League pennant for the first time since 1991, were trying to win their first Japan Series title since 1984.

Staff writer Kaz Nagatsuka contributed to this report. </s> SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- The crack of the bat, the gasp from the crowd, a fist pump on the trip around the bases and then a happy hop to waiting teammates at home plate.

Japan went through the routine three times Sunday in the fourth inning of the Little League World Series championship, as Daisuke Hashimoto, Keitaro Miyahara and Natsuki Yajima homered to turn a tight game against Lufkin, Texas, into a 12-2 rout.

Tsubasa Tomii buckled down after allowing two first-inning home runs, finishing with nine strikeouts in a game that was stopped in the bottom of the fifth inning after Japan went ahead by 10 on Yajima's single to right field to score Seiya Arai.

"We were thrilled after we won the Japanese region before we came here," Miyahara said through an interpreter. "But now getting to this level and becoming the Little League World Series champions this year, it can't get any better than this."

The title marks the 11th time a team from Japan has won the Little League World Series, five of which have come in the past eight years. Tokyo Kitasuna, the club representing Japan this season, has won three of the past six.

Lufkin had a six-run comeback victory over Greenville, North Carolina, in the U.S. championship game Saturday to reach the final. Early on, it looked as though the team's momentum would carry through the championship.

Japan had allowed only one run in the tournament heading into Sunday's game, but that changed when Chandler Spencer crushed the first pitch over the left-center-field fence.

Japan allowed only three runs throughout its run to the Little League World Series title. Rob Carr/Getty Images

Hunter Ditsworth cracked an opposite-field homer down the right-field line to put Lufkin up 2-0 with one out in the first. But Miyahara laced a two-run triple with two outs in the second to tie the game at 2, and Ryusei Fujiwara fisted a single to right to bring Miyahara home.

Lufkin manager Bud Maddux, who has coached youth baseball for 41 years and won 10 total championships, came just short of the most coveted title in Little League. He blamed himself for the loss.

"Just like I told them, I'll take full credit for that," Maddux said. "We didn't make some adjustments that we should have. You can't hang your head because [Japan] beat you. They're a great baseball team, but we are too."

But it was Japan's day. After Arai slid across the plate with the 12th run, his teammates leaped out of the dugout to hug him, jumping up and down in celebration.

Miyahara's home run in the fourth came after he fouled a ball off his left leg and was evaluated by the trainer before stepping back into the batter's box.

"I was in pain," Miyahara said. "But going through all that tough practice in Tokyo, I learned how to focus and forget about that pain and just focus on hitting the ball."

Japan manager Junnji Hidaka also led the Tokyo team that won the Little League World Series in 2015. Asked to compare the two clubs, he gave the nod to this year's group.

"This team is a little more of a tight-knit group," Hidaka said through an interpreter. "A lot more happier team."

A REAL CHAMP: Champ Pederson, who was born with Down syndrome, was enshrined as a member of the 2017 Little League Hall of Excellence class before the title game. He is the first player from Little League's Challenger Division to get the honor. The Challenger Division is for children with physical and mental challenges. Pederson threw out an honorary first pitch alongside former major leaguer Mark Teixeira and spoke to the crowd before the game. He encouraged both Texas and Japan to work hard in everything they do and refuse to let adversity stop them from doing what they love. After the speech, Pederson sprinted out to center field and climbed the wall to touch the bust of Howard J. Lamade, for whom the stadium is named.

MEXICO TAKES BRONZE: Mexico beat Greenville, North Carolina, 14-8 on Sunday in the third-place game. Twelve of 14 Reynoso hitters scored, and the teams combined for 14 runs in a 53-minute fourth inning. "I didn't think that we were going to make it this far," North Carolina's Ashton Byars said. Byars hit his first home run of the tournament Sunday after promising his mom and dad that he would knock one out of the park before the series ended. Manager Brian Fields mixed in five pitchers who hadn't seen the mound all tournament. He said after the game that he wanted all his players to experience the Little League World Series to its fullest. </s> The Hokkaido Ham Fighters’ never-say-die attitude culminated in a Japan Series title on Saturday night in Hiroshima.

Hideki Kuriyama lauded his team’s resilience after Nippon Ham clinched its third title in franchise history with a 10-4 win over the Hiroshima Carp in Game 6.

During the regular season, the Fighters were down, but not out, in the Pacific League pennant race. They erased what was once an 11½-game deficit to the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks to win the league title, and used the perks they earned to beat the Hawks again in the Climax Series.

“I said it when we won the league championship, we had such a tough season, but we didn’t give up, even though we had a huge deficit to overcome, and we made it all the way here, said Kuriyama. “We grew a little in every single game.”

Never give up, never give in, never say die.

The Fighters lived by that creed, united in the belief no mountain was so high it couldn’t be scaled.

So when Nippon Ham faced adversity in the form of a Carp team that held a 2-0 lead in the Japan Series, and was looking as if it might snatch a third in Sapporo behind veteran pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, there was no panic. The Fighters rallied to win Game 3 in 10 innings, and just kept on winning.

“The two games we lost and the games in Sapporo, those could’ve gone either way,” Kuriyama said.

Game 6 could’ve as well, until the Fighters finally scored a KO in the eighth inning.

The score was tied at 4-4 when Nippon Ham strung together three two-out singles to load the bases. From there, Sho Nakata drew a walk, reliever Anthony Bass drove in a run and Brandon Laird hit a grand slam. All of a sudden, the Fighters were up 10-4 and their hard work was six outs away from paying off.

Nippon Ham’s triumph required the contributions of a number of players. That was no more apparent than in the bullpen, where the relievers stepped up to face down the Carp hitters, who as a group were statistically the best in Japan.

“It’s a humbling experience to be down there,” said Bass, who was chosen as one of the outstanding players of the series. “There’s a lot of great pitchers in the bullpen. We picked each other up all series long. I was just fortunate enough to kind of have, if you want to say the hot hand, but it’s been a fun season.

“Credit to the Carp’s bullpen, they’ve been lock-down all year. They’ve got a great bullpen. It’s just we got things going our way at the end. Everyone’s just kind of been doing their job.”

With the bullpen keeping things close, the Fighters eventually found the big hits they needed. Shohei Otani came up with the first, a walk-off single in Game 3. Then it was Laird hitting a two-run homer in the eighth inning of Game 4. Those two hits came after game-tying hits by Sho Nakata. Then in Game 5, Haruki Nishikawa put Nippon Ham in the driver’s seat with a sayonara grand slam.

Before the series, all the focus was on Otani, who had an 11-strikeout performance, though while allowing three runs, in Game 1 (his only appearance on the mound) and finished the series with four doubles among his six hits at the plate.

Otani played a role, but it was the sum of the Fighters’ parts, coming through in big moments, that added up.

The Fighters simply made more plays when it counted. There was Luis Mendoza throwing five heroic innings of relief in Game 5, and Bass shining in each of his appearances to the tune of three wins. When the Fighters needed big hits at home, Nakata was there to deliver, and third-base coach Kazuyuki Shirai’s call to send Kensuke Tanaka home on Hiromi Oka’s shallow sacrifice fly to tie Game 5 in the seventh inning was among the most pivotal of the series. And those were just the tip of the iceberg.

Kuriyama preached belief after the game. The Fighters always believed the turning point was right around the corner, and four out of six times in this Japan Series it was.

They believed in one another, and believed that together there was no deficit that couldn’t be overcome.

As it turns out, as the Hawks and Carp can both attest to, that turned out to be true, and the Fighters now have the titles to prove it.

“This is a young team and we had to move forward together and we could not have won unless each one of us grew,” Kuriyama said. “So even though we became the best in Japan, we still have a long way to go. We are going to keep moving forward from tomorrow.” </s> Japan won the 2017 Little League World Series 12-2 over Texas on Sunday.

The team from Tokyo poured in nine runs in the fourth and fifth innings to take a 10-run lead and win by mercy rule on a walk-off hit. Japan was undefeated in its nine games in the Little League World Series this year, and with this win, it marks fourth time in the last six years that a team from Tokyo went home the Champions. It is the 11th time a team from Japan captured the crown.

The team from Lufkin, Texas went 8-2 in the tournament. The team came back from a four-run deficit in the United States Championship game to win 6-5 and earn a birth to the title game. It was the eighth time a team from Texas played for the championship. </s> The Hiroshima Carp are set to retire the No. 15 shirt worn by retired right-hander Hiroki Kuroda, the Central League club’s owner Hajime Matsuda said Monday.

“There are two reasons, the first is his record along with the fact that we won the pennant this year,” said Matsuda. “The other is that he showed today’s society that values are not just based on money.”

Kuroda began his career at Hiroshima and spent 11 years with the club from 1997. He rejoined the Carp in 2015 after seven seasons in the major leagues despite much larger offers on table to stay in the United States.

The 41-year-old this season helped the Carp to their first pennant in 25 years after going 10-8 with a 3.09 ERA, and took his career record to 203-184 before announcing his retirement ahead of the just-concluded Japan Series.

“I wanted to make him remembered in 15 and 20 years’ time not just as a pitcher who won 203 games in Japan and the United States, but also for the influence he had on people,” said Matsuda.

Kuroda is the third Carp player to see his shirt number retired after former sluggers from their golden era of the 1970s and ’80s, Koji Yamamoto’s No. 8 and Sachio Kinugasa’s No. 3.

Kuroda last pitched in Game 3 of the Japan Series on Tuesday against the Pacific League champion Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Sapporo, getting Japan’s fastest pitcher, Shohei Otani, to fly out for the second out in the sixth inning before coming off due to cramp and stiffness to his legs with his team winning 2-1.

The Carp went on to lose that game, and two more, to see Nippon Ham turn the series 3-2 heading into Games 6 on Saturday before the Fighters clinched it with a 10-4 win in Hiroshima, dashing the hopes of Kuroda’s showdown against Otani in Game 7. </s> By Matt Martell and Jack Dougherty, The Associated Press

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Tsubasa Tomii buckled down after allowing two first-inning home runs and Japan hit three homers in the fourth and won the Little League World Series title with a 12-2 victory over Lufkin, Texas, on Sunday.

Keitaro Miyahara laced a two-run triple with two outs in the second to tie it at 2, and hit a solo shot in the fourth after fouling a ball off his foot earlier in the at-bat. Daisuke Hashimoto and Natsuki Yajima also homered in the fourth.

Tomii cruised through the final four innings and finished with nine strikeouts.

After starter Chip Buchanan was pulled in the fourth inning, Lufkin had trouble getting outs and the game was stopped in the fifth inning after Japan went ahead by 10 on Yajima’s single to right field to score Seiya Arai.

The title marks the 11th time a team from Japan has won the Little League World Series, five of which have come in the last eight years. Tokyo Kitasuna, the club representing Japan this season, has won three of the last six.

Lufkin had a six-run comeback victory over Greenville, North Carolina, in the U.S. championship game Saturday to reach the final. And early on, it looked as though the team’s momentum would carry through the championship.

Japan had allowed only one run in the tournament heading into Sunday’s game, but that changed when Chandler Spencer crushed the first pitch over the left-center field fence.

Hunter Ditsworth cracked an opposite-field homer down the right-field line to put Lufkin up 2-0 with one out in the first. But after Miyahara’s triple in the second, Ryusei Fujiwara fisted a single to right to bring Miyahara home and make the score 3-2.

Japan added the final five runs in the fifth inning, which also was highlighted by Miyahara’s two-run double.

A REAL CHAMP: Champ Pederson, who was born with Down Syndrome, was enshrined as a member of the 2017 Little League Hall of Excellence class before the title game. He’s the first player from Little League’s Challenger Division to get the honor. The Challenger Division is for youth with physical and mental challenges. Pederson threw out an honorary first pitch alongside former major leaguer Mark Teixeira and spoke to the crowd before the game. He encouraged both Lufkin and Japan to work hard in everything they do and refuse to let adversity stop them from doing what they love. After the speech, Pederson sprinted out to center field and climbed the wall to touch the bust of Howard J. Lamade, for whom the stadium is named.

MEXICO TAKES BRONZE: Mexico beat Greenville, North Carolina, 14-8 on Sunday in the third-place game. Twelve of 14 Reynoso hitters scored a run, and the teams combined for 14 runs in a 53-minute fourth inning. “I didn’t think that we were going to make it this far,” Greenville’s Ashton Byars said. Byars hit his first home run of the tournament Sunday after promising his mom and dad he would knock one out of the park before the LLWS ended. Manager Brian Fields mixed in five pitchers who hadn’t seen the mound all tournament. He said after the game he wanted all his players to experience the LLWS to its fullest.

Matt Martell and Jack Dougherty are journalism students at Penn State. Penn State is partnering with The Associated Press to supplement coverage of the Little League World Series.
The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks defeat the Hiroshima Toyo Carp to win the 2018 Japan Series.