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Little League World Series: California’s El Segundo wins title with walk-off home run vs Curaçao.

The West Region team from El Segundo, California was helped to the Little League World Series title by Louis Lappe's hero ball. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)

Visits: 26

Little League World Series: California’s El Segundo wins title with walk-off home run vs Curaçao.

Callie Lawson-Freeman

California’s El Segundo is bringing home the Little League World Series championship title after a 6-5 victory over the team from Willemstad, Curaçao, on Sunday.

The thrilling game ended with a walk-off home run from Louis Lappe, who was given a perfect setup from the booth by ESPN broadcaster Karl Ravech.

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, PENNSYLVANIA - AUGUST 26: The of the West Region team from El Segundo, California celebrate a home run hit by Louis Lappe #16 during the fifth inning against the Southwest Region team from Needville, Texas during the Little League World Series United States Championship at Little League International Complex on August 26, 2023 in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
The West Region team from El Segundo, California was helped to the Little League World Series title by Louis Lappe’s hero ball. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)

With the score tied in the sixth inning, Lappe stepped to the plate.

“Curaçao has not allowed a home run at the World Series,” Ravech said in an announcer jinx for the ages. Almost instantly, Lappe, the series’ home run leader, sent one flying for the win.

California has been in the championship game 24 times and now has its eighth title. The region has the most victories by any U.S. team but hadn’t won since 2011.

The team had some of the best bats in the tournament, including Lappe and Brody Brooks. En route to the U.S. title on Saturday, Lappe had five RBIs, including a three-run homer as California beat Texas 6-1.

But Curaçao didn’t go down without a fight. Having appeared in the LLWS championship four times, the team was hoping for its first win since 2004 — its only title. Last year, the team made it to the championship game and lost to Hawaii 13-3. Five of its players returned from last year’s disappointment, the most in the tournament.

Down 5-1 in the top of the fifth, Nasir El-Ossais showed the grit of a seasoned veteran. With two outs, he tied the game 5-5 on a dramatic grand slam to right field off Max Baker.

“I am sweating right now, and not from the heat,” El-Ossais’ dad said after the play, adding that emotions were at an all-time high.

Curaçao overcame a big deficit thanks to El-Ossais, but California’s pitching strength and defense won it. Brooks, a shortstop and strong pitcher, tied the World Series record by scoring 13 runs. On Sunday, he had a single and finished the tournament with 12 hits and three home runs.

In a tear-filled postgame interview, El Segundo manager Danny Boehle said he told his team “the game’s not over.” He was surprised Curaçao pitched to Lappe, who said he was close with the Curaçao players and offered kind words after hitting the winning home run.

There was plenty of sportsmanship all over the stadium in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “Great job, keep your head up,” Lappe recalled telling the opposing team.

California also posed for photos with Japan after the victory:

El Segundo’s players will go back to school soon, and they’ll have plenty to share with their classmates. Throughout the tournament, they were sent positive messages from the likes of Los Angeles Lakers’  and multiple Los Angeles Dodgers stars.

On Sept. 10, they will be celebrated in their hometown with a parade.

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Life Reprints from other.

This Former Marine Had Her Leg Amputated — Now She’s Climbing the World’s Tallest Mountains

Never say never. Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Visits: 17

 

AUTHOR Rebekah Brandes

Looking at a timeline of Kirstie Ennis’ life, it’s clear that to call her a go-getter would be a considerable understatement. The 31-year-old has completed three master’s degrees, worked as a Hollywood stuntwoman, earned a real estate license, walked 1,000 miles across England, and climbed six of the world’s tallest mountains. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, she accomplished it all after a tragic accident that resulted in the loss of one of her legs.

The former U.S. Marine sergeant — she enlisted at just 17 years old — was riding in a helicopter above Afghanistan in 2012 when the aircraft went down, a crash that nearly killed her and left her with brain, spine, and ankle injuries. She underwent 40 surgeries over the next three years, and in 2015, a severe infection required her left leg to be amputated. Forced into medical retirement, Ennis needed to figure out a way to both process her trauma and continue to protect people, one of her main motivations for joining the armed services in the first place.

She found the answer in the great outdoors. She began snowboarding and climbing, participating in sponsored events to raise money for nonprofits. Soon, she had a more specific goal in mind: She would scale all Seven Summits — the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. Since beginning in 2017, she’s checked six of them off her list, according to Axios. Next spring, she’s set to tackle her final frontier, and the most difficult climb, Mount Everest.

If you have any doubts at all about her abilities, Ennis would love to hear them. “I like people looking at me and being like ‘She’s small, she’s a woman, she has one leg,’ and me being like ‘All right.’ I like being the underdog,” she said on an episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. 

 

Besides her lofty climbing goal, Ennis is on a mission to prove that nothing is impossible — and, from this vantage point, there is seemingly nothing she can’t do. According to her Instagram page, the intrepid young woman is flying planes, riding motorcycles, and scuba diving.

She’s also set up the Kirstie Ennis Foundation, which helped earn her the Pat Tillman Service Award at the 2019 ESPYS. The organization partners with nonprofits, offering educational and healing opportunities to veterans and people who have lost limbs and introducing medical device technology to underserved parts of the world. Its mission is fitting: “To inspire individuals to stubbornly climb the mountain in front of them.”

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Life Sports

The restorative power of never giving up

At 33 he finally made it and got his first hit. Zito Photo.

Visits: 25

The restorative power of never giving up.

By

Salena Zito

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — When Drew Maggi stepped into the batter’s box in the eighth inning as a pinch hitter, fans at PNC Park knew they were about to witness something extraordinary. Maggi, a 33-year-old infielder who had played over 1,100 games for over 13 seasons in the minor leagues, was about to take his first pitch in the Majors Wednesday evening.

The crowd and his fellow players rewarded him with an emotional standing ovation. The sight of his parents, who were there to witness their son’s big moment, brought plenty of tears to the eyes of a fan base that has been looking for something inspirational for a very long time.

It didn’t matter what happened next — Maggi had made it to the Show. More importantly, he had earned his place there through perseverance, hard work, and faith.

He pulled his first pitch foul, got jammed up into an 0-2 hole, fouled off another pitch (had it been a smidge more inside, it might have landed him a home run), then struck out swinging on an Alex Vesia slider.

Maggi told reporters after the game that he had a hard time putting into words how that night felt. “I can’t explain how I was feeling in the box,” he said. “I didn’t even know what to do. You guys were cheering me on. I don’t know, I never expected that.”

Maggi added that, through his 12-year, 10-month journey up to that moment, he thought that if he ever got here, it would be a normal at bat. “Obviously special, but the crowd cheering my name, I got my parents here, my three brothers, a sister back at home…”

He also saw his Dad crying. “I don’t think I ever saw him cry before,” he said. “All those years, I wondered what I would say to my parents if that moment ever were to come. They’ve been right there with me. Hearing those words made it all worthwhile. I know the last 13 years have not been wasted.”

On Sunday, Maggi was headed back to the Minors , but not before he notched his first Major League hit and RBI. On Saturday night, he lined a pinch-hit single in the seventh inning of the Pirates’s doubleheader sweep over the Nationals.

Baseball, like life, gives and takes. Maggi’s story is evidence that you should never give up.

The whole article can be found here.

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History Life Sports Travel Uncategorized

How Olympian Cornelius Johnson’s Legacy Lives on Through an 87-Year-Old Oak Tree

(Original Caption) 8/9/1936-Berlin, Germany- With what is obviously the greatest of ease, Cornelius Johnson of the United States, without even doffing his sweatshirt, is clearing the bar at a height which other competitors found difficult to surmount. Johnson placed first; Dave Albrittson and Delos Thurber, also of the United States, captured second and third honors respectively.

Visits: 24

How Olympian Cornelius Johnson’s Legacy Lives on Through an 87-Year-Old Oak Tree.

Cornelius Johnson won gold in the high jump for the United States at the 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany. Along with his medal, he took home an oak sapling and planted it in the yard of his family’s Los Angeles home. Though Johnson died just 10 years later, at age 32, the oak tree still stands tall — a physical representation of his legacy as one of the many Black American athletes who took the podium during those Games and resisted the then-ethos of the country that hosted them.

“Him planting his tree was a way of saying ‘I beat you, we won,’” Susan Anderson, a curator at the California African American Museum, told CBS News. Johnson’s tree is one of about two dozen oaks left standing from the 1936 Olympics, and it has now been designated as a historical monument in LA.

That designation is due in part to the work of Christian Kosmas Mayer, a Vienna-based artist with a particular interest in trees with historical significance. He lobbied to save this one when the land was bought by a developer and, thankfully, he was successful.

“Now it grows in what we call Koreatown in Los Angeles, a very diverse, multiethnic, multi-language area, absolutely the opposite of what the Nazis would have dreamed of as their future,” Mayer told CBS. “So I think it’s a beautiful symbol for how things can turn out much better.”
See the Tree

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/los-angeles-oak-tree-carries-legacy-of-forgotten-1936-olympic-athlete/

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