Fastest exit ever for Japan in the baseball Little League World Series

Enough was enough.

It had been five decades since a team from Nicaragua had made its way to the baseball Little League World Series, and despite losing its opener 2-0 to Curacao of the Caribbean, has survived in double-elimination play with back-to-back victories.

First the team representing Managua got past Puerto Rico, 3-1, but the big one came with an 8-7 win in 11 innings that ousted Japan in the shortest exit for that nation. Japan had also lost to Canada, 6-0, before turning back Mexico, 5-0.

This game actually began Sunday, but a lengthy downpour forced the contest to be postponed to Monday with Japan leading 3-1 after two innings. But after a heavy ran fell as this game was winding down, it did force the Mid-Atlantic team from Pennsylvania

against the Metro team from New York to shut down until the weather changes, and the same with the one where the Southeast Tennessee team was set to take on Iowa’s Great Lakes representative.

Otherwise, this was a stirring finish to an exciting game. After Nicaragua scored once in the bottom of the first, Japan responded with a 3-run second inning. It remained 3-1 until the team from Takarazuka tallied once in the fourth. But in the last of the fifth, Nicaragua tied the score at 4-4 on a 3-run home run that finally got its dugout excited.

In the sixth, neither team scored, and so they went to extra innings, but the seventh and eighth were also scoreless. In the ninth, Japan tallied twice on a bases-loaded walk and a run-scoring double. But back came Nicaragua with two of its own on a 2-run double with two out.

In the 10th, Japan loaded the bases with one down and scored twice on a bases-full walk and sacrifice flyout. Again, Nicaragua answered back, scoring two times on a two-out back-to-back pair of doubles following by a stolen base and RBI single.

In the 11th, Japan left two on after it got on by way of an infield error and a single up the middle, but Nicaragua found the way to win this marathon. With one out it loaded the bases, and when a tough grounder got past the shortstop, in came Luis Bravo with the winning run and followed by the celebration.