Staten Island’s Little League baseball team was sent packing Tuesday after losing 6-1 to Lake Mary, Florida– ending their run in this year’s World Series.
The South Shore squad’s defeat followed a weekend of victories: they beat the Midwest Region team on Saturday and the Great Lakes Region team on Sunday.
“It was a great run that we had,” Staten Island coach Bob Laterza said during a postgame press conference. “Not everybody’s gonna win, but as long as they fight to the end I don’t have a problem, and they did.”
This was the third time a Staten Island team made it to the World Series, and a chance for redemption for Laterza: The last team he brought to the championship decades ago lost because of a scandal involving a pitcher on the Bronx team who was older than the league’s age limit.
“It’s only with the help of God that I got here, there’s a lot of things that could go wrong – you don’t get the team, you run into a buzzsaw like the Danny Almonte team, an outfielder could fall down, somebody gets an injury,” he said at the press conference.
Laterza said he briefed the kids on “the downs and the ups” that await them when they get home. “They played their hearts out,” he said.
The 38-game tournament will culminate in a championship game between the eventual winners of the American and international brackets, which is slated for Aug. 25.