The all-star team from El Segundo won the U.S. championship of the Little League World Series Saturday with a 6-1 victory over its counterpart from Needville, Texas — which beat El Segundo on Monday.
El Segundo will play for the world championship Sunday against the all-star team from Willemstad, Curacao, which won the international championship earlier Saturday with a 2-0 victory over its counterpart from Taoyuan, Taiwan.
El Segundo’s Louis Lappe limited Needville to three hits and one run over 5 1/3 innings, striking out 10 and walking one. He also drove in five runs, including a three-run homer off reliever Easton Ondruch in the fifth inning.
“Once you hit it, sometimes you know it’s going out and that one I knew it was going out as soon as I hit it,” Lappe told ABC.
Lappe singled in two runs in the third before a crowd at Howard J. Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania announced at 28,791.
Brody Brooks homered leading off the bottom of the first for El Segundo, went 3-for-3 and scored three runs.
Needville scored its run in the top of the fifth as D.J. Jablonski led off with a double, advanced to third on an error by center fielder Max Baker and scored on a wild pitch by Lappe.
Jablonski was charged with the loss, allowing four runs and six hits in 4 1/3 innings. He struck out six and walked three.
Jablonski limited El Segundo to four hits and one run in 5 1/3 innings in a 3-1 victory Monday, with the only run coming on Lappe’s first-inning home run.
The victory was the fourth in five days for El Segundo following Monday’s loss to Needville, the Southwest Region champion.
El Segundo is 19-2 in five tournaments this summer. The West Region champions’ other loss was to the all-star team from the Sherman Oaks Little League, 4-3, in the opening game of the championship series of the Southern California State Tournament on July 31. It won the rematch, 3-2, later that day.
The loss ended a 14-game winning streak for Needville and dropped their record to 20-2 in five tournaments.
Needville lost to the all-star team from the Hallettsville Little League in its second game in the Texas East Section 4 tournament, 4-3, then defeated the all-star team from the Sweeny Little League, 6-2, and Hallettsville, 19-0, in a game called after three innings because of the run rule, which requires the manager of a team trailing by at least 15 runs through three innings to concede the victory to the opponent.
The Southwest Region champion then defeated Hallettsville, 1-0, to win the tournament.
Needville will face Taoyuan in Sunday’s third-place game.
This was the first time since 1994 that a Los Angeles County team has played in the U.S. championship game. The all-star team from the Northridge Little League won the 1994 U.S. championship with a team including future USC and NFL quarterback Matt Cassel.
Los Angeles County teams have won the Little League World Series three times. The all-star team from the Granada Hills National Little League won in 1963 and teams from the Long Beach Little League won in 1992 and 1993.