Georgia’s mind was on crown Champs stayed focused after shaky 0-2 start

loading...

BANGOR – Once they got started at the Senior League World Series, there was no stopping the Cartersville Kids.

Four days after falling to 0-2 in pool play, the U.S. South champions from northwest Georgia capped off an impressive comeback with their crowning achievement, a 9-0 victory over Falcon, Venezuela, in the world championship game Saturday.

Once Colton Montgomery launched a three-run homer in the top of the fourth to give Cartersville righthander Chris Huth a 4-0 lead, the celebration essentially was on in front of a large Mansfield Stadium crowd and an ESPNU television audience.

“After we got ahead by four runs, the way Chris was pitching I knew we were going to win,” said Cartersville catcher Hank Stewart.

That confidence was a long way from where the team was emotionally after falling to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands 5-4 on Tuesday, a loss that dropped the Georgians to last place in Pool B.

“We were the underdog from there,” said second baseman Garison Boston. “Everybody from Cartersville was calling us after the first two games, saying win at least one game and no matter what we’ll still be proud of you.”

But the team came on with the tenacity of a Georgia bulldog, defeating host Maine District 3 champion Brewer and then Surrey, British Columbia, by the 10-run rule to earn the final semifinal berth from its pool via a tiebreaker.

A semifinal victory over Tyler, Texas, then gave Cartersville the chance to win it all.

“We weren’t satisfied with one game, we wanted the whole thing,” said Boston, whose team outscored its last four opponents by a combined 34-2.

“That’s just the way we play, we wanted it all.”

Huth started Cartersville’s comeback with a five-inning no-hitter against Brewer, and he finished off the team’s championship run with a complete-game one-hitter against a Falcon team attempting to win its second straight SLWS title.

In helping Cartersville emerge from an early part of the week spent on the outside looking in on championship dreams, Huth and Stewart worked the outside part of the plate with great success.

“We’d watched them for a couple of days and seen that they couldn’t hit low and outside to save their lives, they tried to pull everything,” said Stewart. “So the whole time we were trying to stay curveball outside, fastball outside, and then when we got to 0-2 we’d go way outside and they still were trying to pull it.

“About the time they’d get keyed up on the outside, we just busted one inside and then went back to our normal deal.”

Huth threw 89 pitches – six shy of the Senior League maximum of 95 in a game – with three strikeouts and three walks.

He yielded just a one-out single to center by Angel Zea in the third inning, and only one Venezuelan runner reached second base.

“The first few innings I just went out there and I was a little tense and a little nervous, but it kind of helps me when I’m nervous,” said Huth. “When I get overconfident I’ll start leaving balls in the strike zone and they’ll start hitting me, but I was a little nervous and it just fell all together.”

Huth was backed by a 13-hit Cartersville offense and a stellar defensive performance that turned one double play and set the tone for the game in the first inning when Stewart threw out Marcos Pina by 10 feet as he tried to steal second.

Much of Falcon’s offense throughout the tournament was based on speed, but with that one play its speed was minimized for the rest of the breezy afternoon.

“When I saw [Pina] go I was looking at their coach and he just shook his head because he knew they weren’t going to be able to steal bases today,” said Cartersville manager Eric Stewart, Hank Stewart’s father. “That was huge for us.”

A single to left by Boston and an RBI double to left-center by Cole Payne – who had a team-best 10 hits in the tourney – on consecutive pitches by Venezuelan starter Jose Alvarado gave Cartersville a 1-0 lead in the top of the third.

But the hit of the series came an inning later.

After Brad Green hit a leadoff double and Tyler Linn walked, Montgomery got an outside pitch similar to those the Venezuelans couldn’t hit and lofted it into the jet stream that was blowing out toward right field.

The ball sailed over the scoreboard some 390 feet from home plate, and Cartersville had a 4-0 lead.

“It was a fastball on the outside corner,” said Montgomery. “It was a 2-2 count, so I knew it was coming. The way the wind was, I couldn’t believe they were throwing outside like that. We’re not a good outside-hitting team, but we didn’t show that today.”

Montgomery was an unlikely hero, having gone 1 for 12 in the SLWS.

“Colton hadn’t gotten many hits this tournament,” said Eric Stewart. “I pinch-hit for him several times, and I pinch-hit for him right after he hit the home run.

“I’m not going to say it was lucky, but I’ll take whatever I can get.”

Cartersville padded its lead with three runs in the sixth, with Boston hitting an RBI triple, Huth an RBI single and Payne adding an RBI on a double that turned into an out when it was ruled that he didn’t touch first base.

The Georgians scored two more runs in the seventh, as Payne had an RBI single and pinch-hitter Trey Dickson singled and scored from third on a balk.

Moments later, when Huth retired Edickson Primera on a comebacker to the mound, Cartersville had emerged from the deepest of tournament depths to join the community’s 2002 Junior League team as a world champion.

“After we were 0-2, I had no doubts that we would be 2-2,” said Eric Stewart. “And then from looking at the pool format and after they told me what we had to do against Canada, then I had no doubts about being in the semifinals.

“After the first inning against Texas, I had no doubts about beating Texas, and after the fourth inning here, I knew we were world champions.”