By CHACE BRYSON | Editor
It may have been the easiest decision Jorge Guerrero faced at any point during the Intermediate Little League World Series to that point.
With his Nogales National Little League All-Stars holding a 6-5 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning of the U.S. Championship game, his closer Dustin Bermudez was nearing the pitch count threshold that would make him unavailable for the World Series Championship the following day.
“One of my coaches asked me, “˜He’s at 19 (pitches), are you gonna take him out?,'” Guerrero said. “(Bermudez) even asked me if he was coming out. No. We gotta win today.”
Bermudez has been a force in relief for the West Region team which has won all three of its games in the tournament. And it was never more evident than Sunday as he worked 2.2 innings of no-hit relief to send the Arizona club to the World Series final.
Bermudez relieved starter Jorge Bojorquez with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the fifth inning with the West leading the East Region 6-4. His third pitch bounced in front of catcher Mario Duarte and went to the backstop, allowing a run and the tying run to reach third. But the 12-year-old right-hander recovered to strike out the next two batters and end the threat.
Bermudez then struck out the side in the sixth and made Guerrero’s decision a no-brainer. In the seventh, he induced a groundout to shortstop before closing out the game with a pair of called strikeouts.
“I was real excited because we were up by one,” Bermudez said of taking the mound for the seventh inning. “I was kind of pressured, but I worked through it.”
Because he’s ineligible to pitch in Monday’s World Series Championship against International champion Puerto Rico, Bermudez’s final pitching numbers for the tournament are two saves in 4.1 innings pitched, no runs, one hit (an infield single), 12 strikeouts and no walks.
The fact that Bermudez even had the chance to take the hill in a closing situation was its own story. The East Region team from Berlin Little League in Maryland looked locked in after posting four runs on four hits in the bottom of the second inning and taking the 4-0 lead into the top of the fourth.
Through the first three innings, Nogales had just two hits off of East starter Tristan McDonough.
“Almost all of our teammates were down, and we tried to pick each other up,” Duarte said of the West’s dugout after those first few innings. “We told each other to look the other way to the opposite field (against McDonough), and stay on that curveball.”
As it turned out, Nogales barely needed to hit the ball out of the infield to start its four-run, game-tying rally in the fourth inning. Aaron Solis was hit by a pitch to lead off, Bojorquez followed by drawing a walk and Duarte delivered an RBI single off the shortstop’s glove in shallow left field. The game-tying hit was pinch-hit two-run double to left center by Luis Andrade.
The West took the lead in the fifth on an RBI single from Paul Carreno and an RBI groundout from Jesus Robles.
Nogales now turns its focus to the other undefeated team of the week, Puerto Rico. The Samaritana Little League All-Stars from San Lorenzo, PR, are a pristine 4-0 and coming off a dramatic 3-2 victory over Latin American (Curacao) in the International Championship.
The game will be nationally broadcast on ESPN2, which should cater nicely to the West’s rabid fan base back home in Nogales, Arizona.
“They’re watching the live stream (on the tournament website) right now,” Guerrero said. “There’s a lot of people following in Nogales. I’m getting text messages from numbers I have never seen.”
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