LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL
Roadrunner loses heartbreaker to Whitefish Bay
NM team eliminated from regional stage of LLWS following loss to Wisconsin
From the very beginning, the vibes were decidedly different 鈥 in a good way 鈥 for Roadrunner Little League.
It still wasn鈥檛 quite enough for the New Mexico representative to survive and advance.
Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, rallied from a 3-0 first inning deficit to edge Roadrunner 4-3 in an elimination game at the Junior League Baseball World Series in Taylor, Michigan on Tuesday night. The game-winning run came home on a controversial balk call against pitcher Brycen Rogillio with the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth inning.
鈥淢y frustration is that it wasn't a balk. They said before the tournament started, it has to be deceptive,鈥 said manager Joe Rogillio, who is Brycen鈥檚 father. 鈥淎nd there was nothing about that move that was deceptive in that situation for him to call that balk.
鈥淚 think there were a lot of people that are higher up within Little League that agreed that it was a bad call. And it's just something we have to live with.鈥
Roadrunner had a legitimate chance to tie the game in its final at-bat after Christopher Cybulski worked a two-out walk and stole second base. Then, Ariano Martinez hit a slow roller to the right side of the infield, and Wisconsin first baseman Wyatt Gray couldn鈥檛 handle a diving underhand toss from pitcher Hudson Fox. Cybulski, who had already advanced to third, saw an opportunity to race home.
However, the ball didn鈥檛 land far from first base, so Gray quickly picked it up and gunned down Cybulski at the plate.
鈥淚 sent him in that situation because the first baseman was looking for the ball and because he was pretty erratic,鈥 Joe Rogillio said. 鈥淎t that point, it was worth the risk, I thought, to send a kid and hopefully the ball was thrown away or put in the dirt or the catcher couldn't handle it. So just playing percentages at that point, that just didn't go in our favor.鈥
Roadrunner threatened to break the game wide open in the top of the first inning. After three batters walked to load the bases with two outs, Harry Brunton made it 1-0 with an RBI single. An ensuing error and a walk allowed Roadrunner to take an early 3-0 lead.
Brycen Rogillio and Adrian Van Caster, who entered the game after Wisconsin starter Stu Dickerson pitched to just five batters, engaged in a pitcher鈥檚 duel for the next few innings. Brycen Rogillio cruised until a grueling fifth stanza, where he allowed a single, double, two walks and a hit by pitch. The Roadrunner hurler also had two balks in the frame, the second of which brought home the aforementioned decisive run. He did manage to get out of the inning after allowing three runs, ending his night at a whopping 100 pitches 鈥 a significant workload at any level.
Van Caster, meanwhile, pitched a gem after entering in the first inning. He allowed just four hits over six innings before giving way to Fox for the final out.
While Roadrunner didn鈥檛 advance as far as it might have hoped, the team still made history as just the third New Mexico team to make it past Southwest Regionals in Little League at any level in the past 70 years.
鈥淢y biggest thing is how far these kids have gone and the history they made for themselves and for their families and their futures and something they can tell their grandkids about,鈥 Joe Rogillio said. (That ) is something that's special to me because they worked their tail off and we beat a lot of great teams along the way to get where we were.鈥