Chinese Taipei rallied from a 3-0 deficit Wednesday night to beat Washington County 6-4 in the 73rd PONY League World Series championship game. It’s the 12th title for the Asia-Pacific champions. The Hosts built a 3-0 in the middle innings. Kaden Harkins homered in the fourth to open the scoring. Washington County used a walk, Lucas Daniels’ rbi double and a run-scoring single from Luke Henderson. In the bottom of the inning, a pair of errors allowed Chinese Taipei to score four times, taking a lead it never surrendered. A one-out walk, a single and a hit-batter loaded the bases. Zi-Hao Quan’s infield grounder was thrown wide at home allowing one run to score. Zi-Han Yang promptly singled to right, tying the game. Chieh-Yu Sung’s sacrifice fly put Chinese Taipei in front. The eventual winners added a pair of runs in the sixth. Three singles in the seventh for Washington County pulled the locals to within two and brought the potential go-ahead run to the plate before a strikeout and a ground out ended the game. Henderson, Carson Simmers, and Daniels each had two hits, part of Washington County’s 10-hit barrage. Yang was the winning pitcher. Braxten Thompson took the loss despite only allowing one hit over the first four innings and only four through 5.1 innings when he reached PONY’s pitch-count limit for the day.
Award winners
Batting Champion: JJ de los Santos, Corpus Christi
Earned Run Average Award: Jonah Koontz, South Hills
Stolen Base Award: Gavin Stock
John Voytek Memorial Award (Washington County leading hitter): Carson Simmers
PONY Princess: Sydney Baber
PONY Hostess: Piper Roberts
Mike & Pat Ferrari Memorial Scholarship: Cameron Schofield