BANGOR- The Clear Ridge Little League from Chicago, Illinois continued their solid play on Tuesday evening and advanced to the semifinal round of the Senior League World Series by routing the Roberto Clemente Little League from Carolina, Puerto Rico 11-1 in a mercy rule shortened game at Shawn T. Mansfield Stadium.
Clear Ridge had three hits and took advantage of a Puerto Rico error in the bottom of the first to take a quick 4-0 lead and never looked back.
“My team came into this game without any focus. There is going to be no easy games. We had a very bad first inning and my team never recovered”, said Puerto Rico manager Pedro Cabrera after the game.
Puerto Rico did cut the lead to 4-1 in the top of the third on an RBI double by Ulises Ramirez, but Clear Ridge got RBI hits from Paolo Zavola, Joe Trezek and Zach Verta in the bottom of the fourth to put the game out of reach at 7-1.
Clear Ridge ended the game on a pair of two run singles from Tim Malloy and Dave Navarro.
Verta got the win on the mound allowing just one run, none earned, three hits, one walk and had five strikeouts in four innings. Josue Ortiz suffered the loss for Latin America allowing five runs, two earned, four walks and one strikeout in 3.2 innings thrown.
Verta who is 5-7 at the plate this tournament and has reached base 10 out of 12 times with five hits, five walks and four RBI said, “I just look for a good pitch to hit and if it isn’t good then I am doing a good job of not swinging and throwing the bat away”. Clear Ridge manager Mark Robinson on the teams 10 runs per game average said, “They can score with the best of them and this is nothing new. They can score in bunches. It’s kinda what I expect from them depending on when they wanna do it. It’s like they have a button they push and boom they score a bunch of runs”.
Clear Ridge now awaits their opponent in the 5 pm semifinal on Thursday while Puerto Rico will play Melbourne, Australia in an elimination game on Wednesday evening.
Latin Am. 0 0 1 0 0- 1 3 3
US Central 4 0 0 3 4- 11 10 1
WP- Verta LP- Ortiz
LOB- Latin America 3, US Central 8
