Palo Alto's Walk-off Championship Win

Dec. 2, 2018. EvergreenLL, San Jose.

Kanghee Cho got the hit of his young career yesterday with a double, driving in 2 runs for a walk- off victory securing the D59 Fall Ball 5070 Championship against host Evergreen Little League in west San Jose. The abbreviated and twice-postponed Tournament turned into a one-day affair due to the recent rain and bad air quality from the Camp Fire. The normal 2 day event in early November switched to a single elimination 2 game series for the PA18 5070 team. The shorter December daylight meant a 2 hour limit for each game placing a premium on pitching.

Joshua Kao met the challenge in the first game, striking out 12 Centerville National batters, allowing only 3 earned runs over 5.2 innings of magnificent pitching. The dominant right-hander posted 1.06 WHIP walking only one batter with 14 first pitch strikes while limiting the opposition to 5 hits. Still, it was PA up 5-3 until the bottom of the fourth when PA exploded for more 4 runs which included 5 back-to-back singles by Pablo Schettino, Gus Soedarmono, Oscar Anderson, Joshua Kao, and Ryan Kim. Schettino and Kim led the offense, each going 2 for 3 and gathering 2 and 3 RBI’s respectively. Aydan See and Neel Sharma both had key singles that topped off an 11-5 PA victory. Bennet Quo and Kim shared the biggest hits of the game with doubles, getting Quo his 2 RBI’s.

Host Evergreen had the bye and only had to beat PA for the Tournament Championship in the 2nd game of the day, but PA sent their entire order to bat in the bottom of the first to jump ahead 5-0. Chase Veerbek, Kim, and Cho all had multiple hits. But PA’s offense sputtered in the middle innings and Evergreen battled back down by the score of 8-3 at the end of 3 innings. PA’s starting pitcher, Gus Soedarmono pitched courageously for 3.1 innings, allowing only 4 hits and getting 4 strikeouts. Amazing Pablo Schettino who had been out for a month (volleyball injury), had the catch of the day tracking down a deep fly ball in center preventing further damage. But Evergreen came blasting back with 5 hits in the top of 4th, scoring 4 runs to narrow the score to 8-7. PA left fielder Oscar Anderson threw a perfect rocket to catcher Cho getting an Evergreen runner out at the plate and ending the Evergreen onslaught. The top of the fifth saw PA make 2 uncharacteristic defensive errors by shortstop Kim and Quo who came in to pitch. After 2 walks, Quo threw errantly to 3rd trying to pickoff an Evergreen runner, allowing a run to score. It was the only run allowed by the resilient Quo who closed out the seemingly disastrous inning with Evergreen up 9-8.

But baseball is a game of highs and lows and with time running out; the bottom of the fifth had both Kim and Quo due up. Kao led off with a walk and later stole 2nd. An unfazed Kim redeemed himself with a line drive single scoring Kao and tying the game. Quo followed suit with a walk and that brought Cho up to the plate. On a 2-0 pitch, he drove a middle-outside strike to the opposite field, down the right foul line driving in both Kim and Quo. “Kanghee is one of our hardest workers, he practices at 200% effort all the time. We were missing our two top hitters (Jonathan Yang and Sawyer Michelsen) and he earned the move up to the '3' spot,” commented PA manager Craig Yanagisawa who was helped by coaches Frank Kao and Eric Anderson.

The Palo Alto 5070 Fall Ball team ended up going undefeated this season with a final record of 11-0, including a win against Menlo Park’s undefeated D52’s Juniors FB team.