Mystic’s run in Little League baseball tourney comes to an end

Killingworth — It didn't feel right, this idea that a team could win nine straight games across two baseball tournaments and still face elimination in one night. Yet that's what befell Mystic Little League this week. Mystic, which cut a swath through the district and won its first two games of the sectional, faced one-loss Madison, which Mystic defeated two days earlier, in a Little League-deemed winner-take-all game beginning Monday night. The winners took it all, too. It wasn't Mystic. Madison had to wait two days because of bad weather, but eliminated Mystic 6-3 Wednesday night in the Section 3 title game.

Madison took a 6-0 lead Monday night before heavy rain suspended the game in the fourth. More rain postponed the game Tuesday, thus making Madison wait 48 hours to clinch.

“I told the kids at the end that they showed loads of resilience,” Mystic coach Jeff Joyce said. “Fought till the very end. They believed they could win all the way till the last out was recorded. That's all we asked for the last few days. I'm almost as proud of them for the way they finished and lost. A character thing. Character isn't built by playing sports. It's revealed. We saw 13 kids who have some impeccable character. I'm proud of them.”

Not without a fight

Mystic scored three runs in the sixth inning, thanks to an RBI double from Trace Morales and an RBI single from Griffin Pollard. Mystic was a batter away from sending the tying run to the plate.

It wasn't an easy week for a team that hadn't lost yet in the postseason, suddenly facing a large deficit and elimination.

“It was a little existential Monday night,” Joyce said. “We went through our stages of grief before they flushed it. We got to Tuesday and we had to build the kids back up. Still had three

more innings to play. We held little pep rally for them (Tuesday) night and told they could win this game.

“I'm not so convinced if there wasn't one more inning we wouldn't have won. There was a lot of soul searching and challenging them the last few days. I was proud of the way the kids were able to move through the embarrassment of Monday and finish with dignity and class today.” m.dimauro@theday.com