Post Oak Little League Loses in Most Heartbreaking Way Possible, But Their Incredible Fighting Spirit Still Comes Through: Home Run Hero Typifies Team’s Magical Williamsport Ride

Sometimes, you just run out of outs. Sometimes, no matter how hard you fight, no matter how much you care, no matter how much you pull together, the ending’s anything but the dream.

Sometimes, even those Astros rainbow jerseys are not enough. Even oversized hearts don’t always win.

Post Oak Little League’s run in Williamsport is over, done in by a 7-6 extra innings loss to Georgia, by a topsy turvy epic of a Little League World Series game that neither of these battling teams deserved to lose. The team that everyone from Houston seemed to be pulling for — the Astros watched Post Oak’s game in the visitors clubhouse in Seattle before having to take the field themselves — is out of the tournament.

But their story is certainly not over.

If anything, these Post Oak kids made even more fans with the way they played under the pressure of an elimination game Monday night.

There is Ryan Selvaggi — the 12-year-old who lost his mom to cancer at age 7 and found a community willing to surround him in love — going 4-for-4 with a two-run rocket blast over the centerfield wall, a triple and two singles in Post Oak’s biggest game of all. There is Matthew Hedrick tripling with two outs in the top of the sixth and scoring moments later to push Post Oak’s advantage to 5-2. There is catcher Andy Guy, the hidden key to so much of this, driving a ball deep enough to score Selvaggi and give Post Oak the lead back in the top of the eighth inning.

There is Kaleb Rook, the surprise starting pitcher, striking out Georgia’s best hitter to get out of a bases loaded jam in the bottom of the second inning, keeping a determined, talented opposing lineup at bay again and again.

It’s never easy to be the manager’s son in Little League, but Kaleb certainly made his manager dad proud.

And there is Carter Pitts twisting himself into a pretzel, almost completely contorting his body, in an attempt to make a catch on an infield pop up in something of no man’s land. Pitts’ supreme effort leaves the ESPN commentators buzzing — and in many ways it typifies this special Post Oak team.

This team of 12 and 13-year-olds always played beyond hard, always stretched for that extra effort. That is how you become the first team in the 62-year history of Post Oak Little League to ever make the Little League World Series.

And you thought the Astros overcame a long drought last fall?

A Special Post Oak Team

Post Oak came within one strike of winning this game and advancing on twice. They were so close, they could see the crazy postgame celebration.

But baseball can be a cruel game sometimes. Even after they lost the lead in the bottom of the sixth — the last regulation inning of a Little League game — the Post Oak battlers came back and took the lead again in extra innings.

They never hung their heads. They never felt sorry for themselves. They just kept fighting.

There is still something more than a little unnatural about ESPN televising all these Little League games — and putting kids barely old enough to be in middle school under such unforgiving spotlight pressure. I covered MLB star Todd Frazier’s New Jersey Little League team in Williamsport for two summers another lifetime ago and I can still remember how absolutely devastated the losing starting pitcher was after that team failed to repeat.

Somehow, this Post Oak Little League team never seemed to forget it was just a game. Somehow, they always appeared to remember to have fun as they scraped to advance.

But sometimes, the other team is full of battlers too.

“Amazing. I can’t believe what we did to win this game,” Georgia’s Jansen Kenty, who blasted a two-run homer to center to tie the game at 5-5 and force extra innings after falling into a 0-2 count, tells the ESPN cameras afterwards. “Best game of my life.”

Once you’re in extra innings, the home team holds a major advantage. Peachtree City Georgia happened to be the home team for this elimination game. Peachtree walked it off in the bottom of the ninth — the third extra inning. Post Oak would never have a chance to battle back again.

The Little League game that never seemed like it would end finally did at 11:03 p.m. local time in Williamsport. It would end with every but of Post Oak heart left out there on that field.

Sometimes, you just don’t get the happy ending. At least not in the conventional sense.

Somehow, these Post Oak players still seem to get it, though.

“I bet we’ll remember it fondly,” Kaleb Rook says in the official Little League postgame press conference, sitting next to his dad. “I bet everybody’s really sad right now. But we’re all probably going to look back on this and think it’s really cool.”

It certainly was. What a ride. What a team. What a group of kids. Sometimes, it’s about much more than just the ending.