Wild strategy sends Little League team to the finals, a breakdown

Winner of this match goes to the Little League World Series final and Curacao is going to use a pretty rare strategy to get themselves there. This one's brought to you by SeatGeek. You've got strike one and then ball one. We're in the third inning. Swung at that one, strike two, then swings at that breaking ball that was way away. It's a strikeout, but it's actually their first base runner of the inning. Tough break for the pitcher. The fans, they enjoy it. They celebrate by sliding down the hill on the cardboard. Now, that's just what they do there. Little League World Series, great time. He's thinking, I struck that guy out. I struck that guy out. Now, Curacao says, that was a bad swing. Let's not swing anymore. Let's just bunt. Bunts that one foul, which is great because now Japan knows. They got the wheel play in motion. There, you see the corners crash. The middle infielders rotate. Pitcher says two strikes. Great. They're not going to bunt. Oh, my God, he's bunting on two strikes. That's ball. And they're going to show bunt again, two strikes. If he bunts it foul, he's out. Instead, he gets it down. The throw isn't made. It dribbles to center field. The pitcher has to cover third base. They throw it away again. And there's the first run of the game. It came on a strikeout and a bunt. And that is how Curacao takes the lead. The crowd absolutely loves it. The coach of Team Japan is like, hey, guys, if they bunt, just get them out because I think they're going to keep bunting. And the coach of Curacao is like, yeah, right, we're going to keep bunting. That one goes foul. But why not? You got another runner on second base. Bunt him to third. Gets that one down. The pitcher says, I'll take it. Makes himself a nice play there. The bare hand grab fires at the first. But Curacao's clapping too because they got the next runner to third base. He can score on a fly ball. Great play. Bare hand fires it over. All right, here we go. Another batter coming in to bunt. Our third batter in a row trying to lay down a bunt. Takes that one for a ball. They're all playing in. Next pitch. It's down. It's barely going anywhere. He throws it to first. The first baseman caught it. But then the runner ran into his hand. And it popped out. The runner scores. He gets to second base. Three bunts in a row. Two runs scored. Curacao's up. Another runner. Watch this. First baseman crashes, crashes, grabs it, throws it. And at this point right here, if his foot was on the bag, he's out. If he tags him in the leg, he's out. But the ball never was secure. He's like, I got to throw it home. Oh, I don't have the ball. And right there, if his foot stayed on the base, it doesn't. You can see it comes off. Oh, that's a brutal shot. It just comes off just ever so slightly. Scary. Guy charging you down. And then maybe the tag here. Because that foot by the runner's not on the bag. But this knee, bam. A-Rod, Bronson Arroyo. Curacao, Japan. Famous baseball words. The umpires get together. Coach from Japan's like, can you guys talk about that? Maybe something happened that's good for us and bad for them. So the home plate ump says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got it. We got it. He's like, hey, what'd you guys got? What'd you see? And they're like, same as you. And he's like, OK, we all saw the same thing. OK, cool. Now the runner has to go on the outside. In MLB, if this ball hits the runner's back, he'd be called out for obstruction. But I don't know if that's the same in Little League. And then they got the call correct as far as it played out. So kudos to the umpires. They're volunteers doing it for the love of the game. They give a little thumbs up. They say, no, thumbs up by us. It's actually a pretty dang good job by us. So now Curacao has bunted three times in a row. They've scored two runs. They have another runner in scoring position on second base. Are they going to bunt? Yes, they are. Of course they're going to bunt again. And this one gets down. And the first baseman grabs it, fires it, and he misses his target. So now another run is going to score. At least the batter didn't advance to second. But what is going on here? Look at this. It hits the lip of the grass and gets redirected backwards. That might have traveled further, got to the first baseman. Instead, it hits the lip of the grass, then hugs it, takes the turn. And that leads both players being like, I got it. They're kind of racing. Stumble throw. It's wide. Hits the ump in the foot, I think. And another run scores. Oh my god. They're going to bunt again. It's the fifth bunt in the inning. He's shaking the bat. Takes strike one. Too busy shaking the bat. Next one, he gets it down. And nice, clean play by the pitcher. Pitcher's field in his position. He's now recorded both outs. And the strikeout. Oh man, now I feel even more bad for the pitcher. That's five batters that bunted in a row. Is the sixth? Oh no, we're dancing again. That's a ball. And dancing back again. Strike. I mean, if you're going to bunt, you got to bunt that one. And finally, a swing. We're going to bookend the inning with swings. Good piece of hitting, but right into the glove. Should've bunted. The bunting was working. What a straight. They go on to win this game, and then they go on to win the whole thing. Thank you very much to SeatGeek for sponsoring our videos. You can download the SeatGeek app now and use JOMBOY10. That code gets you 10% off. That's 10% off any tickets with promo code JOMBOY10. Thank you very much for tuning in, enjoying the content. We've got a lot more coming. We're buckling down for the pennant race and the postseason. It's going to be fun.