Aug 11, 2024 By Chris Dugan 3 min read

The thing you have to like about Mon Valley’s Zach Plymire is his sense of timing.

Plymire hit a tiebreaking two-run homer in the top of the seventh inning, and teammate Jack Crovak followed with a solo homer as Mon Valley rallied for a wild 7-4 win over Long Beach, Calif., in an elimination game Sunday at the Pony League World Series.

In another elimination contest, Bay County, Mich., defeated Gijon, Spain, 5-3.

Mon Valley had terrific pitching for six innings and a walk-on-the-wild-side experience in the other inning — the third — that put Long Beach on top 4-0. The West Zone champion scored four times without the benefit of a hit, using five walks and two hit batsmen.

Mon Valley started its comeback with two runs in the fourth and two more in the sixth that tied the score.

Jesse Sobczak led off the seventh with a single. Two batters later, Plymire drove a 3-2 pitch from reliever Ty Gallo – the sixth Long Beach pitcher of the game – onto the ground crew’s deck beyond the left centerfield wall.

“I’ve hit only two home runs all year,” Plymire said, “and both of them were hit on this field, both were tiebreaking home runs and both were hit to the same place.”

The Long Beach pitching staff had been working Plymire away the entire game.

“I was waiting for my pitch,” Plymire said. “They were pitching me outside and I was waiting for him to miss with something over the plate.”

When the pitch from Gallo sailed over the plate, Plymire didn’t miss it. Neither did Crovak, who gave Mon Valley back-to-back homers with a shot to left field for a 7-4 lead.

Mon Valley manager Jason Plymire said he wasn’t worried when his team fell behind early because it wasn’t striking out, instead hitting hard outs.

“We were barreling balls,” the manager said. “This was different than our game against (Plainview) Texas. We had better approaches. I said, ‘Guys, have faith in the approach, we’re just getting unlucky. They are going to start to fall and we’ll make things happen.'”

Zach Plymire was the winning pitcher, tossing 4 2/3 scoreless innings with one hit. He struck out four and said one of the turning points of the game was when he was called out on strikes to end a Mon Valley threat in the fifth.

“I went to the mound, threw a couple of pitches hard, got my anger out and then refocused,” he explained.

Cam Matusik had an RBI single and Kennedy Nash added a sacrifice fly in the fourth that made it 4-2. In the sixth, Demaris Tolliver had a run-scoring single and Braylon Schoch’s groundout scored Nash from third base and tied the score at 4-4.

Mon Valley will play Plainview in a rematch Monday at 10 a.m.

Bay County, 5-3

Brody Kuhn hit a tiebreaking two-run single in the bottom of the fifth inning and Bay County eliminated Gijon, Spain, 5-3.

Winning pitcher Brenner Gansser and Kuhn combined on a four-hitter.

Gijon tied the score at 3-3 when Alex Morales hit a three-run homer in the top of the fifth.

In the bottom of the fifth, a double, walk and single loaded the bases, setting up Kuhn’s two-run hit.

Bay County will face Washington County in another elimination game at 12:30 p.m. Monday.