Winners and ... not losers

 The Little League World Series ended Sunday on a bunt and a wild throw into right field, and as always it was the kid who made the wild throw, and all his teammates, I felt for.

And, no, I can't tell you for sure why that is.

Maybe it's because they're all still kids, and the cynicism of adulthood hasn't worn the shine off 'em yet. They still think the world is a fair place, and that everything will work out in the end. None of them spends a nanosecond considering what it will feel like if they lose, because of course they're not going to lose.

Except someone always does.

And they're 10, 11, 12 years old.

And unless their parents are complete jackwagons (or maybe the knuckle-draggers who mocked Tim Walz' teenage son for crying with pride last week), no one's shamed them yet for shedding tears when the ball sails into right field and it all goes to heck.

When that happened yesterday, and a kid named Lathan Norton from Lake Mary, Fla., wheeled around third and stomped on homeplate with the winning run, it wasn't the smiles and laughter and jumping up and down of the winners that hit different for me. It hardly ever is.

It was the catcher from Chinese Taipei, still geared up, his face contorted. 

It was second baseman crumpled in the infield dust, inconsolable.

It was all of them turning on the waterworks because it had been RIGHT THERE, it had been SO CLOSE, and how could it have eluded their grasp?

So the tears came, and that was a good thing, a natural thing. Because Chinese Taipei had been right there. It had been so close. 

Those kids, they led the championship game 1-0 after an inning. They led 1-0 after two, three, four, five innings. They led even though Florida had a runner on third in three different innings, and the Taipei kids wouldn't let him come home three times.

And then it was the sixth inning, Taipei one out away -- one out! -- and NFlorida kid named DeMarcos Mieses, who had struck out twice already, stroked one into shallow left, and a kid named Chase Anderson raced home, and it was on to extra innings.

Bottom of the eighth, Lathan Norton on second, the bunt rolling, rolling ...

Well. Already told you what happened next.

We all know how it works in sports: There are winners, and there are losers. Except when there's not.

Those young men from Lake Mary, smiling and shouting and living the best moment of their just-getting-started lives?

They were your winners Sunday, 2-1 in eight innings.

And the young men from Chinese Taipei, scrubbing away the tears that came because, well, tears were entirely appropriate to the occasion?

They weren't losers. Call 'em something else, if you have to, but never that.