TAYLOR — It was the penultimate day of the 44th Junior League Baseball World Series on Saturday at Heritage Park in Taylor.
In the U.S. championship game, it was a rematch between Taylor North Little League battling their counterparts from La Mirada, California. The two clubs squared off earlier in the week on Wednesday with the West Region representatives holding on for a 4-2 win over the local hosts.
The hometown all-stars put up a good battle early and throughout a majority of the contest, but the visitors from southern California pulled away for an eventual 16-0 win.
The win for Califorina marks the first U.S. championship for a West Region team at the JLWS since 2019 when a team from Fullerton took home the world title. It’s also the second time that La Mirada LL has reached the grand finals and the first since 2003, when they won the whole thing.
Though Saturday’s game got away from his team in terms of the final score, Taylor North manager Tommy Stubbe expressed a lot of pride for his group.
“There is not another team I would rather take the field with, any day of the week,” Stubbe said. “These guys really battled. The score is not indicative of what it really was. Hats off to (California pitcher Jayden Valdez), he threw the ball well.
“We were able to put the bat on the ball a little bit, just didn’t go where it needed to go.”
For the second straight game, Taylor North fell behind early before even getting a chance to bat.
In fact, California loaded the bases with nobody out to begin the contest but, fortunately for the hosts at the time, only settled for one run on a sacrifice flyout.
However, unlike their eventual 10-4 win vs Wisconsin on Thursday, the locals this time around could not respond. A big reason for that was the aforementioned Jayden Valdez.
Blake Greear allowed three runs on eight hits over 3.2 innings for Taylor North in what was a 16-0 loss vs California in the U.S. championship game of the Junior League Baseball World Series on Aug 15, 2026. (ALEXANDER MULLER — MediaNews Group)
The starting hurler for La Mirada pitched into the seventh inning, allowing just one run and three walks with nine strikeouts over 6.1 innings of work.
“(Valdez) did a fantastic job,” Stubbe said. “He did a good job of mixing things up and keeping us off balance. Hats off to that young man. It just wasn’t our night.”
Despite their offensive woes throughout the night, Taylor North was very much still in the game late.
California scratched across single runs in both the third and fourth innings. The latter of those chased Taylor North starter Blake Greear from mound.
Greear ended up going 3.2 innings, scattering eight hits as well as one free pass.
“Blake was a little down on himself early,” Stubbe said. “I kept telling him, ‘you’re still throwing a good ball.’ It was just a couple of bonehead mistakes. And even then, we were still playing good ball.”
That 3-0 score remained true heading into the seventh inning. That is when California opened things up considerably, exploding for 13 runs and doing so incredibly on just a handful of hits. The biggest of those knocks was a grand slam from Jerimiah Ortega, which was his second homer of the evening.
California finished with 13 total hits versus just one for Taylor North.
“These boys came in hungry,” Stubbe said. “I knew they would be ready. Then some things don’t go your way, and it was hard to get them re-motivated. They’d get up and then would get down. And then in that seventh inning, it just completely crumbled.”
California will now advance to the 21st and final game of this week’s Junior League Baseball World Series — that being the world championship game — which takes place at 12 p.m. on Sunday, Aug 16.
California players celebrate after Jerimiah Ortega (6) clubs a home run in the U.S. championship game vs Taylor North at the Juniot League Baseball World Series on Aug 15, 2026. (ALEXANDER MULLER — MediaNews Group)
La Mirada will square off with Chinese Taipei, which has won four consecutive and 10 of the last 11 JLWS titles. Taipei has won all three of its games in this year’s tournament by a combined score of 20-0.
As for Taylor North, the loss wraps up what was a busy week of baseball. It’s the third time in four years that the program has reached at least the U.S. final of the tournament. The five total games also ties the most played by a host team, matching the 2024 squad.
“Taylor North is the best little league in the world,” Stubbe said. “If anybody says otherwise, come up here on a Saturday during the season, or just throughout the year. It’s a real family, and I would not want to be part of any other family.”
Stubbe talked about the continued support from the city throughout the week during the team’s run. This was the fifth consecutive year that Taylor North has represented Michigan District No. 5 at the JLWS.
“It means we’re doing something right here,” Stubbe said. “These boys deserved all that support. It was really great to see. Even our opponents were saying how electric it was out here.
“You want to come away with it, but that’s baseball.”