{"id":890554,"date":"2026-10-22T08:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T08:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890554\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T08:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T08:30:11","slug":"manatee-county-slugger-benny-banta-qualifies-for-mlb-pitch-hit-run-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890554\/","title":{"rendered":"Manatee County slugger Benny Banta qualifies for MLB Pitch, Hit &#038; Run Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; Whether the Rays win or lose, one Manatee County boy is already World Series-bound.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Benjamin Banta, who goes by Benny, has qualified for MLB\u2019s Pitch, Hit &amp; Run National Finals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to his dad, Benny won the local competition in St. Petersburg, then advanced to compete at Tropicana Field \u2014 where his score placed him among the top five in his division across all 30 MLB stadium competitions nationwide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">His invitation includes an all-expenses-paid trip for him and one guardian Oct. 23-25, when he\u2019ll compete for the national title.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Benny plays travel baseball for Bay Area Pro in Manatee County.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Good luck, Benny!<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WWSB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; Whether the Rays win or lose, one Manatee County boy is already World&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[346774,14533,363,99,19632],"class_list":["post-890554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-local-star","tag-manatee-county","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-world-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}