Utah baseball team is one game away from the Little League World Series after walk-off win

There were two outs in a tie game. The bases were loaded in the final half-inning of a playoff game. Just like practically every dramatic baseball movie ever made.

And Colton Gainey of Snow Canyon Little League delivered.

Gainey’s base hit at the bottom of the sixth inning gave the Allstars a 5-4 walk-off win over Nevada in the semifinals of the Mountain Region Tournament. The win advanced the team from Santa Clara to the championship game at 3 p.m. on Friday on ESPN.

“Pretty surreal. Crazy ending,” manager Mark Ence said late Tuesday. “The whole team battled until the very end. They never gave up.”

A win Friday puts Snow Canyon into the main bracket of the Little League World Series, which starts on Aug. 17 in Williamsport, Penn. No team from Utah has ever played on that stage.

The Allstars await the winner of Montana vs. Nevada, who will play Thursday.

On Wednesday afternoon, Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell congratulated the Allstars on the win via his Twitter page.

“Shoutout to Snow Canyon Little League!!,” Mitchell wrote on Twitter. “I always wanted to play in the Little League World Series [two double exclamation point emojis]. This is dope [two fire emojis].”

Snow Canyon Little League beat Wyoming in a comeback 7-4 win Sunday to advance to the semifinal round.

The Mountain Region is one of two new regions — Metro is the other — in the larger Little League World Series landscape. The tournament expanded to 20 teams starting this year.

Ence said early Tuesday that once the new Mountain Region was formed, he felt confident his team could compete against the other three teams in it.