When Lake Charles, La., scored two runs in the bottom of the fifth inning on Aug. 23 to take a 5-1 lead on Waipi'o in the Little League World Series U.S. Championship game, hundreds of fans in the announced crowd of 28,500 at historic Lamade Stadium started to make their way to the exits.

But not 12-year-old Luke Wallace of Uniontown, Pa., and his two buddies, Charles Calabrese, 12, and Joey Superick, 14. Sitting near the top of a grassy hill beyond the center field fence, the three young baseball fans saw an opening down below as others headed for their cars.

"Everybody started to get out of their seats," said Wallace, whose father, Dan, drove the group about four hours to watch the game in South Williamsport, Pa. "That's how we got down there. I was cheering for both teams in the beginning, but in the sixth inning I was cheering for Hawai'i, because I wanted to see them come back."

The three Uniontown boys — along with thousands who did stick around Lamade Stadium and TV viewers across the nation who stayed tuned to ABC — were rewarded with what is now being called one of the greatest comebacks in 61 years of LLWS history.

Waipi'o stunned Lake Charles by scoring six runs on six hits, one walk and an error. By the time the inning finally ended after a pop-up to second by the 12th batter, the 5-1 deficit turned into a 7-5 lead, and Waipi'o had just about cemented its place in youth baseball lore.

SURPRISE MOVE

The game's turning point actually came in the Lake Charles dugout during the two-minute commercial break after the bottom of the fifth. That's when Lake Charles manager Charlie Phillips decided to move starting pitcher Trey Quinn to center field and call on left-hander Gunner Leger to come on in relief.

Quinn, a hard-throwing 5-foot-11, 154-pound right-hander who had limited Waipi'o to just one run on four hits in the previous five innings, was three pitches under the Little League limit of 85 and would have been allowed to face at least one more batter.

But Phillips said the pitch count was not a factor in his decision to take Quinn off the mound.

"It was time for Trey to come out," Phillips said during the post-game interview session. "You could tell the previous inning he was leaving some balls up and in, and based upon his history and his pitch count, it was time to make the move. There's no hindsight here."

Waipi'o manager Timo Donahue, however, fully expected Quinn to face Tanner Tokunaga to lead off the inning. So during the break, Donahue instructed Tokunaga to take at least two pitches.

"(Quinn) had owned Tanner," said Donahue, noting Tokunaga struck out in his previous two at-bats. "If he swung at the first or second pitch and got out, now Trey can face another guy (pitchers can finish the at-bat even after the 85th pitch). We didn't want that; we needed to get him out of there. So I told Tanner we might need him to sacrifice for the team."

But when Lake Charles took the field, Tokunaga saw Quinn run to centerfield and Leger go to the mound, and he called out to Donahue from the on-deck circle.

"He said, 'Another guy is pitching,' so I told him I'd take off the ('take') sign," said Donahue, who was in the dugout telling the rest of the team, "You've worked too hard to hang your heads now. Keep your head up."

'PA-LI-KU! PA-LI-KU!'

Tokunaga hit a 3-1 pitch to left field for a single, bringing up Pikai Winchester, who had been Waipi'o's hottest hitter throughout the Series.

The Hawai'i cheering section of about 50 family members above the Waipi'o dugout was on its feet, chanting "Pa-li-ku! Pa-li-ku!" in reference to Winchester's 5-year-old brother, Paliku, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in February and has been undergoing chemotherapy treatments since then on O'ahu.

Winchester hit a line drive double that bounced over the left-field fence and under a chain-link gate on the hill where the three Uniontown boys were sitting. The ball ricocheted off Wallace, and Calabrese chased it down.

Calabrese might have been a fitting recipient of the souvenir, considering he had tabbed Waipi'o as his favorite team when the Series began on Aug. 15.

"I was thinking they could pull (the comeback) off, because they're a very good team, very well-rounded," said Calabrese, who even wore a Hawai'i hat when he left the house Saturday morning. "They're so good, I knew they could come back at any time."

MOMENTUM SHIFTS

With Tokunaga at third and Winchester on second, Iolana Akau hit a ground single to center to score Tokunaga. A groundout to second by Khade Paris then brought home Winchester to make it 5-3, and Caleb Duhay followed with an RBI single to center to score Akau and close it to 5-4. Jedd Andrade then hit another single to left, and after a strikeout, Keelen Obedoza walked to load the bases for leadoff batter Christian "C-boy" Donahue.

Leger was then sent to first base and replaced on the mound by right-hander Peyton McLemore.

On a 2-2 pitch, Donahue hit a grounder to first which was mishandled by Leger, who spun around to frantically look for the ball that was sitting right at his feet. Donahue was able to reach safely as Duhay crossed the plate with the tying run.

"When I saw (Leger) bobble the ball, I just started running harder," said the diminutive Donahue, who celebrated by jumping on the bag and repeatedly pumping his fist.

Meanwhile, the crowd at Lamade Stadium, which had been mostly subdued when the inning began, now was energized and electric again.

"Honestly, I didn't think (Waipi'o) could come back from being down 5-1, but when they started that rally you could see they had the momentum," said Superick, the oldest of the Uniontown boys. "Everybody was getting really excited."

BUZZ OF THE TOWN

That brought up Tokunaga again, and this time he ripped the first pitch into the left-center alley for a two-run double to put Waipi'o up, 7-5.

"I was just thinking, 'Get a solid hit,' " said Tokunaga.

McLemore finally got a pop-up to second to end the inning, but reliever Trevor Ling — facing Lake Charles' top three in the lineup — retired the side in order in the bottom half to set off a jubilant on-field celebration.

A day later, Waipi'o's stunning rally was still the buzz of conversation at Lamade Stadium as the overall championship game against Mexico approached.

"I've been coming to Williamsport since 1990," ABC play-by-play announcer Brent Musberger told a network TV audience at the top of the telecast. "It was the greatest comeback in a championship game that I've ever witnessed in Little League."

It was something 12-year-old boys from Uniontown, Pa., to Waipahu, Hawai'i will remember the rest of their lives.