SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- Zach Zwieg will mark Aug. 26, 2001 as a day he will never forget, for many reasons.

He got to scratch "Meeting President Bush" off his to-do list. He also hit a single and made a stellar defensive stop with his idol in the seats. How many 12-year-old kids can say they did that, let alone even have the opportunity to do so?

	Safe! Yuusuke Nomura's dive beat Stuart Tapley's throw to score the winning run.

Maybe it was wet grass. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was the heat of the moment, but after the sixth inning of Sunday's Little League World Series championship game, the two phrases Zwieg will hear in his head repeatedly over the next few weeks will be, "E-5," and "Poor kid."

The first two Japanese hitters of the inning, Masayuki Itoh and Yuusuke Nomura, reached on soft grounders that the normally sure-handed Zwieg misplayed. They later scored on Nobuhisa Baba's line drive single to give Japan a 2-1 victory and his country's second LLWS championship in three years.

"Zach Zwieg has won more games for us with his glove than he's lost," said Apopka manager Bob Brewer, who ends the summer tournaments with a 22-4 record. "I told the boy that one person doesn't win a game and one person doesn't lose.

"We lost the game."

Apopka lost by abandoning the fundamentally sound baseball that got the team to that point.

The "Big Potatoes" (nickname derived from the Native American word "apopka," which means, "big potato") committed a number of errors in the inning: mentally, physically, offensively and defensively. Zwieg's miscues were the most noticeable, thus compounding the other blunders.

In the top half of the inning, right fielder Jeff Lovejoy led off by ripping a double down the left field line. Two batters later, Tyler Scanlon, who hit the no-doubter that iced Saturday's U.S. championship against the Bronx, hit a sharp ground ball to the right of shortstop Takaaki Ohno. Ohno made an "Oh yes!" play, diving to snag the grounder.

Lovejoy broke from the bag early and got hung up between short and third, where Ohno eventually tagged him, killing Apopka's bid for an insurance run, and caused Florida fans to cry, "Oh no."

When Zwieg fumbled Itoh's tapper and then biffed the following ground ball from Nomura, a pall seemed to cast over the crowd.

"Ever since we came here, our intentions were to win," said Kiichiro Kubo, coach of the new champions, through interpreter Bill Lundy. "Our plan going into the inning was to get one run. The errors made it easier for us."

The runners advanced on Atsushi Mochizuki's bouncer to pitcher Justin Lafavers. Those who stuck around for Saturday's International final knew of Mochizuki's power and sense of drama, and were glad he didn't hit another "Sayonara" home run.

Baba was 1-for-2 on the night and 4-for-14 in the LLWS to that point, so it didn't come as a surprise to see Lafavers pitch to him rather than intentionally walk him to load the bases and set up the force play.

But Baba promptly hit a screaming liner off the glove of Stuart Tapley at short, who dived for it and deflected the ball into left field. Itoh scored easily, and Nomura was sent home. The ensuing throw from Tapley would have beaten Nomura to the plate, but Lafavers inexplicably cut it off and the run scored.

Just like that, game over, series over. Dreams of the first U.S. title in three years, over.

"I thought for sure I would get a hit that time at bat," said Baba. "I was expecting a fastball, but it came in as a curveball. I had good timing."

Apopka, Fla., may have thought it was the better team, but in the final inning of the final game of the Little League World Series, it wasn't.

Will Weiss is an assistant editor at ABC Sports Online.