Little League World Series All-Star Ty McKenzie is playing with a broken arm

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Ty McKenzie II left the 2023 Little League World Series with a broken heart — and a broken left arm.

On Wednesday night, during the top of the fourth inning of Southeast Region champion Nolensville’s game against El Segundo, California, McKenzie was hit in the left arm by a 70-plus mph pitch. ESPN cameras caught him falling to the ground, writhing in pain.

However, he took first base.

He stayed in the game for the next half inning, taking his place at second base. Then, before being diagnosed with a broken left arm, McKenzie made a diving catch to cap California’s rally and end the inning.

He caught a screaming line drive while wearing a glove hand attached to a broken arm, which he didn’t know was broken until nearly six hours later, when he was X-rayed nearby. hospital. He made the play after Nolensville manager Randy Huth visited the mound, rallied his team around him and said he needed “diving bodies.”

Still in his black and yellow Southeast Region cap, McKenzie wore a white cast and a black sling that held up his left arm in a picture his father sent during a text exchange with in The Tennessean.

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“Broken,” his father wrote. “We just got back to the hotel.”

It’s 2:36 a.m. Eastern.

The experience informed Ty McKenzie as a father back in 2012, when he broke his scapula in a game against the Green Bay Packers. He reminded his son of that play, when he tried to tackle a ballcarrier, on Wednesday night.

“I told him there was nothing to stay in the game, fighting through the pain to try to help his team win a game,” texted the elder McKenzie.

This wasn’t the first highlight-reel-worthy play of the game for Ty McKenzie II. Earlier he threw out a runner at first from his knees after diving for a groundball while playing third base.

Ty McKenzie is the father, the man who works the overnight shift behind the front desk of a college hotel – whose father died of colon cancer when he was just 9 years old, who can’t see his son play. football – hurt for his own son. The man who put his NFL coaching career on hold is here right now, beaming.