Hawaii's Pearl City Senior League All-Stars came home as world champions after losing their opening game and winning out from there — a feel-good story for the islands.

• The team flew 4,500 miles to the mainland, lost game one, then ran the table and beat Curacao in the title game.
• Same pattern as regionals, where they dropped the first game and won six straight.
• The players have grown up together since they were kids, including a 2023 World Series run, and credit that bond for the comeback.
• They brought kendama, the Japanese ball-and-cup game popular in Hawaii, and taught it to teams from other countries between games.

Outlook: The core group stays together, and the confidence from this title is the kind that follows players well past baseball.