Florida beats Texas 10-7 in Little League World Series semifinal and will face Taiwan for title

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) — Everything seemed to be going Texas’ way.

The Southwest region champ was ahead 4-0 over Florida in the third inning Saturday in the U.S. bracket title game at the Little League World Series. Starting pitcher Julian Hurst hadn’t given up a hit, much less a run, and had beaten the team from Florida last Monday.

Then things got crazy. Three lead changes later, Florida is headed to LLWS championship on Sunday. Luis Calo hit a go-ahead two-run double in the sixth inning as Lake Mary, Florida, beat Boerne, Texas, 10-7 in a semifinal matchup.

“We’ve prepared for this, we’ve worked for this,” manager Jonathan Anderson said. “It’s been our summer.”

Florida, the Southeast region representative, will take on Taiwan, a 4-1 winner over Venezuela, on Sunday afternoon. It will be the first appearance by a Florida team in the title game since 2003, when East Boynton Beach fell to Musashi-Fuchi of Japan, 10-1.

Texas seemed in control after Doc Mogford hit a two-run double past the outstretched glove of Jacob Bibaud, which made it 4-0.

Florida’s comeback started an inning later, when James Feliciano got a pop-up to drop for an RBI single. An inning after that, Teraj Alexander capped a four-run rally when he stole home, giving Florida its first lead of the game, 5-4.

“I saw the catcher was looking into the hill,” Teraj said. “I just started creeping. Then once I thought I had it, like 100%, I just took off.”

After Texas rallied for three runs, Florida came into its final at-bat in the sixth inning down 7-5.

But Jacob Bibaud hit a ground ball that bounced through the infield, bringing in James Feliciano and cutting the lead to 7-6. A sacrifice fly from Liam Morrisey brought in Garrett Rohozen to tie the game.

After Luis smacked his go-ahead hit, Liam — in as a courtesy runner — stole third and went to score when an error left the ball loose down the third base line.

“I know I pushed them hard, and I know I told them that that work would get them to the promised land. And I’m sure they didn’t believe me,” Anderson said. “But here we are, boys, here we are. Job’s not done. We got one more. But boy, are we close.”

Avery Hill is a student in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

Boerne, Texas' Doc Mogford, left, follows through on a double off Lake Mary, Fla.'s James Feliciano, driving in two runs, during the third inning of the United States Championship baseball game at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. Catching is Lake Mary, Fla.'s.'s Landon Bono. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Boerne, Texas' Julian Hurst (15) steals second base on a wild pitch as the ball gets away from Lake Mary, Fla.'s Chase Anderson, left, during the first inning of the United States Championship baseball game at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Boerne, Texas' Doc Mogford stands on second base after driving in two runs with a double off Lake Mary, Fla.'s James Feliciano during the third inning of the United States Championship baseball game at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Lake Mary, Fla.'s James Feliciano collects himself on the mound after giving up a two-run double to Boerne, Texas' Doc Mogford during the third inning of the United States Championship baseball game at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Boerne, Texas' Gray Collins (8) and Julian Hurst (15) score past Lake Mary, Fla.'s Landon Bono, left, on a double by Doc Mogford during the third inning of the United States Championship baseball game at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Boerne, Texas' Julian Hurst delivers during the first inning of the United States Championship baseball game against Lake Mary, Fla., at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Lake Mary, Fla.'s James Feliciano delivers during the first inning of the United States Championship baseball game against Boerne, Texas at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Boerne, Texas' Kaleb Christ (4) grounds out, driving in a run, during the second inning of the United States Championship baseball game against Lake Mary, Fla. at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Lake Mary, Fla.'s Jacob Bibaud dives but cannot catch a fly ball by Boerne, Texas' Doc Mogford during the third inning of the United States Championship baseball game at the Little League World Series tournament in South Williamsport, Pa., Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. Two runs scored on the hit. (AP Photo/Tom E. Puskar)

ROME (AP) — The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem.

“We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin's school of English, told The Associated Press.

What's more, she said, the poem was within the main body of Latin text: "It was extraordinary.”

Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, "Caedmon’s Hymn" appears within some copies of the “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” written in Latin by a monk and saint known as the Venerable Bede. His history is one of the most widely reproduced texts from the Middle Ages, with almost 200 manuscripts, according to Magnanti's colleague Mark Faulkner, an associate professor of medieval literature at Trinity.

He considers Caedmon’s poem to be the start of English literature.

The manuscript he and Magnanti found is one of the oldest, dating from the 9th century. Two earlier copies contain the poem in Old English, but as afterthoughts — translated from Latin and scrawled into the margin or appended but not within the text's main body, according to the researchers.

The discovery sheds light on the English language's wide diffusion, long before what was previously understood, Faulkner said in Rome, where the duo had traveled to view the text in person for the first time.

“Prior to the discovery of the Rome manuscript, the earliest one was from the early 12th century. So this is three centuries earlier than that. And so it attests to the importance that was already being attached to the English in the early 9th century,” Faulkner said.

And it's something of a miracle they uncovered it at all.

Caedmon is said to have composed the poem while working at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire, after guests at a feast began reciting poems, Faulkner said.

“Embarrassed that he didn’t know anything suitable, Caedmon left the feast and went to bed," he said. "A figure then appeared to him in his dreams telling him to sing about creation, which Caedmon miraculously did, producing the nine-line hymn."

Some 1,400 years later, this copy of his poem resurfaced in Rome’s main public library — but not before crossing the Atlantic Ocean at least twice and changing hands even more times.

Monks transcribed this copy of Bede's history in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola, one of the most important transcription centers during the Middle Ages, located near modern-day Modena in northern Italy, according to Valentina Longo, curator of medieval and modern manuscripts at Rome's National Central Library.

In the 17th century, as the abbey's importance declined, its vast collection of manuscripts was shifted to another abbey in Rome, then moved to the Vatican and finally on to a small church.

Along the way, some of the texts went missing, only to emerge in the early 19th century in the possession of famous international collectors, Longo said.

This copy of Bede's history went to renowned English antiquarian Thomas Phillipps. He fell on hard times, selling off bits and pieces of his collection, and Swiss bibliophile Martin Bodmer secured the book. From there, somehow, it arrived in New York City, in the trove of Austrian-born rare bookseller H.P. Kraus during the 20th century.

Italy's culture ministry was scouring the world for the Nonantola abbey's missing manuscripts, snapping them up in auctions and from collectors around the world. It bought the copy of Bede's history from Kraus in 1972, Longo said, and since then the illustrious text has remained in Rome's library — but received scant notice.

Enter Magnanti, who had spent over four years studying Bede’s history and was compiling a catalog of extant copies.

“I knew that the book was listed in the library’s catalog, so I was almost certain that the book was, in fact, still here," she said. “I realized that, because of the very complex history of this book, no Bede scholar had really looked at it. So it had been virtually unstudied."

She emailed the library, which confirmed the book was in its stacks. Three months later, she received digital images of the entire manuscript.

Nupue. sciulun. herga. hefunricaes. puard. metudaes. maechti. and his.

mod geðanc. puerc. puldur. fadur. suæhepundragiaes

ecidrichtin or astalde. he aeristscoop eor dubearnū hefento

hrofe halig. sceppend. ða. middū. geard. moncinnes peard eci

drichtin. aefter. tia de. firū. on foldu. frea. allmechtig.

Now we must praise the guardian of the heavenly kingdom,

the might of the creator and his intention,

the work of the father of glory, in that he of each wonder,

eternal lord, established the beginning.

He first created the earth for men,

heaven as a roof, the holy creator,

then the middle earth, the guardian of mankind,

the eternal lord, afterwards created

for men on earth, the almighty lord.

The library has digitized the entire Nonantolan collection and it is freely accessible through the website, Longo said.

It's part of a massive project by the library to make thousands of rare books and manuscripts available to researchers around the world, according to Andrea Cappa, the library's head of manuscripts and the rare books reading room.

“The discovery made by the experts of Trinity College is just one starting point, a single manuscript that might pave the way for countless other discoveries, in countless other fields, through international cooperation like this,” Cappa said.

—

An earlier version of the story mistakenly quoted Elisabetta Magnanti as saying that “no big scholar had really looked” at the book before. She said “no Bede scholar had really looked at it”.

The 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is seen at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

A rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is visible in the five lines above the final line of a page from an 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

From left, Elisabetta Magnanti, Mark Faulkner of Dublin's Trinity College, Andrea Cappa and Valentina Longo of Rome's National Central Library examine a manuscript containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

From left, Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner from Dublin's Trinity College and Valentina Longo of Rome's National Central Library look at a manuscript containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn, the first poem ever to be written down in Old English, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

A rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is visible in the five lines above the final line of the left page from an 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)null