NALB - 2025 World Championship Series Game 1

The World Championship Series is a rematch of last year's teams. In 2024, the Brooklyn Knights won an impressive 108 games and faced a Stade Maples team that won a mere 80 games. Despite the mismatch, the Maples won the series in six games. In 2025, the defending champions won 90 regular season games while the Knights won 101. Will the Maples repeat as champions or will the Knights win their first NALB Championship since 2018?

The starting pitchers for the opening game were Yusuf O'Croly (10-3, 1.58 ERA) for Stade and Tony Tamayo (16-5, 3.36 ERA) for Brooklyn.

The Knights and Maples were NALB's top two defensive teams with outstanding pitching and fielding. Therefore, it was not surprising that the game was scoreless after four innings. Tamayo was almost unhittable but had trouble finding the strike zone. He gave up only one hit and struck out seven but walked four batters. After 4.2 innings, he was pulled for a relief pitcher. The Knights got things going in the bottom of the fifth. Don Hartz led off with a double and scored on a single by Clement Barrows. After DH Bruno Levigne walked, catcher Nick Koche cleared the bases with a three-run homer. Brooklyn padded its lead with another three runs in the eighth inning.

Final score: Brooklyn 7, Stade 0

             1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   R  H  E
Stade        0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0   0  3  0
Brooklyn     0 0 0 0 4 0 0 3 X   7 10  0

W: A. Alfaro
L: Y. O'Croly

Player of the game: Nick Koche