SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- Japan's Go Matsumoto got the best of Georgia's Kyle Carter in ping-pong on Monday morning at the International Grove that houses the Little Leaguers.

"Yeah, today he beat me twice," Carter said.

Meeting at the table had become a daily routine for the two stars of their respective teams as they became good friends over the past two weeks. But as their rivalry crossed over to the baseball field on Monday afternoon, consider it safe to say that Carter got more than even.

Carter's record fourth win of the series coupled with Cody Walker's two-run homer gave the United States its fourth Little League World Series championship since 1993 as Columbus, Ga., topped Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1, before 4,725 at Lamade Stadium.

And on the heels of Hawaii's championship in 2005, the win marked the first time since 1983 that the United States had captured back-to-back Little League titles, a national repeat where the Peach State again found itself riding on the back end.

Columbus, just the second team in Georgia history to reach Williamsport, also brought home a second title to the state, joining the 1983 Marietta team atop the Little League throne.

"That is pretty awesome. Been here twice, won it twice," Columbus coach Randy Morris said. "Maybe we should try this more often."

But as the 11 players exultantly celebrated around second base in the moments after second baseman Josh Lester had tagged Ryota Koike for the final out, a perspective on this dream of a ride had hardly settled in.

"They probably just don't realize what this means yet, but they will," Columbus coach Randy Morris said.

Carter was simply thinking about playing ping-pong with his buddy. Immediately after the game, the 12-year-old went to Japan's dugout along the third-base line to seek out Matsumoto, who was in tears after Carter had just struck him out.

"Me and him are real good friends. We communicate the best we can and I told him for him and his team to go to the game room and we'll play ping-pong," Carter said. "It will be me and him first."

2006 Little League WORLD SERIES AUG. 18-27 | WILLIAMSPORT, PA. Schedule Wednesday - Aug. 23, 2006 International Semifinal • Mexico 11, Venezuela 0 (4 inn.) United States Semifinal • Beaverton (Ore.) 4, Lemont (Ill.) 3 Thursday – Aug. 24, 2006 International Semifinal • Kawaguchi City, Japan 4, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia 1 United States Semifinal • Columbus (Ga.) 8, Portsmouth (N.H.) 0 Saturday – Aug. 26, 2006 • Columbus (Ga.) 7, Beaverton (Ore.) 3 • Kawaguchi City, Japan 3, Matamoros, Mexico 0 Monday – Aug. 28, 2006 • Columbus (Ga.) 2, Kawaguchi City, Japan 1

Such simplicity was matched by the eerily unassuming atmosphere surrounding the final game. Because heavy rains on Sunday pushed the game back to late Monday afternoon, the 4,725 fans on hand marked a record low for a championship game in the series' 60-year history.

Large swaths of the bleachers remained unfilled and only a scattering of fans could be seen on the ridge behind the stadium. The second ridge, usually accommodating an overflow crowd that has approached 40,000 for recent title games, sat empty.

Still, the fans who were here, now united by a patriotic theme and universally behind Columbus, offered the week's most electric atmosphere. The game, of course, had much to do with that.

Japan went ahead, 1-0, in the top of the third on Matsumoto's run-scoring single and looked to shift the game's balance even further to its side in the frame's bottom half.

With Carter at second with one out, Josh Lester shot a line drive into center field. But Carter ran past Morris, who was motioning for him to stop at third, and the throw from Japan center fielder Seigo Yada beat him by several steps. He never even got within two feet of the plate, which was blocked by catcher Ryoya Koike.

"That was definitely a stop sign," Morris said, now laughing about it. "I was surprised it was as close as it was."

What could have been a play that doused Georgia's hopes only set the stage for what proved to be the championship-winning hit. On the next pitch by Matsumoto, Japan's ace, Walker lined a home run over the right-field wall.

"Before the game at practice, I wasn't hitting well," Walker said. "[Later], I was in the outfield and Kyle came up to me and said he needed me. So I just focused and hit the ball."

Japan had overpowered its way through its five games here by a combined 31-4 margin, so the momentum swing was just confidently viewed as a small obstacle on the way to another win.

"That didn't effect us," Shigeru Hidaka said through a translator. "We still thought that we could not lose. We were a team that did not lose."

Besides Walker's homer, Carter -- who was a national finalist in the Pepsi Major League Baseball Pitch, Hit & Run competition and finished in third place in the 11-12 year old division during the All-Star break in Pittsburgh -- needed little else. The left-hander held Japan to just three hits and struck out 11 in the complete-game win. In four games in Williamsport, Carter allowed just one run and was the winning pitcher in all four of Georgia's wins. The four wins was a World Series record.

"He was absolutely fantastic," Hidaka said.

After the game and following his effort to console Matsumoto, Carter then looked for one of his coaches: his father, Richard.

"He told me I did a great job and he loved me," Carter said.

In his last game as a Little Leaguer, Carter and his Georgia teammates were riding high atop the baseball universe.

"This means the world to me," Carter said.