They Played With Heart--and Proved the Team to Beat

Most entertaining story in the paper this week was about the Junior Baseball League team in Los Alamitos that won its league championship with what could be described as a motley crew. It all started when Coach Stu Cahn “drafted” his players in February without having seen half of them play because he had to leave midway through the tryouts. Given that these “draftees” are 7- and 8-year-olds, it helps to at least eyeball them to see if they know where first base is.

It’s not that Cahn didn’t want a good team. He’d been coaching for a few years and the word around the league, he said, was that “Stu’s teams never win,” which was OK with Cahn because he made friends with some nice parents of his players and, well, winning isn’t everything.

Still, it’s more fun to win. When he assembled this year’s team, the Pirates, Cahn wasn’t overly optimistic. His own two sons were on the team and--don’t read this, boys--Cahn considered them among the least talented in the league. He also learned he had an autistic child, another boy who was hyperactive and taking Ritalin, another boy who was too shy to speak and a girl whom he was sure no other coach would want on his team. He also had the league’s shortest player at 3 foot 6.

On the other hand, he had perhaps the best player in the league, which meant that he also inherited the boy’s 22-year-old brother to help coach the team. Cahn told parents before the season he liked his team’s attitude and hoped they could win 10 of their 14 games. Privately, he says, he thought, “God would have to be on our side for us to win 10 games.”

Kenny, the autistic child, posed unique challenges. “He’d run to first, run to second and continue running into left field,” Cahn says. “I’d be yelling, and his dad would say, ‘Sometimes that happens.’ ”

It’s now part of league history that the Pirates went 13-1 to win the championship. Then they won another three games before losing 1-0 in Monday’s division championship game.

When I reached Cahn on Tuesday, not even losing the championship the night before had dulled his glee over the season. “It was a ‘Bad News Bears’ thing,” he said. “No one thought we’d get where we did, me included.”

Every sports season is a drama, either large or small. Let us not make too much of a league for 8-year-olds. But Cahn says it definitely had its moments.

Such as the first game. After much schooling that players should not turn toward second base when beating out a close play at first, Cahn’s son did just that and got tagged out. Furious, Cahn told him that physical errors were excusable, but not mental ones. Especially since his son’s IQ is 135, Cahn notes, parenthetically.

Anyway, the upbraiding made his son cry. That prompted Kenny, the autistic child whom Cahn knew very little about at that point in the season, to approach coach and son.

“He sits down,” Cahn says, “and says, ‘Coach Stu, you should not raise your voice to that boy. You made water come out of his eyes.’ ”

Realizing that the boys sometimes teach the adults, Cahn apologized to every parent on the team. “I said, ‘I won’t do that again.’ ”

Now that the season is over, Cahn gives the credit to coach Ryan Olson, who, Cahn says, did most of the heavy lifting with the team.

But there was also something about the players, Cahn says. “I’ve had kids in the past where I actually knew in my heart I was biased against them, because of their attitude. I’d get a kid who would say, ‘You guys are crappy,’ and I’d pull him aside and say, ‘Look, pal, no one on this team is crappy.’ ”

This year’s Pirates were special, Cahn says. “Not once, I swear to you, did I hear anyone say anything to Nicole, and she struck out many times. No one said anything to Nathan [his son], who struck out many times. They never argued. They learned early on to be team players. We shouldn’t have won as many as we did. It sounds goofy, but a lot of it was heart.”

Kenny, the autistic boy, made the last out in the championship game. A symptom of Kenny’s autism, Cahn says, is that he shows little or no emotion. In the final game, he was the team’s last chance.

“I said, ‘Kenny, this is the most important game of your life. Hit the ball and run like a big dog is chasing you.’ When he hit the ball, it was like the world stopped. It went between shortstop and third base and the pitcher went over and everyone converged and the pitcher backhanded the ball. Kenny was running to first base and he sees that it was caught and he started crying. He never cried all season, but to me that was very good. I didn’t want to lose like that, but I was excited that he showed emotion. When he did, I think he knew how important the game was. It was the last out. How ironic that it be Kenny.”

The postscript for the season occurred when Cahn had to introduce each player and say something about them, to reward them for winning the National League title. “When I introduced my son Nathan, I said, ‘Nathan tries his best, and I’m proud of him,’ and that’s when I lost it. I was wearing sunglasses, and I started to cry. The only time that happened was when I cut the umbilical cord. For about 15 seconds, I couldn’t talk. My wife asked me why I couldn’t talk. I told her my throat was dry from talking too much.”

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.