Cooperstown Beckons to 14 Little Leaguers

It’s almost every Little Leaguer’s dream to one day get into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

The dream will become a reality of sorts for 14 Ventura County youths Friday. They will travel to New York to compete against teams from across the country in the first Cooperstown Invitational Tournament for Little League players, ages 12 and under.

“We’re ready,” said honor roll student Aaron Segovia, a 12-year-old right-handed pitcher and shortstop from Santa Paula. “I want to see how all these other guys do, if they’re really any good or not.”

Aaron, who plays in the Santa Paula Little League, is one of a growing number of young players receiving personal coaching from Bradey Thurman, 25, and Warren Hall, 26, who run Future of America Baseball Camps in Ventura, the only training program of its kind on the West Coast.

Hall and Thurman--the latter a former pitcher for the Sonoma State Cossacks--are private baseball tutors who travel around the state offering individually tailored lessons.

They are also the organizers of this year’s trip to Cooperstown.

Thurman said the program concentrates on the fundamentals of pitching, hitting and fielding, and also emphasizes academic achievement and personal development.

“There’s a reality check. . . . Everyone wants to become a major league baseball player, but the statistics become reality when you’re about 19 or 20 years old and you start thinking, ‘Boy, I’d better get that college degree because I’m not going to make it.’ ”

Right now, these kids just want to play ball.

“I just want to throw as hard as I can and get them out,” said Gilbert Infante, 12, also an honor roll student and a left-handed pitcher from the Elks Little League in Ventura.

Thurman’s and Hall’s all-county squad will compete in Cooperstown from Friday to Aug. 10 and play at least six games in the two-month invitational tournament series, which began June 29. Team members will also go head to head in a home-run derby, a base-running contest and a throwing competition.

For Alexander Merricks, a 12-year-old straight-A student and left-handed pitcher and outfielder from Oxnard’s Northside Little League, the trip to Cooperstown Dreams Park is a journey to lands unknown.

It has also earned him a little respect.

“Nobody in my family has ever been to New York, and my older cousin Matt--I was always looking up to him--well, he’s looking up to me now,” Alexander said with a smile.