6 Brothers Have Triple the Fun at T-Ball Game

Last weekend’s T-ball game between the Angels and Padres had some pretty improbable competitors.

For the first time that anyone involved with the sport in Ventura can remember, two sets of triplets faced off on the baseball diamond at Arroyo Verde Park.

Harrison, Weston and Halen Buker, all 5, and William, Mark and David Seelos, all 6, were the players who made the game a one-in-a-million event Saturday.

“I was kidding them before, saying they had to win it because it was a big game,” said Harrison, Weston and Halen’s father, Terry Buker. “But everybody wins in T-ball and all the boys are really good friends.”

T-ball is a game organized for younger children who haven’t developed the skills and coordination for baseball. Instead of pitching, the ball is set on a tee on home plate, where the pint-size players take their turns at bat. Additionally, the game is played just for fun: No one keeps score.

“They were really looking forward to the game,” said their mother, Fran Buker. “Not because they were playing against another set of triplets, but because they were playing against their friends.”

Both sets of fraternal triplets, who are the product of in vitro fertilization, said they love the game.

The Buker triplets have been known to sleep with their hats on and mitts tucked under the pillow, while the Seelos triplets look forward to practice and weekend games like they were Christmas.

“They really get excited about the game,” said Kevin Seelos, struggling to keep hold of the three hats, three baseball mitts and three water bottles he was carrying for his boys. “They can’t wait until the weekends when they get to play.”

T-ball league president Rob Sapp said he looks forward to listening to announcers call the games when the boys start playing baseball.

“It’ll probably be like a ‘who’s on first’ sort of situation,” he said. “They’ll have to say things like ‘Seelos with the pitch and Seelos smacks it to left and there’s Seelos with the catch.”’

At the end of Saturday’s game, all six boys ran around the field in an impromptu game of tag and then recessed to shimmy up a tree and hang from the branches.

And although none of the boys took much notice of the statistical improbability of Saturday’s game, they still thought it was special.

“I just like playing with my brothers the most,” said Weston Buker, who was anxious to get back to the horseplay. “I always want to play with them.”