Last Inning a Heartbreaker

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — South Mission Viejo’s 4-foot-11 catcher shuffled slowly out of the players’ quarters to greet his mom.

The spark that had lit Adam Elconin’s eyes just two days earlier was gone. One awful final inning had taken it away. The scoreboard still flashed the defeat: The Vaqueros of Guadalupe, Mexico, 5; South Mission Viejo, 4.

“How do you feel?” Bonnie Elconin asked her son, pulling him to her.

“Sad,” the boy said quietly, staring at the ground, his dusty cap swinging at his side.

“Well, who’s the national champions?” she asked.

“They are, because they beat us,” said Adam Elconin, who had hit his first home run in the U.S. championships last Thursday.

“No,” Bonnie Elconin said. “You’re the USA rep and no one can take that away from you.”

At that, her pint-sized son finally looked up and asked the question eating at his teammates: “Will everyone back home still be proud of us?”

It is the hardest part of being a champion. At some point you have to lose. Saturday, the South Mission Viejo players and all the screaming fans who rode a roller coaster to the top with them, plunged back down to unexpected defeat.

As Orange County’s 13 boys of summer trudged dejectedly off the field, they looked like kids again.

*

In the stands, their parents, who had shouted, shaken bottles filled with coins and striped their faces with paint, fell silent for the first time in 17 days. Frozen. Their hopes caught in raw throats.

Their “franchise player,” Ashton White, who saw the ball bounce off his glove for the winning run, slammed his mitt to the ground and cried, the black paint under his eyes smearing with tears. Adam Sorgi, who gave up the three-run homer that tied the game, wailed to his father, Assistant Coach Ed Sorgi, as if the world had ended: “It’s all my fault.”

In the stands, Karen Gattis, the manager’s wife, broke the awful quiet. Looking around at the parents, she began to shout: “We are proud of you. Say. We are proud of you.”

In seconds, the South Mission Viejo fans were screaming themselves hoarse again, rattling their trademark coin-filled bottles.

“Hey, they’re still the national champions,” said Gattis, whose 12-year-old son, Gary, played third base. “They deserve their time to be disappointed.”

Back home, at the Clubhouse Family Sports Grill, 250 cheering fans fell awkwardly silent as the home team’s march to victory ended on a dozen televisions.

*

Posters touting the team dropped to stunned fans’ sides. The jangling of coins stopped. The pandemonium that reigned from most of the game halted.

Ann Brisco, 31, dropped her head to the pizza-strewn table in front of her. “No. No. No. No. No. This can’t be happening,” she said, watching the final run.

“They were so close,” she said a few minutes later. “I really thought we had this in the bag. But Mexico really came back and there was nothing we could do about it.”

Only Jorge Sandoval of Mission Viejo let out a giant hoot of glee, thrusting his arms in the air from his perch at the bar.

“I didn’t know whether to root for Mission Viejo or Mexico,” said Sandoval, pointing to the Mexican flag pin on his baseball cap. “But I’m very happy that Mexico won. I live right around the corner from here, but I grew up in Mexico City.”

Near the video games, three Little Leaguers from other Mission Viejo teams had been following the home team as if they were in a major league pennant race. Their shoulders slumped, they mourned the squad’s sudden loss after five great innings.

“I feel a little discouraged that they lost after they had such a great game and a great lead,” Aaron Jackman, 11, said. “It was pretty upsetting.”

“I have to tip my hat to Mexico. They really pulled it off,” Logan Beebe, 11, said sadly. “But Mission Viejo is still the USA champs.”

In Williamsport, Marel Fabian, whose son, Gavin, had a near-perfect game until the end, watched her son slowly walk off the field. “I think what hurts the most is that they lost to errors,” she said. “But they are tough. We have to let them know that this game means little to us in the scheme of things. But there’s nothing we can say to them right now.”

On the field, Manager Jim Gattis said the months of pressure and mounting expectations had finally caught up with his young players.

“I really felt like today we didn’t play as a unit,” he said, patting the backs of the boys. “I really think it was because the kids were trying too hard. They put a lot of pressure on themselves.”

He paused a moment, looking at the three standouts of the game, Nick Moore, Fabian and Brian Kraker: “We deserved to lose today.”

Assistant Coach Al Elconin said, “We never have errors like this. We just weren’t on.”

But Jaime Luna, the manager of the Vaqueros who had denigrated the South Mission Viejo team all week, said the Americans had surprised him. “Our whole team was nervous for a while. These boys are all winners.”

*

The players’ parents said they simply hoped the loss wouldn’t tarnish a magnificent season.

“It’s so tough to see your son aching over such a huge loss,” said Charles White, a former Heisman Trophy winner who took time off from coaching football at the University of Southern California to watch his son, Ashton, play. “But losing is part of it. It’s our job as parents to let them know how proud we are of them.”

Added Mike Moore, whose son, Nick, hit the team’s only home run: “I just hope what they say about kids being resilient is true. It all came crashing down just now.”

Gavin’s father, Ralph Fabian, said the parents are simply glad to be able to spend time with their sons again. Because of the tight security, the parents have only been able to see the boys, who have been staying in barracks for the last 17 days, for 15 minutes a day, he said.

“Every time we got to see them for those 15 minutes, all the moms were checking their teeth,” Ralph Fabian said.

Outside the ball field, the parents swarmed the boys, hugging them until the tears stopped and the waiting flock of young girls came forward demanding their autographs.

“It was a tough game, and I thought we had it sewn up,” said Nick Moore, the team’s 5-foot-11 first baseman. “But I’m still proud we got this far.”

As he spoke, a young girl stepped up and thrust a baseball and marker into his hands, Nick blushed and grinned, feeling suddenly better. “I still can’t believe that.”

Gavin Fabian had no time to feel bad, he told his mom. “I have to go be on TV now, Mom,” he said as she kissed him.

In Mission Viejo, the fans said the team had done the city proud.

“I think I can speak for all of Mission Viejo, all of California and all of the country when I say that we are proud of them,” said Adam Mortensen, 16. “They played with spirit and they did a great job.”

Outside a shopping center in Laguna Hills, Craig Thomas said the team had done more than that.

“Win or lose, these champs have put us on the map,” said Thomas, a 30-year-old Laguna Hills claims adjuster. “Mission Viejo and Orange County have never had anything like this before. To see them on national TV makes me proud.”