The Boys of Summer : Individuals Are What Made Team, Moments and Memories

The road to Williamsport, as followers of South Mission Viejo’s Little League All-Stars will tell you, is paved with moments, not stones.

After a while, individual games fade into a blur of statistics, of hits and runs, RBIs and strikeouts, and, ultimately, final scores.

But the moments themselves--well, they stand out.

Take catcher Adam Elconin’s run-in with an El Monte American behemoth a scant three weeks ago.

It was the second game of the Division 2 tournament. Mission Viejo was up 1-0, but the El Monte Americans were threatening in the bottom of the last inning with a man on base and a good bat at the plate.

Then crack!--a line drive to center field, where Brian Kraker fielded the ball cleanly and threw it right back where it came from.

“He gunned it straight to home plate,” recalled Mission Viejo South League Vice President Larry Sullivan. “He threw a strike to Elconin.”

Elconin--just under 5 feet tall and just over 100 pounds--squared around to face the El Monte player trying to score the tying run.

“The kid coming in was 6 feet tall,” Sullivan says. “Adam said he weighed 10,000 pounds. He got hit and flew back about 10 feet. But he held on to the ball, and he saved the game.”

When your team plays 23 games in less than three months, there are a lot of things to remember, a lot of moments to savor. But there’s not much time for reflection. You win a bunch of games and move on--to La Puente, to San Bernardino, to Williamsport.

And then--even though you lose the world championship in a one-run heartbreaker to Guadalupe, Mexico--you come home to find yourselves the toasts of the town. The princes of the parade. The celebrities of your own little suburban world.

Then, finally, you have the time to savor. And the time to remember.

Lining Up the Pieces

The South Mission Viejo team wasn’t even a team until mid-June.

It came together as a selection of 14 all-stars, voted on by league players and coaches at the end of the regular season. The selection of the manager was automatic. Jim Gattis’ Mets won the regular season, so he was drafted for the job.

He took it over like a general.

“My regular Little League team can beat you,” Gattis, a former minor league player and coach who owns a chain of coffeehouses, told the 11- and 12-year-olds during their first meeting.

Gattis also challenged the parents, gathering them in the outfield of the Youth Athletic Park at Olympiad Road and Marguerite Parkway.

“He told us that this was a commitment that we were making, that it could be our whole summer that we will be spending,” recalled Michael Nieves, father of left fielder Andrew Nieves. “I thought, ‘Yeah, yeah, right, the whole summer.’

“He said a lot of problems in Little League start around the dinner table. I look back, and that was such great advice very early on.”

Gattis named as his coaches Allen Elconin, manager of the South Mission Viejo Padres team that beat his Mets in the district tournament of champions, and Ed Sorgi. Both have sons on the team.

The team knit together quickly, individual strengths complementing each other. Strong pitching. Strong batting. Strong fielding.

“There are no heroes on this team,” says Sorgi, a salesman. “This team has 13 kids [one dropped out due to time conflicts], and they play as a team for each other.”

The parents played their roles as well. Mothers worked hard to keep their sons’ morale high. The night before each game, some slipped out to each player’s home, serving as the Good Fairies of Baseball, leaving gifts on doorsteps and banners stretched across garages.

The first tournament was held in early July in San Clemente. South Mission Viejo was one of 16 teams from southern Orange County entered in the double-elimination District 55 tournament, which Gattis’ team swept with relative ease to move on to the next round of elimination tournaments.

There were no distinct defining moments of drama. But the final game against Rancho Mission Viejo was telling, when the team of children took a workmanlike approach and ran off nine hits in a row to start the second inning. In all, eight batters scored on 10 hits--nine singles and a double--with 14 batters going to the plate.

The rally put the game out of reach.

“Ashton White had pitched,” recalled Chris Ferraro, the Rancho Mission Viejo coach. “We got only two hits off of him and both [were] home runs. This kid has it.”

Overcoming a Loss

The Section 5 playoffs, a four-team double-elimination tournament July 20-23 in Santa Ana, gave South Mission Viejo its first tough challenge. It was where they met their first defeat, a 3-2 loss to East Yorba Linda, after beating the team 8-7 in the first game.

Both games were come-from-behind victories.

“I’m not sure they actually ever had a lowest point, but clearly it might have been that Yorba Linda loss,” Sullivan said. “Jim [Gattis] has a saying for the players that you get what you deserve, what you earn in life.

“I remember him talking to the team after that loss. His attitude was that ‘You’re a great team. If you believe in yourself, you’ll get what you deserve. If you don’t believe in yourselves, you’ll beat yourselves.’ ”

They must have believed: South won the rubber match 10-2.

Gavin Fabian, the cleanup batter, belted a grand slam to ice the game.

“It was just great,” Bonnie Elconin said. “The kids went crazy. And we felt so proud.”

The win meant the team moved on to the next step: the Division 2 playoffs during the last weekend of July in La Puente. In essence, it was a tournament to determine the Southern California champions, who would represent this part of the state in the Western Regional playoffs.

By then, the steady schedule of games was beginning to have an effect on the players. Matt Cusick, left fielder and third baseman, was hit on the arm by a pitch and there were fears he’d broken a bone.

“That was devastating to him,” his mother, Edie Cusick, recalled. “He was wondering if he’d be able to bat.”

The injury was a bone contusion--a bad bruise.

“He came back in the first game,” Sullivan said. “He pinch-hit a home run.”

The final game was against West Covina, with the winner getting a berth at the Western Regionals in San Bernardino--one tournament from Williamsport.

Through the first three innings, each team scratched out runs, tying the game at 2. In the bottom of the fourth, a West Covina batter connected with a curveball and put it over the left-field fence for a 3-2 lead.

In the top of the fifth, West Covina brought in a new pitcher. The reliever immediately struck out Adam Sorgi and Gary Gattis. Fabian drilled a line drive single to left field, bringing up White. He put the first pitch, a fastball, over the field fence for a 4-3 lead. The team held on for the victory.

And the right to play in the Western Regionals.

Continuing the Climb

By the time the team got to San Bernardino, it had won every way imaginable: by rout, by holding slim leads, by staging late rallies.

After trouncing New Mexico, 11-1, the team found a new tactic.

Sneakiness.

Against Arizona, South Mission Viejo had runners on second and third, and Gattis--coaching third base--sent the second-base runner to steal third. But the runner at third didn’t move.

At first, it looked like a horrible base-running blunder, trying to steal a base where a runner already stood. The Arizona infielders quickly caught the runner and chased him down. But while they were trying to make the out, the runner on third--Sorgi--bolted for home and scored.

“I’ll never forget my husband and Gary [their son] leaping off the field pounding their fists in the air together,” Karen Gattis said. “The fans were confused, but we knew what had happened. It was beautiful.”

Mission Viejo went on to win, 4-1, then beat Oregon, 3-0, to get to the semifinal game, a rematch with Oregon.

South Mission Viejo scored five runs in the first inning of that game and just kept rolling. A three-run homer by Nieves in the top of the fourth gave the team an 11-1 lead, and the game ended under the league’s 10-run mercy rule.

That set the stage for the final game against Sunnyvale, the Northern California entry in the tournament.

In a league of 12-year-olds, pitching duels are rare. But the final game became one anyway. White started and struck out 11; the Sunnyvale pitcher, Robert Perry, struck out 7.

But South Mission Viejo pushed across two runs--the last scored by White--while Sunnyvale managed only one.

South Mission Viejo was in the World Series.

Strong to the Finish

From a team standpoint, the timing couldn’t have been better.

“Gattis is just tremendous at peaking a team at the right moment,” Sullivan said. “And not only peaking a team--he peaks the kids on the team. He can peak a player for certain games. He’ll look down the bench and go, ‘Andrew Nieves, I want you to pinch-hit.’ And he’ll go out and hit a home run.

“That’s how magical it is.”

The magic held until the last possible moment.

In the first round of the World Series, South Mission Viejo won all three of its games, holding on to top Bradenton, Fla., 10-6, in the first game before flirting with Little League World Series history in the second game against Dyer, Ind.

South Mission Viejo used three pitchers--White, Sorgi and Ryan O’Donovan--to pitch a near-perfect game. A bloop single in the last inning kept South Mission Viejo from becoming the first team ever to record a combined perfect game.

Final score: South Mission Viejo 9, Dyer 0.

In the last of the round-robin games--delayed a day because of rain--South Mission Viejo cruised past local favorite Pottsville, Pa., by a 3-0 score. A few hours later, the team met Bradenton again for the U.S. championship and the chance to face the international champions from Guadalupe, Mexico, in the world championship.

South Mission Viejo rolled over Bradenton, 12-1, again forcing officials to invoke the mercy rule. It was a typical South Mission Viejo victory, a mix of consistent hitting, a few scattered home runs and dominating pitching backed by solid defense.

“It’s been terrific,” Sullivan said. “These are kids that we’ve watched grow from 5-year-old T-ballers into young men of 11 and 12. Now they’re representing their country in a baseball championship.”

The team’s usual mix of consistent hitting, pitching and defense would be needed Saturday, the day of the world championship.

And it was there, at least until the last minute.

For the first 5 1/2 innings, South Mission Viejo seemed invincible. Fabian, the starting pitcher, carried a no-hitter into the bottom of the sixth inning, leading 4-1. But then the magic switched sides. With a dramatic comeback powered by a three-run home run, Guadalupe won the world championship, 5-4.

For only the second time in nearly three months, South Mission Viejo lost a baseball game. But the team kept its poise, shrugging off the predictable dejection and placing the game in context.

“It was a tough game, and I thought we had it sewn up,” Moore, the first baseman, said just after the game ended. “But I’m still proud we got this far.”

Now, finally, the ride was over.

It was time to go home.

Time to start savoring those memories.

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“They played their hearts out and we’re so proud of them.”--Mission Viejo Mayor William S. Craycraft

“They’re champions no matter what.”--Vince Petrozzi, 27, Lake Forest