By the time he’s finished, Presutti’s tournaments will host as many as 15,000 elite baseball games a summer. He will be the king of all of youth baseball. And then he’s going to tell the story of how he made it happen. Hollywood producers and directors have contacted him about doing a movie, but he’s not interested just yet. He wants the movie to be the definitive story, and the tale is only beginning.
The South Oakland A’s took the field to battle for the Week Six championship at Cooperstown Dreams Park. The A’s sent a tall redheaded lad named Alex Maodus to the mound. He throws the ball in the seventies, which means the ball gets to the plate at an equivalent major-league speed in the upper eighties. He also tosses the ball softly once in a while.
At the fuzzy-faced age of twelve years, good players understand the elements of pitching. If you have a hard fastball, that’s great, but hitters are going to hit it hard if you don’t mix in some soft stuff and move the ball around the strike zone. The catcher’s ability to receive the ball is the most important aspect of youth baseball. If the catcher can catch anything, the pitcher can throw anything. And the best way to get hitters out is to throw stuff out of reach—down in the dirt, up near the eyes, or away from the plate. Set ’em up with strikes and near-strikes, and then get ’em out with junk.
But North Tampa had a line on Alex Maodus, the A’s pitcher. After two innings, the Yankees led 5–0. The Yankees scored one run in the first inning on two hits, three walks, a balk, and a wild pitch. It could have been worse. One Yankee got caught stealing third base, and the team left the bases full. A solo home run, three singles, and a walk scored four more runs in the second.
Manager Buster Sunde replaced Maodus with one out in the second, but the change didn’t help much right away. But after allowing three runs—one of Maodus’s, two of his own—John Keith shut down North Tampa for the rest of the game. Keith throws hard, in the upper seventies (close to 100 when calibrated to major-league distances). He rocks into a full motion and drives his body home like Roger Clemens or Curt Schilling. His overhanded delivery is hard for hitters to pick up.
I watched the game on the A’s bench. The players were excited and energetic, but tired. They bounced around like a kid rubbing his eyes while insisting that he doesn’t need to go to bed. The fatigue had an effect. By the time the game was over, the two teams combined for five errors, two wild pitches, five passed balls, one balk, and one hit batsman. Remember, this is the best twelve-year-old baseball in the country.
Despite the errors, the players usually looked good in the field. With a baserunner at second base, the shortstop and second baseman took turns covering the bag for pickoff throws. Infielders took bounding grounders and shots in the hole and made strong pegs to first base with perfect timing—the throws are quick and deliberate, but not rushed.
And the catchers! Like hockey goalies, the catchers took every kind of abuse behind the plate—foul tips, balls in the dirt—and usually kept the ball in front.
The players do not imitate major-league players the way some Little League players do. No one holds his hand back toward the umpire like Derek Jeter. No one uses the exaggerated bat wagging like Gary Sheffield. “We teach them proper technique, period,” says Larry Lobur, one of the A’s coaches. “There’s no time for anything else.”
There was one showboater on the field, a short second baseman named Opie Brodbeck. Between innings, as he takes his position, Opie does one, two, three, four flips—the way Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith used to do for the St. Louis Cardinals.
During the game, Lou Presutti sat for a while in the A’s dugout. He talked with a couple boys about the game. Introduced only minutes before, Presutti was already teaching them the fine points of baseball.
“Watch where that ball is coming out of his hand,” he tells the boys, sons of an executive for Disney World, which hosts another elite baseball tournament for twelve-and-under players. The pitch burned up and inside.
“Where’s he going to throw it now? I think he’s going to throw some outside junk now. He had him set up for outside junk. Junk is an important part of pitching. Fastballs are great, but junk’s what makes it work.”
But the pitcher threw another fastball on the inside part of the plate. “Okay, he fooled me, too,” Presutti says.
He watched intently for another thirty seconds. The boys followed his example, scanning the field, examining the pitcher and then the hitter. Presutti had another nugget for the boys. “Look at the way he holds the bat. Look at his palms—the way he’s holding them opposite to each other.”
The pitch-by-pitch tutorial continued for two batters, and then Presutti moved on. The boys stayed behind, watching the game like medical students sitting in on surgery performed by a seasoned doctor.
Their education in baseball continued, even after the doctor left the operating room.
The game had its share of harsh moments. The families and other fans of the two teams took turns with their “Let’s Go” chants, sometimes screaming louder to drown out the other side. Close calls—force plays, ball and strike calls—prompted groans and boos. The fans jeered loudly when the A’s Mitch Kozlowski got tagged in a rundown play in the first inning. “Aw, come on, ump!” shouts one A’s dad after a close strike call. On a couple of occasions, the managers protested calls.
In the top of the first inning, the North Tampa team had runners on second and third when South Oakland pitcher Alex Maodus made a quick throw to third base to get Opie Brodbeck running to third base. Brodbeck got caught in a rundown play and got tagged out after three throws. It was the third out, the end of the inning. The South Oakland fielders left the field. The North Tampa players took their positions on the diamond.
But North Tampa manager John DiSanto could not believe it. He ran out to talk with the home plate umpire. The discussion went on for a minute or two. Then the umpire convened the other umpires for a discussion. DiSanto made his case to the blue crew and then backed off while they talked. Soon the South Oakland manager, Buster Sunde, came out to ask what was happening. More discussion.
Finally, the umpires signaled for the teams to trade places on the field. They were persuaded that the pitcher balked. Brodbeck was called safe at third, and Kevin Gomes was allowed to score on the play. Then there came more arguments. Finally, play resumed.
In the bottom of the sixth inning, the home plate umpire made a foul call on a sacrifice bunt attempt along the third-base line. Sunde argued vociferously. After hearing Sunde’s cries for a half-minute, the umpire ripped off his mask and shouted back: “The ball landed there,” he said, moving halfway up the line. “It was foul! I had it all the way! Foul!” End of discussion.
The A’s and Yankees went into the bottom of the sixth inning—the end of regulation play—tied 5–5.
In the sixth, the A’s Ryan Horvath started a rally when he reached first on a walk and took second on a groundout. One out later, Mitch Kozlowski hit a fly ball to the 200-foot wall in right field. The Yankees’ Cody Mizolle got handcuffed on the ball—he couldn’t decide whether to come in or back up on the play—and let it drop. The A’s Horvath, running on the hit, had no trouble coming all the way around to give the A’s the winning run. As they had in eleven other tournaments that summer, the A’s flocked to the plate to mob each other in celebration.
At the very moment that Horvath crossed the plate, Presutti grabbed a pair of trophies and moved toward the field for yet another championship celebration. North Tampa took its runner-up award and then South Oakland reveled in its victory.
It was after midnight when the brief celebrations took place on the field before a dwindling crowd.
And then it was time to get ready to go to the Albany Airport. The team was on its way to Disney World’s Elite World Series, where twenty-four teams were getting ready to compete for yet another championship.
If it’s August, this must be Orlando.
Most experts on youth baseball consider the best travel teams to be far superior to th
e teams playing in the Little League World Series.
The team from Chiba City, Japan, combines rigorous discipline and fundaments with open expression of the joy of play.
CHAPTER 12
How They Play the Game
ON THEIR FIRST MORNING OF WORKOUTS in Williamsport, I was watching the team from Davenport, Iowa, take cuts in the batting cages when the all-stars from Chiba City, Japan, briskly walked down the long hill from International Grove. I knew they had arrived at one in the morning—after spending a full day traveling from Tokyo to California, and then on to Philadelphia—and it was now just 9:30 a.m.
But they looked better—more organized, more energetic—than the Iowans hacking away in the cages.
Wearing practice uniforms and carrying bags of bats and balls and helmets, the Japanese players approached the batting cages.
“Good morning!” the Japanese kids said with an energy not usually found in global travelers working on six hours of sleep. “Good morning!” “Good morning!”
The players from Davenport looked puzzled as the Japanese players glided by. A few imitated their greetings—“Good morning!”—before a coach told them to respond politely and not mockingly. But the Japanese were gone before the Iowans had a chance to think up greetings of their own.
Within minutes, the Japanese stood on the farthest of the five practice fields in the complex. They spread out on the field, stretched, ran, and did calisthenics.
With every movement, they shouted out: “ Ui!” (It’s pronounced “Way!”) That chant can be loosely translated as “Let’s go!” The chant is part grunt, part chirp, depending on the player’s stage of physical development.
And go is what they did. After limbering up in the rhythms of the chant, they took the field for a fast-paced set of drills to quicken their reaction times and sharpen their brains.
A morning fog shrouded the mountains in the distance, creating an ethereal effect. The scene looked like a Japanese watercolor.
One exercise had the mesmerizing quality of Riverdance. Groups of three or four players clustered around the bases and home plate. Their manager shouted out game situations. And then the players whipped the ball from base to base, without a pause. If the situation was a steal attempt, the catcher made a hard throw from the plate to second base— answering the manager’s order—and then the fielders threw the ball around the diamond faster and faster. After making a catch and a throw, one player stepped back and a second one moved in for the next throw; after he got the ball and whipped it across the diamond, the third player stepped in for his catch and throw.
Yusuke Taira and other pitchers from Chiba City emulate the motion that Hideo Nomo used to become one of the first Japanese stars to play in the American major leagues.
A quick look at a wristwatch showed that the players made about thirty-five throws every minute—more than a throw every two seconds. As the ball zipped back and forth across the diamond, the kids tittered in anticipation of which player would miss the ball first. When it happened—when one of the players stationed near third base let the ball tip off the top of his glove—everyone laughed. He ran after the ball, ran back, the manager shouted the next game situation, and the game of lightning catch began anew.
At one point, a ball got away from another player around third base and hit a teammate on the right wrist. He went down, crying. The manager and coaches gathered. The manager’s wife walked over from the third-base bench. One of the team’s “uncles”—the volunteers who look after the teams’ everyday needs—made a walkie-talkie call to Little League’s trainer. Minutes later, Mike Ludwikowski arrived on the scene. He found no broken bones, only a bruise. He guided the player toward a golf cart and took him away for ice treatment. The rest of the Japanese players then resumed the lightning drill.
In another exercise, the players did a fast-paced hitting/fielding drill. One player threw the ball to the other, who hit it back on the ground. The throws—short-distance pitches—were almost all accurate, and the hitters hit the balls directly back at the fielders. The manager and coaches walked around, shouting encouragement and instructions. Every once in a while a ball got away. But the players threw and hit the ball with near-perfect control.
Discipline was high for the Japanese players. The team’s manager, Hirofumi Oda, seemed an interested bystander for much of the team’s practices. He walked around, wearing a white golf shirt and long white pants—the ice cream man’s outfit that he wore for the whole tournament—while the players disciplined themselves. The team’s catcher and captain, Kisho Watanabe, shouted out instructions to his teammates. But even he did not need to do anything to rally his teammates. They all knew what to do, how, and when.
It’s wa, the Japanese word for group effort.
Wherever they go on the field, the players run. They run in and out of the dugout for bats, catching gear, everything. They run from a position on the diamond to the batter’s box. The Japan team was all about movement. There was urgency in everything these players did.
At first glance, the Japanese team seemed to reinforce all the cultural stereotypes of seriousness and formality. The Japanese worked through drills constantly, burning into the players’ muscles and minds automatic responses to different game situations.
But the Japanese players burst out laughing every five or ten minutes. And then they got back to work. Work, work, work, laugh; work, work, work, laugh. Enthusiasm ran high on this team.
After the practice, Oda asked Japan’s team hosts—through the volunteer translators who would shadow the team during the tournament— whether they needed to groom the field before they left. At first, the hosts could not believe they heard the question right. Translator Bill Lundy—grandson of one of the three original sponsors of Little League, back in 1939—then told Oda not to worry.
Before they departed, the players lined up along the third base line, took off their hats, turned toward the diamond, and bowed—a silent closing gesture of respect for the field.
Baseball first came to Japan sometime in the Meiji era, which promoted westernization and modernization, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Because it was seen as a variation of martial arts—with this high-speed duel between pitcher and hitter—besuboru quickly captured the imagination of the Japanese.
At the turn of the century, the Japanese formed their first professional league. In the 1930s, Americans led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig barnstormed Japan, creating a frenzy of interest. In the 1960s and 1970s, the home-run prowess of Sadaharu Oh gave Japan its great mythic figure. In the 1990s and 2000s, the migration of Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, and others to the U.S. showed a growing parity in the quality of players on both sides of the Pacific. In 2006, Japan triumphed in the first World Baseball Classic.
Baseball in Japan has always been embedded in school sports, rather than community leagues. For years, when Japan and Taiwan dominated the Little League World Series, detractors complained that the Japanese had an unfair advantage because they drew teams from broad geographic areas and taught the game in schools like a basic subject. Youth baseball reaches its peak every spring when a million fans attend the national high school baseball tournament. To understand the atmosphere of those games, think of a college bowl game or the NCAA’s March Madness.
The cliché about Japan is that it’s a rigid, conformist society. There’s no room for innovation or joy. The individual gets lost in the system. Maybe there’s some truth to that. But at the same time, the game is open to innovation. Ichiro challenged the way hitters approach the game. Bobby Valentine, a two-time major league manager, brought a looser, player-friendly attitude to running a team. Not long ago, Japanese teams did not give players time off for family occasions like having a baby. Valentine’s attitude, once scorned but now accepted, is: Why not?
The Chiba City Little League showed that even if discipline remains the defining characteristic of Japanese baseball, there’s still plenty of space for exuberance.
One Japanese grandfather told me that his grandson was so shy that he doubted that the boy would last long in a team sport. His place was home and in the classroom. But baseball has transformed him. He’s learned some discipline, but he had plenty of that already. “He’s more playful because of playing on this team,” he said. “I like to see him smile, not be so serious. I like to see that my grandson is always helping the others—picking up balls or bats. I didn’t realize he is such a generous or helpful boy.”
The Japanese team paid its respects to the crowd after every game in the Little League World Series.
Teams throughout Japan work out endlessly, using repetitive drills to hone skills and make every conceivable action a reflex. One pro player set a record by fielding 900 straight ground balls over a period of almost three hours—before dropping from exhaustion. When he played for the Hiroshima Carp, one of the most relentless organizations in Japan, Alfonso Soriano swung bats until his hands were bloody. I once asked Soriano what he thinks about the Japanese approach. “I hated it,” he said. “But it made me a better player. I improved my bat speed like you wouldn’t believe. I’m glad I played there, but I’m glad I got out.”
The sensei—the master or, in this case, the coach—demands and gets the absolute devotion of his players. When the coach calls the players together for words of encouragement, the players take off their hats and form a semicircle around him. They’re there to listen, not be distracted.
Little League, Big Dreams Page 25