Little League, Big Dreams

by Charles Euchner

  Midway through the third batter, Isabella starts to panic. As he scans the dugout and the field, he panics even more. Who could replace Liberia? His best pitcher, Jurickson Profar, is ineligible to pitch because he started the international championship game against Japan the day before. Other pitchers have not shown much mettle in the face of adversity.

  Hawaii’s next hitter is the strong kid with the bubble butt named Sheyne Baniaga. Baniaga is dangerous because he has the meat to power his swing and drive the ball over the wall. In Hawaii’s 2–0 win over Louisiana, Baniaga hit the home run that won it. Baniaga is a power athlete. In football, he gets the ball and runs it hard past everyone. He doesn’t look agile, but he races so hard and so fast that he’s streaking down the edge of the field as the defenders are just arriving on the scene, like ineffectual cops ready to take notes of what got burgled from a house.

  When Liberia is even more tentative against Baniaga, Isabella gets an even sicker feeling.

  Baniaga is taking it all the way. Liberia’s first pitch flies so high that Willie Rifaela has to stand and reach to keep it from sailing to the backstop.

  Isabella decides he can’t wait any more for Liberia to right himself. He walks to the mound.

  “I wanted to stay in the game,” Liberia tells me later. “I would have found the plate if I stayed in the game. The umpire called a strike zone that was too small. It was smaller than other umpires. All the umpires had ups and downs, but they usually had wider strike zones.”

  Naeem Lourens, the new pitcher, is a risky choice. He has pitched to one batter in the entire World Series. He does not throw the ball hard. But that might be an advantage—after all, the Hawaii hitters feast on fastballs.

  When Isabella gives Lourens the ball, he gives him the same advice he gave Liberia: Throw the balls away from the plate. The Hawaiians are hackers, and you can’t let them catch up to the pitches.

  Lourens ignores his orders. He throws the ball inside. He retires the next three hitters easily, with two strikeouts and a weak pop fly.

  Isabella prays that Lourens can pitch the rest of the game. By lifting Liberia without an out, the manager has deprived himself of any pitching depth. If Lourens falters, only little Christopher Garia remains. A couple of others—Sherman La Crus and Alexander Rodrigues—can pitch. But Isabella wants to avoid using them no matter what happens. He winces when asked about his confidence in them. “No, no,” he says.

  Vernon Isabella has a stern appearance for being such a young man— twenty-three years old, still an active player himself at the island’s highest levels of baseball. He never allows himself to get giddy or morose. Every day’s a job, win or lose. In that first game against Japan, when Curaçao lost 9–0, Isabella and his players acted as if it was all part of the plan: Yeah, we lose now, but we’re setting up for the game that matters.

  But no matter how controlled this slender young manager is, he cannot hold back his happiness at the great escape.

  “When he got us out of that jam, I said it was impossible for us to lose the game,” Isabella raves about Lourens’ clutch pitching performance.

  Months later—back in Willemstad, right before Christmas, deep into planning for the 2006 run at the Little League World Series—a smile breaks out on Isabella’s face. It’s as if that first-inning escape did in fact clinch the game for Curaçao.

  Hawaii takes a brief lead in the second. Willowy Quentin Guevara lines a ball off the first baseman’s glove—it would be a soft out in PONY ball—and takes second on a passed ball. And then Zachary Rosete hits the ball past third baseman Denjerick Virginie, who plays in front of the infield dirt looking for a bunt. Rosete swings down on the ball and hits it just above his hands.

  “The hitter has to stay on top of the ball,” Aliviado says. “If you get under the ball, if you hit it in the air, they only have to do one thing—catch the ball. But if you hit a grounder, they have to field the ball and throw the ball and then someone’s got to catch it. Hit a line drive or hit it hard on the ground. I keep it all simple.”

  The left fielder grabs the ball near the line but doesn’t have much forward momentum. When he throws home, Virginie cuts off the throw and guns it to second for an inning-ending out.

  Catcher Willie Rifaela has his left foot on the plate as he waits for the throw that never arrives. He’s upset. He shouts out to his teammates, waving his hands high in exasperation. What were you doing? Let the throw come home! We had the guy!

  Curaçao takes the lead in the third inning when Hawaii disintegrates on a Texas League single.

  With two men on base, Jurickson Profar—hero of the 2004 and 2005 Little League World Series—takes an emergency hack on a 2–1 fastball. He swings late, but still gets the fat of the bat on the ball. The ball clanks out to right field.

  Quentin Guevara played a crucial role in Hawaii’s championship, providing a strong left-handed complement to the team’s pitching staff.

  Then the classic Little League play begins. The ball bounces past Zachary Rosete, to the wall. The first runner scores easily. Rosete retrieves the ball and throws to Sheyne Baniaga in short center field. After hesitating, Baniaga throws home to catcher Michael Memea. But the runner, Rayshelon Carolina, is not going home. He’s staying at third base. But Profar also lopes toward third.

  Panicked, Profar pedals back toward second base. As soon as he draws a throw, Carolina scoots home.

  Jolted, Kini Enos throws home. Guevara waits for the ball two feet in front of the plate as Carolina dives. Guevara catches the throw with his right (glove) hand and spins around, on his knees, to tag Carolina. Carolina belly-flops around Guevara and slaps the plate with his right hand.

  Home plate umpire David Murphy, standing seven feet away, doesn’t see the play. Hawaii’s Kaeo Aliviado, backing up the play, blocks his view.

  Murphy calls Carolina safe. It’s 2–1 in favor of Curaçao.

  Guevara jumps in disbelief when he hears the safe call. He felt his glove hit Carolina’s foot. But he knows he’s not allowed to argue calls.

  Layton Aliviado walks out onto the field but goes nowhere near the umpires. He makes a show of accepting the call, like Nixon accepting Kennedy’s 1960 election despite all those votes from Chicago’s graveyards. Aliviado wants to calm his players and show confidence in their ability to come back.

  “Hey, no problem,” he says, again and again. He stays with Guevara until his pitcher locks eyes with him. He puts out his fist for acknowledgment, and Guevara taps him with his glove. “Let’s get this guy.”

  The manager isn’t sure how much energy Guevara has left. He wants to make sure he uses what he has.

  “Everything was chaos,” he says later. “Things started to go wrong. But my job is to say, ‘Let’s go. Focus!’ They know what I’m talking about. To me that [the botched play] is history. We cannot go back and change nothing. I know the umpires will stick together. Instead of fighting them, settle this team down. We are a better team. We had a goal two years ago, we worked hard for this; no problem, focus on the next guy.”

  Swinging at the next pitch, Sorick Liberia hits a fastball ball up the middle for a single. That scores Profar from third base. That’s a second free run. Curaçao now leads, 3–1.

  In the bottom of the third inning, Vernon Isabella tells Lourens to pitch Hawaii’s Kini Enos away but Lourens plops the ball over the middle of the plate and Enos whacks it over the left-center field fence. Enos grins wildly as he circles the bases, shyly raising the shaka sign as he runs. Pure joy.

  Isabella walks deliberately to the mound. He tells Lourens not to get behind in the count.

  Alaka’i Aglipay, Hawaii’s batting star, swings too hard at a couple of fastballs. Aglipay reaches down and gets in front of the pitch. He pulls the ball just over the left field fence for a game-tying home run.

  Later, Isabella blames both home runs on missed signals.

  “The catcher got confused and gave the wrong signal on the first batter,” Isabella says. “They w
ere so confused that he didn’t use a sign for the second batter. The catcher, and the pitcher, didn’t know what we were calling for.”

  Isabella tries to tell Rifaela what to do, but the catcher doesn’t hear. It’s Rifaela’s fault, Isabella says.

  “I was still upset with the call, yelling at the catcher to stay outside,” he says. “Rifaela is not the regular catcher. We had another catcher but Profar was throwing so fast he couldn’t handle the ball so he didn’t make the team. Profar is also a catcher but we couldn’t use him there because we needed him at shortstop.”

  Isabella also blames Lourens, the pitcher, for a lack of zeal.

  “If it was Profar [on the mound], he would have stopped to see if the coach was sending the same signal,” Isabella says. “You need to doublecheck. Profar, when he gets the inside pitch call and he knows the hitter is a good inside hitter, will stop and look at the coach and decide if the catcher needs to send another signal.”

  When the next hitter singles, Isabella brings in his third pitcher. Christopher Garia gets three quick outs and stifles Hawaii’s rally.

  Vernon Isabella, the micromanager coaching at third base, steals the game back in the fifth inning.

  With a runner on first, Sorick Liberia comes to the plate.

  Isabella has been studying the relay of signs—from dugout to catcher to pitcher—all day. He thinks he has figured out Hawaii’s system. He sees that Hawaii is calling for a fastball inside.

  Isabella shouts to Liberia, in Papiamentu: “Fastball! Over the plate! Hit it hard!”

  Liberia stands ready for the first pitch with the overactive appetite of a teenager. He swings hard.

  Aliviado has been begging Enos to throw inside, on the hands, even if he hits a Curaçao batter or two. But Enos resisted. “They’re hugging the plate, coach,” he said.

  “Then brush them back,” Aliviado says. “Don’t bean them, but brush them back.”

  But the lanky Caribbean kids hanging over the plate distract Enos.

  The fear of hitting the batters, the distraction, makes Enos miss his spots. It also takes something off his pitches. And Liberia pounces.

  It’s now Curaçao 5, Hawaii 3, in the fifth inning.

  Layton Aliviado now brings in Hawaii’s most ferocious player to pitch.

  Vonn Fe’ao is Hawaii’s X factor. Nobody throws harder, but he can have a difficult time finding the plate. He is the Armando Benitez of Little League—completely intimidating, angry, menacing, blistering fast, but he can lose his focus, get wild, and occasionally get hit hard.

  Hawaii has used Fe’ao mostly in late-game situations. He’s not a closer per se, but he’s someone who can pitch one or two innings and throw the other team off stride.

  The first batter, Naeem Lourens, quickly falls behind 0–2. Then Fe’ao starts to play with him, the way the Far Side urchin burns ants under microscopes. He throws one fastball low and inside, causing Lourens to dance away. It’s a ball, but it sends a message of intimidation. The next pitch carries even more of a message—a fastball up in the eyes. His own confidence neutered, Lourens weakly grounds out to shortstop.

  Fe’ao, usually a bundle of angry energy, is loose on the mound.

  Hawaii brought a balanced team—with a deep pitching staff and a lineup full of power hitters—to Williamsport.

  Next up is Darren Seferina. At four feet, ten inches, and seventy-nine pounds, he’s one of the smallest players in Williamsport. Only five players weigh less in the tournament.

  With the count 1–0, Fe’ao lays a ball on the outside part of the plate, belt high. The left-handed Seferina extends his arms and lets the ball hit his bat. Fe’ao throws the ball seventy-one m.p.h., the major-league equivalent of ninety-four m.p.h. Seferina hits it perfectly. The ball sails over the right-center field fence for a home run.

  As he rounds the bases, Seferina wears the expression of someone doing chores—relaxed, but no smile. When he reaches the plate, he finally breaks out in a grin.

  Now, with his team down 6–3, Fe’ao is angry. He takes the throw from the catcher with a snap. He glares. He stomps around the mound.

  “I was very mad after the home run. I got lazy. I threw a seventy milean-hour pitch and it went right over the plate. I laid it over too much. I thought the guy wasn’t going to hit it. I [should] know that size doesn’t matter. Kaeo can hit even though he’s small.”

  Teammates, coaches, fans, TV announcers—everyone—notice that Fe’ao becomes a different pitcher after his lazy pitch to Seferina.

  When athletes get angry, one of two things happens. They get wild and out of control, losing their focus and their precision. Or they get so locked into focus that they can do no wrong.

  “If he’s throwing hardest, he sometimes loses control and it gets scary,” says teammate Ty Tirpak. “But he just got in his zone.”

  Vonn Fe’ao is not the only one angry. His manager is upset that his fireballing pitcher would let up under any circumstances. And he thinks some of his players are starting to accept defeat.

  “I was mad,” Layton Aliviado says. “Vonn was thinking he’s a small guy and doesn’t have to throw hard. I say, ‘Vonn, why you lay off? Give it to him. Give him heat.’ After he ripped that ball he got mad. I told him, ‘You guys are giving the game away. We’re down already. If we lose, we want to fight. We can win. Come on you guys.’…Vonn got mad and I was like, ‘Hey, man, this is what we want.’ It turned around everything.”

  Aliviado’s faith—his belief in the plan that God has for everyone in the world—produces a mixture of determination and acceptance. God both wills what happens in the world and demands that His subjects make it happen. Aliviado’s job is to push His subjects.

  “I have this belief that if we didn’t win, it was not meant to be. I believe that the Lord meant it to go our way. But we still have to do our part. We still have to fight. That’s what I wanted. Then, if we don’t win, fine, it was not meant to be.”

  The fight is back on the next batter. Fe’ao strikes out Sherman La Crus on three pitches to end the inning.

  After Michael Memea strikes out in the fifth inning—and looks ugly doing it, waving weakly through three fastballs—a flash of excitement bursts out among Hawaii’s fans and on its bench.

  “There’s a bachi!” Ed Javier, the father of Ethan Javier, shouts gleefully to Mack Memea, Michael’s dad. “Curaçao’s going to lose!”

  Bachi is Hawaiian for bad karma. When someone does something unseemly, something arrogant or foolish, it comes back to haunt him with a vengeance. After Memea strikes out, Curaçao’s catcher Willie Rifaela flips the ball high in the air rather than demurely rolling it to the mound. Rifaela and Christopher Garia and the rest of the Curaçao players smile broadly as they trot back to their bench.

  In the dugout coach Clint Tirpak also sees the flip.

  “Are you going to let him insult you guys like that?” Tirpak shouts at the Hawaii players. “See? They think they won the game already! Let’s do it!”

  Because of television commercials, the players have to stay in the dugout for a extra couple minutes before taking the field again. And Willie Rifaela’s flip gives Team Hawaii an excuse to get angry—and to focus on rallying back.

  They’re down to their last three outs of the game, and the Hawaiian side of the field has never looked more confident. The players take up Tirpak’s challenge. All the usual cheerleaders on the bench—Tirpak’s son Ty, sparkplug Kaeo Aliviado—take the bait. And the other players start barking too. Vonn Fe’ao growls.

  Fe’ao is the player to watch for Hawaii. Pitching in the top of the sixth inning, he overwhelms Curaçao. He allows a walk but gets three easy outs on a sacrifice bunt, strikeout, and a grounder to first base.

  Layton Aliviado calls for some curveballs and changeups, but Fe’ao just wants to throw heat. “I just decided, okay, let him throw what he wants,” Aliviado says.

  Fe’ao leads off in the bottom of the inning. To the Hawaii players, Fe’ao’s at-bat will de
termine whether they had a chance to rally.

  “I was thinking, ‘Vonn, don’t try to knock it out of the park,’ because he tends to want to do that,” says Ty Tirpak. “I was like, ‘Just get on, and I’ll bring you in.’”

  But Fe’ao swings hard. He hacks away, missing on the first pitch. After taking a pitch low and outside for a ball, Fe’ao takes another vicious cut through a fastball outside and high.

  Oh, no. Hawaii is doomed. Vonn’s swinging for the fences.

  Ahead in the count, Garia tries to get Fe’ao to chase a ball for strike three. Fe’ao leans forward on a pitch a foot and a half off the plate, but he resists. The next one is a foot outside and just above the dirt. With the count full, Garia throws one even further outside for ball four.

  A sigh of collective relief washes over the Hawaii bench.

  He took a walk! We have a chance!

  Fans filled The Hill beyond the outfield fence of Lamade Stadium before the championship game between Hawaii and Curaçao.

  Curaçao’s Christopher Garia is working his fourth inning. He has now thrown forty pitches. But it’s not the number of pitches that matters here. Those are forty straining pitches. And he has a long afternoon of work ahead of him. For the first time in the game, he is showing signs of wear. He slumps while waiting for the catcher to return the ball. He labors before extending his arms in his motion.

  Vernon Isabella has no intention of taking Garia out of the game. He has two players who could take the mound. But he has no intention of using either one.

  “The last inning is the one where you need to be more intense. You shouldn’t loosen up. I would stay with Garia even if he has to throw his arm out, because it’s the last game of the year. They can treat the arm afterwards. Even if Garia told me that he was tired, he was the one who would have to tough it out…The only thing that would make me change my mind is if Garia said his arm was hurting—and even then I’d ask him to throw some more pitches to see if he really was tired.”