Still, Isabella worries that Garia will not be tough enough to stand up to the Hawaii hitters.
“If you tell Garia to be more focused, he looks down.” Isabella imitates the boy pretending not to notice when someone’s talking to him. He closes his eyes, purses his lips, and stares at the dirt. “Profar is different. He puts on a face that says you can’t beat him. That’s something you can’t teach—the fighting spirit. You have to believe that even if you think you can’t give more, you have to listen to the coach. If you ask Garia whether he wants to stay in the game, he would say it’s up to you. Profar would say, no, I want to stay. Garia didn’t say anything.”
Christopher Garia looks sharp again against the next hitter, Quentin Guevara. Garia gets two quick strikes when Guevara swings late on fastballs on the outside part of the plate, hip high.
Hawaii hitters always take a step closer to the plate and a step closer to the pitcher when they have two strikes. Guevara’s arms are hanging over the plate when he gets the next pitch from Garia. He swings late but hits a blooper into right field.
By the time the ball is back in the infield, Fe’ao streaks into third base. Guevara moves to second base on a botched cutoff throw. Little League mistakes.
When he gets to third, Fe’ao is excited. He sees Curaçao’s third baseman, Denjerick Virginie, staring at him as he slaps his hands together. “What you looking at, popolo?” he barks. Popolo is Hawaiian literally meaning dark berry, meaning black.
Ty Tirpak’s turn. Coaching at third base, Layton Aliviado notes that Rudmichaell Brandao is playing back by the bag. Aliviado puts on the bunt sign.
Tirpak is the skinny-guy image in a fun-house mirror. His face is long, his cheeks hollow, eyes high and mouth low, with almost no chin. He’s a Hirschfeld cartoon, all long lines. His ears stick out of his short patchy blond hair. At the age of twelve, he’s old-school. He says his favorite player is Nolan Ryan.
Ty Tirpak was the most vocal member of the Hawaii team.
As he takes warm-up swings, Tirpak’s arms reach behind his body. When he hits, Tirpak loads energy like a stretched rubber band, then snaps his arms and bat forward at the first split-second that he can make any judgment about the pitch. The problem with the elastic swing is that it doesn’t leave much opportunity for correction. You snap forward and there’s no going back.
Little League does not have a squeeze play, per se, since runners can’t leave the base till the pitch reaches the plate. But Aliviado knows Tirpak can bunt, and once the ball is in play anything can happen.
Tirpak gulps a gallon of air as he waves his bat in a tense half arc. Standing a foot off the plate, Tirpak has to reach for the pitch as it veers to the outside part of the plate. Still, he manages to drop the ball down the third base line. In one motion, like Ichiro, he’s running to first base.
“When I saw the guy [pitcher Garia] releasing the ball, I thought it was right where I needed it. Sometimes they’ll throw a bad pitch, but it was right here [letter high]. It was in the right spot. I didn’t want something to come way outside, especially since I was trying to get it toward third. It didn’t seem super fast, but I just started to put my bat out and it started to feel faster. After that I just sprinted.”
Third baseman Brandao fields the ball, running alongside Fe’ao toward the plate. Rather than taking the ball out of his glove to throw, he shovels the ball underhand with his glove. The throw is late and high, and catcher Willie Rifaela has to lift his foot off the plate to catch it. Fe’ao slides safely under the throw. The score is now Curaçao 6, Hawaii 4.
Vernon Isabella admits he wasn’t ready for a bunt.
“I was completely surprised,” he says. “I would have hit in that situation. One big hit makes it 6–5. With two guys on board, you are looking for a hitter. He’s not one of the best hitters, with the type of swing he had…But that was the most important play of the rally, maybe of the game.
“I told the players that the most important play was at first base, but I didn’t know that he was going to bunt. He did what he thought was easier. It was the wrong decision to go to home plate. But he didn’t go to first base because he didn’t know if the runner would be able to beat it. We weren’t going to play the infield in. If the hitter smacks a ball past the bag, then you’re in even worse shape.”
Curaçao packed the stand with families from the Caribbean territory of the Netherlands.
A split second after he touches first base, Tirpak jumps in the air in exultation, punching the sky like he’s spiking a volleyball. Volleyball, one of the more popular games on Hawaii’s isles, is Tirpak’s best sport. He gets to practice his spike in Williamsport.
Hawaii immediately replaces Tirpak at first base with Harrison Kam, a tiny but speedy outfielder.
The pressure is getting to some of the Curaçao players. Willie Rifaela, the catcher, starts to cry.
“I told him to stop crying and catch the ball,” says Isabella. “But he was one of the guys, his eyes got big when we were playing on TV.”
Before the inning, Hawaii’s Zachary Rosete approaches Aliviado in the dugout. “Coach, I can hit.” Rosete had a hit earlier in the day, but he was not one of the team’s best hitters. But Aliviado decides Rosete is focused and steely.
“I look in his eyes, and I was thinking, ‘Wow, there must be something.’ So I told [coach] Tyron [Kitashima], ‘Put Zach in there. This kid means it.’ Normally he wouldn’t say that. He must be on. When I gave the sign for an outside pitch, he was hanging over the plate. He was eager to hit.”
Rosete singles, scoring Guevara. Now the score is 6–5. Still nobody out and Curaçao leads by only one run.
After Kaeo Aliviado walks to load the bases, Hawaii’s best hitters come to the plate.
Kini Enos grounds to shortstop Jurickson Profar. Profar fires the ball home from deep in the shortstop position, forcing out Kam at the plate.
And now Alaka’i Aglipay steps up. All season, he has been the best player in the West Oahu Little League. Aglipay can lift any pitch out of the small ballpark for a grand slam.
But Garia quickly gets ahead, 0 and 2.
Choking up, Aglipay hits the ball to the right side of the diamond— too far for the second baseman to throw home for a force. Profar, covering second base, gets the front end of the possible double play. A DP would end the game and give Curaçao the championship.
Profar is off the bag by two feet when he gets the throw, but umpire Robert Stuart calls him out. Profar rushes his throw to first base, and it’s wide and late.
“I knew I didn’t have enough time to get both outs,” Profar says. “But I thought I had to try something and see what happens.” Profar dismisses the Hawaii side’s claim that he missed second base. “I know I touched the base,” Profar says.
Rosete scores. The game is tied, 6–6.
Hawaii was lost, and now is found.
Darren Seferina was an unlikely power source for Curaçao in the championship game of the Little League World Series, homering off Hawaii’s Vonn Fe’ao.
The game goes into extra innings. Only one championship game— the legendary Gary-Taiwan game of 1971—has gone beyond the regulation six innings.
Vonn Fe’ao burns through the Curaçao batters in the top of the seventh inning. He gets Jurickson Profar to ground to shortstop.
Ahead of Sorick Liberia 0–2 on blistering fastballs, Fe’ao gets him to swing through changeup for a strikeout. Then he gets Lourens to swing through two changeups before fanning him on a fastball.
So it comes down to the bottom of the seventh inning. Michael Memea stands at home plate, waiting for a three-and-two pitch from Christopher Garia.
Hawaii’s lumbering catcher wags his bat behind his head. The bat barrel bounces up and down as Garia moves into his motion.
Memea gulps and twitches. His face shows some of the signs of approaching adolescence. He wears one of those wispy moustaches that prompt parents to debate when to teach the kid to shave.
On the p
itch before, with a three-and-one count, Memea swung late on a high outside fastball. He swings hard but his timing is off. If he gets that pitch again, he needs to bring the bat around quicker. Maybe he should use a lighter bat. Or maybe he needs to coil his body. But he also has to be ready for an off-speed pitch or a curveball.
Garia is not throwing as hard as he did back in the third inning. But he still flings the ball upwards of seventy miles an hour. That seventymile-an-hour is the equivalent of a ninety-one-m.p.h. pitch in a bigleague game.
Layton Aliviado tells Memea to hack at anything he can hit. Aliviado has enough faith to let Memea swing on a three-and-one pitch. Aggressiveness wins games.
Mike Memea was an instant celebrity after his walk-off home run gave Hawaii the Little League championship in 2005.
Garia stands on the mound completely exhausted. His thin arms hang by his side as he prepares to throw. His mouth is dry. He smacks his lips to get moisture. No matter. He’s still dry.
The full-count pitch to Memea is the sixty-ninth of the game for Garia.
He’s reached his limit. At most, he has a few pitches left in his matchstick arm.
The pitcher is the loneliest player in all of sports. Even when they’re overpowering hitters, pitchers stand solitary. That’s why pitchers act out, taunting strikeout victims, stomping around after close calls, glaring from behind their gloves, waving their arms in exasperation.
Garia is all alone now. He’s been throwing hard, under the most physically and emotionally exhausting circumstances after ten days of taxing practices and games. And now his manager coach wants him to stay in the game when everyone in Lycoming County knows he’s exhausted.
Garia steps forward softly, kicks high, whips his arm forward, and delivers the same ball that Memea could not reach one pitch before.
But this time Memea sees the ball better and gets his barrel out a splitsecond sooner.
He lifts his front foot about an inch before beginning his long loping swing. He extends his arms forward, as if he is presenting a sword to an emperor at an ancient royal court. He drops his bat on the ball. The ball hits the bat’s sweet spot. Memea holds the bat with both hands all the way through his swing. Then he watches the ball arc. He drops the bat, with both hands, to the ground.
He watches. Christopher Garia watches. Centerfielder Rayshelon Carolina turns his back to the infield as he runs back toward the outfield fence and watches.
The ball veers on a line over the outfield wall, about twenty feet above the field. The ball bounces just beyond the dirt track beyond the outfield fence, bouncing to a chain-link fence that holds the hedges beyond the outfield wall. Fans sitting on the hills start to chase the ball, but the hedge and fence—put into place as a security measure after September 11—stops the ball after a skip.
Home run. Hawaii wins.
When Memea sees the ball clear the outfield wall, he leaps and allows a smile. He holds his right arm high, his index finger poking the sky, all the way around the bases.
Memea arrives home to the clamor of all his teammates. Family members press against the fencing separating the stands from the field, digital cameras aloft. A few players line up by the fence, looking for parents and brothers and sisters. ABC/ESPN TV cameras spill out onto the field. Little League officials run onto the field to award the Hawaiians their championship banner.
As TV cameras and reporters move onto the field, Christopher Garia and his teammates walk off. They’re crying, hiding their faces in their hands. For some, the tears come in heavy sobs. Curaçao’s players cluster near Vernon Isabella and the other coaches. The Hawaiian bunch celebrates.
In what has become a tradition, the Curaçao players line up along the first base line and bow to the Hawaiian fans. Then they line up along the third base line and bow to their own fans.
Curaçao’s players react to losing the extra-inning finale in the Little League World Series.
After the Hawaiians get their championship banner, they run around the circumference of the field. Some players from Curaçao join the Hawaiians in their victory lap.
Mike Memea is numb. As he’s mobbed by his teammates, he already wants to move on. The game’s over. He resists going to the media room for interviews.
“Can we go swimming now?” he asks.
After winning the championship, Hawaii’s players sign a souvenir bat.
Players from both the Hawaii and Curaçao teams joined each other in a victory lap at the conclusion of the 2005 Little League World Series.
CHAPTER 14
The Life of Champions
ON A HOT AND BRIGHT DECEMBER DAY, the players, coaches, and family members of the Little League World Series champions from Ewa Beach took their familiar positions around a baseball diamond at Pearl Ridge Elementary School in Hawaii.
Fathers clustered along the right field chain-link fence, with the best view of the action at first base. They stood close together, as if they were in a football huddle, under a jumbo-sized umbrella that protected them from the hard sun. That group of six, seven, eight dads laughed and talked about the game’s plays and their kids’ progress.
Along the line closer to home plate, mothers and children sat in low beach chairs, balancing drinks and lunch and answering the steady demands for attention from their other children. They talked about how the kids are doing in school and how to keep up with the demands of work and ferrying their kids around Oahu, and paying attention to the players’ brothers and sisters.
Younger children ran from station to station—from their moms to picnic tables to playground equipment to a cinderblock shelter where they play board games.
On the field, five of the players from the Little League champions were getting used to the new field dimensions of “real” baseball. Just months ago, they dominated the field with sixty-foot bases. They were so big that the field couldn’t contain them. Now they were playing on ninety-foot bases, the standard-sized field in baseball, half again as big as the Little League diamond. Playing on a bigger field takes some adjustment. Running from base to base sometimes seems like a marathon after Little League. Throwing from deep right field, or from third to first, takes maximum effort. And the runners lead off the bases, creating a new task for the pitcher.
In this case, the pitcher was Quentin Guevara. Guevara is five feet, four inches, and he weighs 126 pounds, but he has a chance to grow into a full-sized athlete. His father, a guard at the Halawa Community Correctional Center, is over six feet tall and well-built. Guevara is concentrating on sports the way his dad never had a chance to do. And his coach, Layton Aliviado, is trying to help him make the adjustment to the full-sized field.
A batter reached base and Guevara had to figure out how to keep him from stealing at will. The beauty of Guevara as a pitcher is the he steps effortlessly into a high leg kick and twists his body around toward the plate. The high leg kick generates power for his motion. As he grows into a bigger and bigger body, Guevara has a chance to become a prototypical power pitcher.
But the runner was going. Guevara barely noticed as the runner took the long journey from first to second base. Guevara was still rocking into his motion when the runner was one third of the way to second base.
After the steal, Aliviado shouted out to Guevara.
“Quint, you’ve gotta watch the runner!” Aliviado got more and more animated as Guevara stayed with his full fluid motion. “You gotta use the slide step! You can’t let him run on you! Quint! Sliiiiiide step!”
The men by the chain-link fence chortled and pointed. The women murmured.
The game took place just a few days before Pearl Harbor Day in 2005. Later, John Baniaga, father of Sheyne Baniaga, pointed to the USS Arizona Memorial, visible in the harbor less than two miles away.
“That’s where the Japanese attacked,” he told me. “My grandparents lived just over there.” He points in the opposite direction. “They used to tell us about the planes flying overhead, all the time, during that time. Then that day,
they looked and saw the smoke coming up from the harbor. It’s kind of what you’re trying to deal with on the mainland with September 11, right?”
There’s a Hawaiian expression for moving forward—“I mua!” That’s what everyone was trying to do here. Move on from the world championship. Move on to the next level of play, with a more demanding field and a more physically imposing and athletic opposition. Move on to better schools. Move on to the rest of childhood’s journey.
No one really understood just what kinds of opportunities—and demands—would come with winning the Little League World Series.
When they arrived at Honolulu Airport, a crowd of 2,000 friends and well-wishers greeted them with leis, banners, and TV cameras.
When the boys returned to school, principals called assemblies. Girls started pressing themselves on even the most awkward boys: “Can I kiss you? I’ve never kissed a champion before.” Politicians and business people arranged parades. The Los Angeles Lakers came to the University of Hawaii for an exhibition game and the Ewa Beach kids were invited to meet Kobe Bryant and Luke Walton and pose for pictures with the glam cheerleaders. The team also shot a commercial for the Fun Factory video arcade.
Little League, Big Dreams Page 29