Friday column: Sometimes team tops dream

Saturday in South Williamsport, Pa., the U.S. champion of the Little League World Series will be determined. Sunday will see the winning American team take on the top international team.

The games will be televised around the world. Millions will be watching. Former big league players will be analyzing. For the 11- and 12-year-olds fortunate enough to be on the field, it is a very big thing, indeed. An experience of a lifetime? Maybe not, but close.

Some 1,800 miles away in Santa Fe, a handful of 11- and 12-year-olds will watch and wonder, "What if?"

Those are 14 Little League players from the Santa Fe American and Santa Fe Metro, which in July combined players — properly, it was thought — to begin a journey the kids hoped would end in Williamsport.

According to manager John Gibbs, district officials, considering Santa Fe National, Santa Fe American and Santa Fe Metro to be different divisions of the same league, decided "we could combine (forces) to make one All-Star team."

"As we thought about it, we thought why not?" said Gibbs, who guided LOE Alarm during the Santa Fe American regular season. "Seemed a good thing for a couple of reasons. We'd be very competitive, and we'd get to know these other people. We'd get a chance to play with them rather than against them."

While National, Gibbs said, declined to participate, nine players from American and five from Metro came together — and not just physically. As they practiced for the upcoming district tournament under the hot July sun, they bonded.

"It was a fun clinic," Gibbs said, "everyone getting better and better."

Then four days before the district tournament, officials broke the bad news: Administrators in Williamsport decreed the joining of Santa Fe American and Metro wouldn't be allowed.

What now?

The obvious option, Gibbs said, was to pick up more players from Santa Fe American. "We'd still have a great team," Gibbs said, "a powerful team." But that would leave the players from Metro out in the cold.

Enter assistant coach Tim Kirkpatrick, who had been talking with S.F. American player Evan Ruesch, whose first question was, "What's going to happen with the kids from Metro?"

"They're done," Gibbs told him. "They can't put a team together."

" 'These guys have worked so hard,' "
Gibbs recalls Evan saying; " 'we've become friends with them.' "

So another option was presented to Evan and eventually to the rest of the players: Stay together as a team and play two games in the double-elimination tournament — knowing that win or lose on the field, the team would officially forfeit the contests, and any chance of advancing.

Evan went for it; the Metro players went for it; the American players went for it.

Two games later — games won on the field 11-2 and 10-2, Gibbs remembers — the team was done. But it was still a team.

The players, all of whom voted to stay together: Will Gibbs, Evan Ruesch, Tristan Gress, Gabe Valdez, Ben Miller, Angelo Lopez, Francisco Martinez, Alex Mundt, Chris Polhamus, Hiram Lopez, Santiago Gonzales, Joaquin Rivera, Isaac Hurtado and Michael Salazar.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.