Little League Champions

            This is a story of small segment in my lifetime.  I chose to write about the year that I won the Little League Championship. I chose it because it is the only time I have been on a team that was the #1 team at the end of it.  It was my 2^nd to last summer rec season…

            …”Alright boys,” said coach Derrick Bulthuis, “We’re gonna win the championship this year, right?!”  “Oh yeah,” we all responded to him.  He just laughed.  We had been so close last year, losing to Granite Falls in the championship.

            “Let’s take some infield.”  So we ran out and our season was underway.

 I remember thinking, ‘’Man, we’re looking pretty good,’’ as we made all the plays almost perfectly, ‘‘maybe we actually got another chance at it.’’  We went through some of the first couple practices.  Some of them were real scorchers, so hot that we even had a couple water fights with the softball teams.  Practices were fun.  Finally, we got to our first game.  I didn’t quite remember what team we were playing, but we completely blew them out of Prinsburg.  “Wow, now we really might have a shot,” I thought once again.

            This team that was going to be good that year was made up of this year’s sophomores, freshman, and 8^th graders.  At that time, we were just coming out of 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th grades.

As the season progressed, we had more practices, water fights, scrimmages against the girls, and also kept on winning our real games.  We were just having a plain old blast out there.  I usually played at 2^nd base or shortstop, sometimes even 1^st base.

About halfway through the season, I had my best game of the year.  I went 4-4 with a triple, 2 doubles, and a single.  Along with those hits, I had 5 or 6 RBI to go with them.  We killed the other team that day.

The end of the season was starting to roll around and we had only one loss so far.  It was to RCW Navy.  We lost the game 7-3. It wasn’t a very good game.  Other than that game, we were still playing great and winning.

Finally, the season ended and we were headed for the playoffs.  I don’t remember who we played first, but we beat them pretty easily.  We had made it to the second round.

We got home and starting practicing again for about a week after that.  No more water fights now.  Derrick told us, “OK boys, we made it to the second round, now let’s go win us a championship next week! But first we gotta win the first one.”  So we finished the week of practices.

Then came the big tournament day.  We were playing Raymond first.  That day’s games were going to be played in Renville.  It was a very hot day and we had to have a lot of liquid.  The game started and we were playing just as well as ever.  We ended up winning by quite a bit again.  Ecstatic with excitement and emotion, we talked and laughed with each other while watching the other game.  Hanley Falls won.  They were the only ones who stood between a championship and us.

The championship started later that day, it was the first close game we’d played all year.  It was great!  It got to the top of the last inning and we were ahead like 6-5 or something.  I was playing first base.  Someone hit a ground ball to Grant at short; one out.  Then they hit a pop up that I caught; two outs, only one more!  I remember Derrick saying, “Come on boys! One more, go to first.”  The hitter walked up to the plate.  Fly ball, center field, everyone yelling, “Come on Tyler!”  It was headed right for him.  The ball seemed like it took forever to come down.  Finally, it fell, right into the webbing of Tyler’s glove.  I couldn’t believe it, we were Little League champions!  What Derrick had said in the beginning was right!

We took our victory lap around the bases.  I touched home and said in my head, ‘Champions.’  It was the first time I had won something important like that.  Then, of course, we had to take team pictures.  Now, it was finally official.