by Chris Munzing
For a collection of kids from Long Beach's Little League, the summer meant a trip to the "birthplace of baseball," Cooperstown, N.Y., where Long Beach's best young ballplayers represented the city in a week-long tournament against some of the best youth teams the country has to offer.
The team, comprising 16 Long Beach 12-year-olds, went to Cooperstown -- home of the Baseball Hall of Fame -- with victory on their minds. However, things didn't quite work out the way they had hoped. The team went 1-7 in eight games, though three of those contests were decided by one run. Coach Keith Gropper said that the competition was unlike anything the kids had seen before.
"Out of state, they have an open tryout," explained Gropper. He said that many of the teams, especially those from the South and Midwest, put out an open call and picked the best 11 or 12 players they could find. Long Beach, however, accepted kids only from the hometown community and made sure that everyone got to play.
"It's for the kids who put the time in," said Gropper. "It was a good experience. It taught them to act as a team."
Many of the other teams played their best kids the entire time. Gropper said that the extra players on their benches were there in case of an injury, and that was it. "If Johnny breaks his arm, you're going in," he said of many of Long Beach's opponents.
Despite the team's record in Cooperstown, Gropper said that the kids had a ball. The players and coaches were sequestered from their parents and housed in barracks with all the other teams. The teams quickly intermixed, and players became friends away from the field. The most popular activity among the children was pin trading.
Each team had a specially designed pin. Long Beach's depicted a baseball player surfing a huge wave, and it quickly became a favorite of the other teams. Gropper's son, Max, ended up with dozens of pins from teams from Alabama to Texas to Colorado. "It was fun just staying there with all the teams," said Max, a shortstop.
Gropper said that he was very impressed with the way these sixth- and seventh-graders played the game. "These kids are definitely a cut above your average Little League baseball player," he said. "You see that level and you can appreciate it."
After Cooperstown, the team split in half. Gropper, along with team manager Angelo Pollicino and coach Stew Kempinski, took half the team to a tournament in East Meadow, where they fared considerably better. The tournament featured teams from all over Long Island, with Long Beach finishing second to Massapequa.
The championship game went into extra innings with no score, due to stingy defense and lights-out pitching.
"We got great pitching efforts by Tom DeRosa and Richard Potapchuck," said Gropper. But Massapequa finally broke through in the eighth inning and won 2-0.
Despite the loss, the Long Beach kids knew that they belonged with the best. They'll now head off to middle school and hope to play for the school team. Gropper finds that prospect a little nerve-racking, largely because he won't be a coach for his son for the first time since T-ball. "He's out of my hands," said Gropper. "I'm just another parent."
If this team serves as an example, the Long Beach Little League program undoubtedly has years of winning ahead of it, and great players to represent the city. Today, East Meadow. Tomorrow, Williamsport?
