BY JAYSON CAMACHO | Clouds covered the sky, threatening to pour down rain from above. It wasn’t a pretty Thursday afternoon for the Greenwich Village Little League Majors American championship.
The Orioles and Royals were on the field preparing to play for all the marbles. For some, this would be their last game ever at the locally famous J.J. Walker Field. Each player was ready to give his all and leave it all on the field. The first two games of the series, a doubleheader on the previous Sunday, had left the teams in a 1-1 tie.
Two minutes before the game’s start, both teams were huddled around their coaches, absorbing any last-minute advice.
Speaking later, Larry Roberts, the Royals manager, said, “We really tried to alleviate any pressure, telling them to be patient at the plate and play good defense behind Finn,” starting pitcher Finn Kaplan-Moore. “More than anything, we tried to keep the kids loose.”
The Orioles took the field first, in what would be an action-packed first inning. Elijah Meltzer, a rising sixth grader at the Little Red School House, was on the mound for the O’s.
Kaplan-Moore helped his own cause with a leadoff single and soon came around to score the game’s first run. Meltzer gave up two runs on four hits before getting the first two outs of the inning.
Errors by the O’s loaded the bases for the Royals’ Paolo Reilly-Bell. With a 2-1 count, he hit a long fly ball off the top of the fence, a foot away from being a grand slam. This scored two more runs, pushing the score to 5-0.
Kaplan-Moore said he took the mound with one thing in mind, to “throw strikes because my fielders can field the ball.” He hit the strike zone pretty well, yet the Birds were making good contact.
After singles by Caleb Tobocman and Meltzer, Kaplan-Moore got his first out with a ground ball to first base. Jack Teitelbaum was up next and produced probably the game’s best at-bat. He fouled off five pitches — five — before finally hitting a ground ball to shortstop that scored the first run for the O’s.
After a chaotic first inning, Meltzer started the second off strong. He struck out the leadoff batter and then got a groundout. After back-to-back singles by Caden Roberts and Nathan Steinfeld, Meltzer got lucky on a groundball that could have resulted in at least one run. While heading to second base, a Royals runner kicked the ball by accident, making him out and ending a potential big inning for them.
At the plate, the O’s were patient, waiting for their pitch and finding one that they could drive for a nice hit. They finished with 11 hits. But their main problem was leaving runners on base. They has four more hits than the Royals, but three fewer runs.
Following their Game 1 loss, Royals Manager Roberts said that in Game 2 it would be important to get an early lead instead of having to fight from behind, and he was right. They rebounded and saved the series.
Again, in Game 3, his team jumped out early and then knew they needed to play good defense in order to win.
Kaplan-Moore pitched 4.2 innings and gave up 10 hits, three earned runs and one walk, while fanning two. Steinfeld then came on in relief.
Steinfeld had started Game 1 for the Royals and gotten crushed. But he came into Game 3 with a clear mind, ready to take over the game and help his team win the championship. He shut down the O’s, and was very efficient in doing so, notching two strikeouts and allowing one hit in his 1.1 innings of work.
The Royals held on to win, 5-3, and took home the championship trophies.
Speaking afterward, Steinfeld said, “I wanted to pitch differently than I did on Sunday, and focus on pitching and not on anything else. I needed to think of it as a normal game and not me pitching in the championship.”
“I’m so proud of these guys,” Manager Roberts said after the victory. “It was such a rush after coming back from 1-0 [after losing Game 1] and to have the other team thinking they had us on the ropes. The big one was Game 2 on Sunday, getting back to 1-1. And then today, coming back and getting great efforts from every player. That’s the best thing I can say about them. The kids are phenomenal.”
While the Orioles lost the championship, they are still the regular season champions and had an amazing season that shouldn’t be ignored. They started off the season a bit unevenly, but ended it on an impressive eight-game win streak.
The O’s manager, John Economou, said the team was unable to rise above a rough first inning.
“They jumped out on us pretty good in the first inning, and then we settled in but couldn’t capitalize on their starting pitcher,” he said. “I think that was the difference. The boys had their opportunities. Hats off to the other team. They played a great game and it just wasn’t out day. That’s baseball sometimes!”
Congratulations to the Royals on winning the Majors American championship!
