Norfolk national champs fall to Puerto Rican team in Senior League Baseball World Series final
First in the nation, second in the world.
Despite seeing their overall Senior League Baseball World Series championship hopes evaporate Saturday, that’s what the Fleet Park team of Norfolk can carry home from their week of adventure in Easley, South Carolina.
A night after winning its first United States championship, Fleet Park fell 10-5 in the championship game Saturday to an aggressive Puerto Rican squad that stole 10 bases.
Fleet Park’s team of age 13-16 players had yielded just seven runs while going 4-0 in the World Series against its fellow American regional champions, but that all changed against the international champs, who went 4-0 in the other bracket.
Perhaps nerves in a contest televised live by ESPN contributed to the six errors by Fleet Park, a team of mostly Maury and Granby High junior-varsity players. Some of those mistakes were costly for Fleet Park, which never had won a multi-state regional title, much less a national championship.
After an hour delay because of weather, Radamés López Little League of Guayama, Puerto Rico, took the lead in the top of the first inning and held it. The Puerto Ricans ran their Norfolk counterparts dizzy, especially when plays began with runners on first and third bases. Victor Cartagena stole three bases.
Fleet Park starting pitcher Derek Baker lasted 4 1/3 innings, giving up five runs, striking out eight and walking four. The only earned run and hit he surrendered came in the second, when Carlos De Jesus blasted a high fastball for a home run off the scoreboard in right-center field for a 2-0 lead.
Jack Bonney scored twice, and Ethan Walker, Connor Kendrick and Baker also scored for Fleet Park. John Stilwell, Brandon Newsome and Daniel Smith had RBIs, but good defensive plays by Puerto Rico — especially by center fielder Anthony Morales, shortstop Cartagena and right fielder De Jesus — derailed some of Fleet Park’s hopes before a packed crowd. Some of the contest was shown on a big video board at Harbor Park before the Norfolk Tides played their game.
Trailing 4-1, Fleet Park nearly pulled even in the fourth inning. Walker walked, advanced to third on Kendrick’s single and scored on a wild pitch. Stilwell then grounded a single up the middle to bring home Kendrick, cutting the deficit to 4-3 and putting runners at second and third.
At that point, Guayama left fielder John Lopez and starting pitcher Justin Diaz switched positions. Diaz yielded four hits and three walks and threw three wild pitches, striking out none.
Slugger Dylan Wood, whose two-run double Friday night drove in Fleet Park’s only runs during their victory over a Houston team for the national championship, flew out to right field to end the threat.
The Caribbean Regional champs scored to make it 5-3 in the sixth, and Lopez retired Fleet Park 1-2-3.
In the top of the seventh, Puerto Rico’s offense roughed up Smith, the only reliever Fleet Park employed after Baker left the mound. Yadiel Delgado added a two-run single to left, a run on a first-and-third double steal made it 8-3, and Lopez and Joey Rivera laced RBI doubles.
In its last at-bat in the bottom of the seventh, Fleet Park managed one last thrill, with some of its players still smiling. Baker and Bonney walked, and Smith hit an RBI single up the middle. Walker singled, and Bonney came home on an error.
With the bases loaded and one out, Fleet Park needed just one more guy on base to bring the potential tying run to the plate. But Lopez induced a popout to Cartagena on a 3-2 pitch, and Landon Carraway hit a tricky pop to short left field that Cartagena caught while falling to his left, prompting a celebration by the Puerto Ricans.
The Norfolk squad scored more runs off Guayama than any of the Puerto Ricans’ first four foes did.
