With the All-Star season approaching, one MHPB player recalls
his experience playing for the team that reached the Bronco World
Series in 2009
Editor’s note: With the All-Star season approaching, one MHPB player recalls his experience playing for the team that reached the Bronco World Series in 2009.
Jack Affourtit, special to the Times
MORGAN HILL — All-Stars are the part of the Pony Baseball season that makes your hard work worthwhile. All-Stars are the time of the year where you prove your skill by playing with and against the best. All-Stars are the time that you play for one thing: your city. If you play well, your team and your city will be remembered.
I have been lucky to be part of the Morgan Hill All-Star tradition for six years going on seven. Every year, we play league ball to show our improvements and get better. Everyone knows, though, there is nothing like All-Stars. During All-Stars, we play our hearts out and prove that Morgan Hill is dominant by playing and beating the best.
In Pinto Division, my team was two wins away from reaching the Zone tournament, but, as my team looks back, all we see is one big ‘L’ haunting and determining us to make it all the way one day. We thought we were going to fulfill our goal in our first year of Bronco, which we set four years ago. We were three outs away from Zone, as four Blossom Valley players touched home one by one. We walked off the field feeling like we had let ourselves and our city down.
We came back the next year with a chance of skipping Zone and going straight to the big dance, the Bronco World Series. In a Memorial Day tournament, our feelings of winning it all slowly faded away in the championship game. After one kid from another team homered twice against us, we came back in the dugout with no momentum, feeling like we had already lost. We still had to prove that Morgan Hill doesn’t go down without a fight. We came back and won the trophy, giving us life and giving us our hopes back.
We returned to the regular season waiting for all-stars to come, and when it did, all our practice paid off. We won the Section tournament and, at Regionals, found ourselves three outs away again from the next round, the goal we set now five years ago. This time, we weren’t going to let it slip. After a dramatic two outs, we were one out from advancing to the Bronco World Series. As the last batter fell to his knees, we fled the mound feeling as if we were the luckiest people on earth because we were going to do something that all teams dream of doing. We came home feeling like champions — and that is a feeling I will never forget.
All-Stars are when you make sure places like Taipei, Taiwan, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Miami remember the small town, the place we call home, and the place many people have never heard of until 14 13-year-olds put the name Morgan Hill in others’ heads just by playing the game they love.
All-Stars are the time you want to win more than anything, and if you do, you feel special because you don’t do it for yourself you do it for your city. I am lucky enough to have my city be Morgan Hill. As I look at the trophies, medals, friends I have made and memories I now have, I know I will never forget what our team did.
That is what All-Stars are all about.
NOTE: Memorial Day All-Stars are coming up for each division of MHPB. A Pinto Division tournament is scheduled this weekend with games starting at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. at Britton Middle School.
