80’s team takes Beckman World Series title with dominating final game effort

Members of the Beckman 80’s squad pose for a picture after winning the Beckman World Series. (Photo courtesy Beckman baseball).

Beckman High’s baseball program wrapped up summer Thursday with the 12th annual Beckman World Series, a tournament in which the players run both teams and the coaches stay on the sidelines and watch.

Coach Kevin Lavalle did come up with the names of the two teams: the 80’s and the 60’s. The tournament began on Monday.

To see the pictures, please click on the first photo.

The 80’s team won game eight of the series 13-0 to capture the series five games to three.

The games were four innings and with the 80’s win, a second game was not necessary.

“The kids have been playing and they’re excited,” said Lavalle, adding that most of the games had been decided by one or two runs. “They’re into it. Every year the first day, teams are a little unprepared. They don’t have signs and inevitably that first day, bunt situations come up and guys want to steal bases and they have no way of relaying it to the guys at first base and the second day they come back completely prepared.

“It lets them see the game from the other side and realize how important it is to be organized. But when everybody leaves here, they had fun. I guess that’s the whole idea. It’s as close to organized sandlot baseball as I can make it.”

Lavalle watched the game from the dugout and also played the music in between innings.

Beckman players shared their thoughts after the game.

“We really thought we had a great chance today because we set up our pitching so we would be ready for two games today. That first inning obviously made things a lot easier,” said Jakob Guardado of the 80s.

“It was fun to dominate like we did,” said Alec Gomez of the 80s. “The whole week was fun. I thought it brought us closer as a program because for us seniors we learn a lot about the younger guys.”

“The teams were very even, but I think today things just got out of hand early because we were super aggressive. Hopefully that style of play is something we can continue this fall,” said Lou Lucci of the 80s.

“They had better uniforms than us, that’s for sure,” said Tristan Dupont of the 80s. “After the first day I think we realized that we better get organized.”

“We just ran out of gas. It was still fun, but I didn’t think it would end like that,” said Mick Hyodo of the 60’s team.

“They threw a knock out punch early, and we just never recovered,”
said Cooper Munro of the 60s. “It will probably bother me the rest of the summer, but the good news is we start school in a few weeks.”

(Beckman baseball contributed to this story)