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Sunday, Aug. 23, 2009

Warner Robins American improves to 2-0 at Little League World Series

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — The baseball-playing country boys from down South rose again Saturday. This time against the boys from the Big Apple.

“The Empire State versus the Empire State of the South,” one Georgia fan dubbed it.

Warner Robins American, champions of the Little League Southeast, squared off against the Mid-Atlantic titleists, the city kids from Staten Island, N.Y., The Georgia gang reeled off a 6-3 win, its second straight at the World Series and 17th in a row since the all-star season began in early July.

Though it wasn’t exactly Blue vs. Gray — more like hot orange and blue against faded gold and red, or, say, Nathan’s Famous vs. Nu-Way — the geography of the inter-regional matchup wasn’t lost on many. Except maybe ABC Sports, which at one point on its telecast declared Warner Robins a town 200 miles west of Atlanta.

Warner Robins superfan Larry Snellgrove, a former Houston County commissioner, was among the 16,000 spectators in the stands at Lamade Stadium here Saturday. When he got wind of the geographic gaffe, he told an ABC cameraman, “If we’re 200 miles west, we’re in Birmingham.”

That said, the way the Georgia gang is stroking long balls of late, don’t be surprised if one touches down in Alabama.

Warner Robins, which bashed four round-trippers in its Series-opening win Friday, banged three more against the New Yorkers — all of them two-run jobs, accounting for all six Georgia runs.

The bigger story, though, may have been the pitching prowess of Georgia’s Jones boy. (And, no, Mets fans, not Chipper.)

Justin Jones, who hit a home run in the second, his third of the series, was nothing short of masterful on the mound as he miffed Mid-Atlantic batters with an assortment of well-spotted fastballs and timely off-speed pitches. Opposing batters, to no avail, repeatedly called time and stepped out of the box to try and throw off his rhythm.

Jones and his deliberate style — long pauses as he peeks over his glove with a sniper’s eye before kicking and firing — even got to the New York crowd.

In the bottom of the third with a two-ball, two-strike count, before Jones blew away a batter with strike three, a Staten Island fan could be heard howling, “Pitch the baaaawwwll!”

Jones became the first Warner Robins hurler to pitch a complete game this all-star season. Of his 82 pitches, 55 were strikes. He surrendered three hits — two in the final inning — and faced just 24 batters, six over the six-inning minimum.

“I felt good the whole game,” Jones said. “I pitched my best today. I had all my stuff.”

“Justin is like me,” said Melanie Jones, his mother, who teaches at Perdue Primary School. “He just has the personality. He’s not real high-key.”

As for his third homer of the Series, the nonchalant younger Jones said, “I didn’t think I was gonna hit any home runs.”

Which is surprising considering Warner Robins has launched 37 of them in its 13 games since the state tournament began in Toccoa. Through 17 all-star games, which includes the district tournament, WRALL has outscored its foes 185-29.

Jones’ father, Randy, the Georgia club’s manager, said of his son’s day, “Words can’t describe what it feels like. If anybody’s got a son out there that played ball in the backyard, to watch this happen, it’s a pinch-me, wake-me-up kind of thing.”

Now the elder Jones and the diamond dozen from, um, south of Atlanta are poised to move on to the U.S. semifinals. They can assure themselves a spot there with a win Monday against the Northwest squad in a 4 p.m. game on ESPN.

“We knew we had a pretty good team ... but to see them on the big stage and never flinch, never show any anxiety and get it done more than once has been really a thrill for me,” Randy Jones said after Saturday’s win over New York.

“This is probably the best team we’ve played. They’ve got some big, strong kids all the way through the lineup. ... There are two or three teams that everybody talks about, and this is one of them. ... We’re 2-0 and we’re sitting pretty good, so that does take a load off. I can enjoy myself this evening.”

As will the other Warner Robins sluggers whose home runs powered Georgia’s seven-hit attack. Catcher Spencer Sato ripped a first-inning bomb to center that gave his team a 2-0 edge.

“I knew I had to go out there with a contact swing and put it in play, and luckily I got the meat of the bat on it. ... It was a pitch that I kind of liked. ... I just knew that it was gone off the bat,” Sato said.

Shortstop Blake Jackson, whose two-run, sixth-inning dinger gave Warner Robins some cushion it would need in the bottom of the frame after a two-run Mid-Atlantic bomb, said, “We were trying to kill it half the time. I just went up there and I was trying to kill it the last two or three at bats, but I hit it and it went.”

Jackson’s centerfield shot broke a three-inning scoring drought for the Georgians, who took a 4-1 lead into the final frame.

The New York partisans tried to rally their team throughout, picking up the oft-heard chant from Yankee Stadium, “Let’s go ... New! York! (clap-clap, clap-clap-clap).”

“Those New Yorkers are getting a little rowdy, aren’t they?” one Warner Robins parent said.

Still, the New York kids were every bit the young sportsmen. In the pregame introductions, as they made their way to the field, each handed a red, white and blue cap from their hometown South Shore National League to the Southeast kids.

And after the game, their manager, Mike Zaccariello, had nothing but praise for the Warner Robins boys.

“That’s a great team that beat us,” he said. “They played better than us today. ... We’re hoping that maybe we’ll have another shot at them down the road.”

And why not? Nothing like another made-for-ABC-TV, North-South clash. Maybe next time the announcers will mention how Staten Island is in the Pacific.

“I think that’s why ABC picked this game today,” Warner Robins parent Ken Sato said of the blockbuster matchup. “Hopefully we’ll pull through and make the South proud.”