When my Genetics and Society professor asked about 30 of us to introduce ourselves to the class at the beginning of the year and share something that makes us interesting, no one came close to topping what music business freshman Keaton Postler shared.
Postler said he won a Little League World Series. I stopped listening after that.
In 2004, when he was in eighth grade, Postler and a team of 13- to 15-year-old baseball players from the Palma Ceia-Bayshore Little League in Tampa, Fla., rattled off 24 wins in 25 games to be the best in their county, state region, Florida, the southeastern U.S., all the U.S. and the world. Postler posted a mind-boggling .417 batting average, and three other players still batted better then him. His team’s 14 home runs in the five-game Junior League World Series broke a 21-year-old record. The mark was more than what the other nine teams in the tournament combined for.
“It was overpowering baseball,” Postler said. “The baseball in Florida is insane. I guess everyone is pretty into the ‘roids.”
Millions of ESPN2 viewers and a crowd of 2,014 people packing the bleachers and grass knolls of Heritage Park in Taylor, Mich., watched them defeat Punto Fijo, Venezuela, 5-2 for the world title.
“They’re the most awesome team in my memory” was all World Series founder and Director Greg Bzura could muster in reaction.
They missed the opening ceremony and the first day of play because Hurricane Charley had just thrashed Florida and shut down the airways. Their snotty ‘tweener opponents wondered how serious a team could be if they missed the opening ceremony. Fort Worth, Texas, found out – Postler and his boys helped set a record for total runs scored in a 21-15 win and hit almost half of their homers in the process.
Just days later, after the world title game, he called his best friend Brett, who was hanging out at the movie theater with about 300 other ‘tweeners, waiting for his mom to pick him up. When he picked up, Postler reported, “Hey, dude, we won the World Series!”
Brett brought the mob of ‘tweeners to silence and shouted, “Dude, they won the World Series!”
Memories of a wall of cheers piercing through the static on his cell still make Postler grin.
A burned out Postler quit baseball soon after, foregoing the chance to become only the 12th baseball player to appear in both a Little League and Major League World Series in favor of an education in writing, music and business.
Three of the 11 players to appear in both series are Tampa natives — Derek Bell, Gary Sheffield and Dwight Gooden.
Columnist Ramon A. Vargas writes about Loyola community members’ sports adventures every other week. Reach him at [email protected].
