Six days of baseball. Ten elite teams from four countries.
And for the second consecutive year, the San Jose 14-U baseball team is one of those elite teams competing for the Pony League World Series title. The players got a rousing send-off this week as they headed for Washington County, Pennsylvania, where the league hosts the summer classic.
At Lew Hays Pony Field, six U.S. teams are going up against some of the best players in this premier division from Taiwan, Mexico, England and Puerto Rico.
The first test in the double-elimination tourney for the San Jose players — under manager Shane Hall and coaches Brian Bacon and Eddie Dimas — will take place at 10 a.m. PDT Saturday, Aug. 13, when the team takes the field against Monterrey, Mexico. The game will be live-streamed via MLB.com; click on the “watch live” link from the Pony League homepage, www.plws.org.
The members of the team are Antonio Chavez, Enrique Sotelo, Griffin Bacon, Marcus Garcia, Tommy Moran, Adriel Ceja, Ethan Williams, David Hall, Aiden Mojica, Dante Butler, Jaden Taylor and Toby Torres. All attend or will attend San Jose, Los Gatos and Oakland high schools.
Before 2021, the last Bay Area team to make it to this Pony World Series was Danville in 1997. Previously, Campbell-Moreland competed in 1984, 1979, 1978 and 1964, and Santa Clara in 1973.