Long Beach Team Full Of Wilson High Kids Playing In PONY World Series

From the time they were old enough to hit off a tee, Josh Goldberg and Will Johnston were together on the baseball field.

Josh still lives four doors down from Will, as they have nearly all their lives. It is baseball that has taken them a ways from their University Park Estates neighborhood and a long ways from Vermont Street as they participate in the PONY 14-year-old World Series.

Tuesday morning, they take on Santo Domingo, a team from the Dominican Republic, as their Long Beach team attempts to capture the World Series title in Washington, Pennsylvania. The game, which was rained out Monday, is scheduled for 8 a.m. PST Tuesday. Fans can go to www.wjpa.com for a live game feed.

Twelve of the 14 boys are freshman and sophomores at Wilson High School and have played together since their first days of Little League. The bulk of the team lives and plays around the Belmont Shore-Naples area and played at Whaley PONY League.

The journey to any level of World Series is filled with an urgency that many have trouble wrapping their heads around. Once a tournament is won, there is mere days until the next starts. Add in travel to different states, and not only is it hectic, but costly for the families involved.

“It’s fine because the kids are all paid for, but the parents had to scramble and pay three times the rates to fly,” parent Ben Goldberg said. “You have about two days notice to get your travel scheduled.”

Their tournament began when they won a pre All-Star tournament in Riverside.

They followed that with a Sectional win Norwalk, where they beat a team from Heartwell Park in Lakewood and topped a team from Pacific Palisades in the final. Long Beach advanced to the Super Regionals in Whittier, where they also went undefeated, first eliminating last year’s 13-year-old World Series Champs from Chula Vista. In the finals, they bested last year’s 13-year old runners up, Simi Valley, in the championship game to advance to the Zone tournament.

The Zone tournament, which included the entire Western United States , saw Long Beach beat teams from Arizona and Washington. They had to defeat the same Simi Valley twice to advance to the World Series.

In that final game, Josh Goldberg allowed one run on two hits with 12 strikeouts for the 4-1 victory.

The Long Beach team includes: Tristin Chamberlain, Will Johnston, Spencer Hill, Blake Perkins, Marc Moroney, Mike Fitzgerald, Jeremy Corbin, Andy Brown, Jake Barham, Sean Suarez, Tyler Radcliffe, Josh Goldberg, Jackson Foss, Connor Dunlap, Mgr. Ken Jakemer, Coach Jerry Barham and Coach Stacy Ybarra.