EL SEGUNDO HERALD March 31, 2016 Page 5 Little League World Champions to Play in Local Tournament By Gregg McMullin Photos courtesy of Richard Murad. Beach City Baseball Academy of Los Angeles is sponsoring a very special event this weekend starting Friday April 1st through Sunday April 3rd to take place in Manhattan Beach at Marine Field and at Brett Field as well as the softball field at Rec Park. Beach City Baseball Academy is bringing back the 2015 Little League World Series championship team from Japan to play in its annual International Kengo and Shingo Tomita, who hit home runs in the 2015 Little League World Series, will accompany the Kitasuna team. 12U baseball tournament. Twelve local teams will also participate together with the German National team and the Kitasuna Little League World Champions. Both the Kitasuna team and the German National teams, who arrived this past Monday, will have a weeklong visit that will include a trip to a Dodger game today. During their weeklong stay twenty-four kids from Japan and twelve kids from Germany will stay in local homes and take a trip to Disneyland as well as take surfing lessons at a nearby beach. Players from these far away countries will get a taste of American culture while their host families will get to experience the brilliance of entertaining a child from another country and creating a lasting bond. Both teams will also spend quality time at Beach City Academy enjoying the generosity of the facility and its staff with an overnight party and breakfast before returning to their homeland on Tuesday. Kitasuna is a championship Little League Academy that has enjoyed international success. Besides winning the 2015 Little League World Series they have played in the Little League World Series a total of five times and have three World Championships. The team that is coming will consist of Kanta Osada, Hironori Osaka, Mizuki Uchida, Seongrae Kim, Hayato Yumisashi, Aoi Takahashi, Kento Takeda, Masaya Baba, Yoon Choe, Ginji Nakatani, camping in the High Sierras. But even those diversions don’t quite hold a candle to the finance world, according to Lillio. “I am excited and proud to have been selected as the City’s Director of Finance,” he said. “I have received a warm Fukutaro Kiyomiya, Keita Nagami, welcome from the City Council, Ryota Yamaguchi, Yamamoto Ueshima, Asuka residents, businesspeople and Ono, Tsubasa Mochizuki, Taiyo Kuwana, Kanau staff. I look forward to serving Sudo, Yuta Kamiya, Kohei Matsuda, Tokito the community and building Imano and Irainori Yamaguchi. Two members, strong relationships with them.” • Kengo Tomita and his brother Shingo, from last See World Champions, page 14 year’s championship team will accompany this year’s team. The Kengo twins were responsible for hitting mammoth homeruns in the World Series final against Pennsylvania. If you watched the Little League World Series championship game last summer you may have noticed Yoichi Kubo, the GM for the Tokyo Kitasuna Little League, wearing a Beach City Baseball Academy cap. Kubo is the legendary coach in Japan who has helped guide the Kitasuna teams to their successes over the years. Coach Kubo honored Beach City Baseball Academy by wearing their cap during the final game of the Little League World Series. Team Germany trains at the Deutsche Baseball Akademie in Paderborn, Germany, which serves the entire nation. The academy scouts, develops and coaches kids from Germany to play baseball. The academy’s highly specialized, world-class training prepares students for play in the European Baseball Championships, the Baseball World Cup and a variety of other high-level tournaments in Europe and around the world. U.S. Major League Baseball players who are former Deutsche Baseball Akademie graduates include Donald Lutz (Reds) and Max Kepler (Twins). Team Germany, which is being sponsored by the Nixdorf family, will include Anton Maximilian de Angelis, Joshua Harrison, Rex Helmig, Lou Helmig, Luca Horger, Ron Hungreder. Tim-Luca Lindemann, Michel Kalle, Paul Schmitz, Moritz van Berger, Yannic Walther and Jacob Boldt. The Nixdorf family is the same family that founded the West German computer company founded by their father Heinz Nixdorf in the early 1950s. It became the fourth largest computer company in Europe, and a worldwide specialist in banking and point-of-sale systems. This is the fifth year that Beach City has hosted the tournament and it will be the largest event they have sponsored yet. The first tournament evolved from the major earthquake in Tokyo five years ago. Originally a team from Beach City Baseball Academy had planned Douglass M O R T U A R Y “Our Family Serving Yours Since 1954” B U R I A L - C R E M A T I O N - W O R L D W I D E T R A N S F E R P E T M E M O R I A L P R O D U C T S 500 EAST IMPERIAL AVENUE EL SEGUNDO, CALIFORNIA 90245 Kershaw May Be Wasting His Prime? By Adam Serrao The best thing that the Dodgers have had going for them over the past eight years is Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw, currently the best pitcher on the Dodgers staff and in the league, is also the best pitcher that Los Angeles has seen since Sandy Koufax. The current Dodgers ace figures to surpass even him in Dodgers lore one day. While Kershaw continues to pitch lights-out, the team around him continues to dwindle. Ever since Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi have taken over, L.A. has gone into a “look into the future” sort of mode. That being said, the front office and the management of the Dodgers are taking their time with some of the best prospects in the entire league that could be helping the Dodgers win big and win big today. With such a patient attitude, the Dodgers could see their World Series hopes disappear until well after Kershaw is gone and out of his prime. Clayton Kershaw is widely considered to be the best pitcher that baseball has ever seen. As a left-handed starter, the eight-year veteran has the lowest career ERA among starters with a minimum of 1,000 innings pitched in the live-ball era. He’s a three-time Cy Young Award winner, a 2014 MVP, a five-time All- Star and a Triple Crown winner, amongst his many other accolades. Yet still, Kershaw has never been to the World Series. That’s a feat that looks as far away now than it ever has for Kershaw, who has been watching the team around him become less and less qualified to become a World Series favorite as each year of the calendar continues to flip on by. Most people will point to the fact that since the Guggenheim group of Stan Kasten, Magic Johnson and others have purchased the team, they have done nothing but spend money. Since the front office’s upheaval and the introduction of Friedman and Zaidi, however, the team has done exactly the opposite. Friedman and Zaidi have been given a team full of over-stuffed, explosive contracts, but what the two have done since demoting ex-GM Ned Colletti is let players with huge contract implications like Zack Greinke and even Matt Kemp walk away. With good cause. Kemp has sunk into an abyss and it remains to be seen what Greinke will do with his new seven year contract that should the Dodgers have signed him, would have cost an absurd amount in luxury tax. The fact remains, however, that the notion of the Dodgers being big spenders on the free-agency market is becoming a thing of the past. Friedman, one of the league’s leading endorsers of ‘moneyball’, has made sure of that. Now, Los Angeles’ focus has turned to grooming their young players to be stars in the league one day. Players like Julio Urias, Corey Seager, Jose De Leon, and Frankie Montas are all among the best pro-prospects in the entire league, yet they are all being handled with kid-gloves. Opportunities at the Major League level present themselves, yet are now consistently being filled by the likes of Chase Utley, Howie Kendrick, Alex Wood, or Brett Anderson. The Dodgers have the best arm in the entire game. The best arm that maybe the game has ever seen. The fact that they have been unable to get Kershaw to a World Series says less about Kershaw’s postseason mishaps and more about the talent that has been put around him. Players like Yasiel Puig, Carl Crawford and Andre Ethier unwaveringly hit a “deer in the headlights” stretch of play once the grand stage of the playoffs roll around. Kershaw is alone on an island, attempting to singlehandedly devise an escape plan to get back to civilization (which is the World Series) as his fellow castaways sit back and relax in the palm-tree-laden shade. The Dodgers have been consistently putting a winner on the field since Frank McCourt bankrupted his way out of town. While the team winning 90 games a season and making it into the playoffs certainly gives the Dodgers faithful something to cheer about, there remains an overwhelming feeling every year that when it comes down to the nitty-gritty and the Dodgers need something - someone - to get them over the hump and toward a victory in a championship game, they are clearly lacking. The Dodgers have very well been winning, but that winning has been masking the fact that they have been nothing close to a World Series type of team. This year is no different. As we enter into the 2016 season, there is no doubt that Clayton Kershaw will once again put up numbers that will progress his cause to be the best pitcher baseball has ever seen. Another Triple Crown, another league-leading ERA and WHIP, another CY Young Award. They’ll all have gone for naught once the Dodgers slip further down the standings this year than they have been in any of the four seasons since McCourt has left the team. Kershaw can opt out of his contract with the Dodgers in 2018. Let’s all just hope that he doesn’t get fed up by then and like Greinke, walk his way out of town. • Joseph Lillio from front page ness processes to become more efficient and apply technology to enhance our effectiveness at serving the public.” Lillio resides in the San Clarita Valley with his wife of 20 years, Jacqueline, who is a civil service engineer for the City of Santa Clarita. The couple have four children ages eight to 19. Lillio also enjoys the great outdoors—especially kayaking, fishing, hiking and Joseph Lillio Burkley & Brandlin LLP A T T O R N E Y S A T L A W Living Trusts/Wills, Probate, Employment Law, Personal Injury Trust and Estates Litigation, Business Litigation, Civil Litiga tion 310-540-6000 Lifetime El Segundo Residents *AV Rated (Highest) Martindale - Hubbell / **Certified Specialist Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law, State Bar of California, Board of Legal Specialization Brian R. Brandlin • Bruce R. Brandlin • Christopher P. 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