EL SEGUNDO HERALD July 6, 2017 Page 5 El Segundo Little Baseball Roundup Around Town By Gregg McMullin The baseball season for our El Segundo Little League (ESLL) all-star teams has been in full swing in the District playoffs. The ESLL has had plenty of success over the years and this season has been no exception. Each of the teams has been highly competitive and though the 11-12-year-old team was eliminated, it took a monumental effort to defeat El Segundo. The 10-11-year-old team played in the loser’s bracket final on Monday. A win would send ESLL into the finals played last night and hopefully a championship game tonight. The 9-10-year-old all-stars look tough, especially after an extra inning victory. They fell into the loser’s bracket after looking so impressive in their first game. 11-12 All-Stars ESLL fell to Palos Verdes LL 9-8 on a walk-off blast. This exciting back-and-forth affair was tied at 8-8 when a lead-off home run ended it for Palos Verdes Little League. The loss dropped ESLL into the loser’s bracket El Segundo fell behind by four runs in the second inning, but surged back. Lucas Bonham hit his third home run in two games to get things started in the third. Home runs by Cooper Gamble and Alex Lee followed in the fourth inning. Palos Verdes jumped out ahead again in the fifth, scoring four runs on five hits. ESLL fought back to tie it in the top of the sixth on a double by Nolan Kelly. Kelly continued his torrid hitting by racking up three more hits and making him eight for nine so far in the tournament. After the 11-12-year-old team fell into the loser’s bracket, it flexed its muscles against Silver Spur Little League. ESLL defeated Silver Spur 18-0 as three pitchers combined to throw a shutout to stay alive. Lucas Bonham continued his torrid all-star hitting by belting two more home runs, including a grand slam. In all, Bonham accounted for driving in seven runs. He has hit five homes in the three games of the tournament. Cooper Gamble, Xavier Rice and Brian Pham each homered for El Segundo, which has hit more home runs collectively than any other team in the tournament. Nolan Kelly stayed hot, going three for four and making him an astounding 11 for 13 in the tournament. El Segundo has scored 44 runs in the first three games of the tournament and faced Palos Verdes Little League in another elimination game. Unfortunately, ESLL was limited to two runs on seven hits and fell 4-2. Josh Zarneke started and pitched four strong innings to keep the score at 2-2. The difference was a go-ahead two-run home run in the bottom of the fifth that proved to be the difference. Cooper Gamble and JJ Anderson each had an RBI in a losing cause. 10-11 All-Stars El Segundo dropped into the loser’s bracket after falling to Redondo Beach Little League. So the locals fought through adversity in an elimination game against Silver Spur LL and won 12-6. ESLL jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning, highlighted by a three-run home run by Holden Coulter. They added another in the second inning on an RBI single by Dylan Immel. Silver Spur answered with a run in its half of the second inning to make it 4-1. Brett Abitante’s spectacular defensive play prevented further runs from scoring. ESLL busted out in the third inning, scoring six runs. After a single by Landon Davis and a walk to Luc Giroux, Benji Kerin belted a three-run home run. Later in the inning, Carson Brooks hit a two-run home run to make it 11-1. El Segundo scored another in the fourth inning to take a commanding 12-1 lead. Silver Spur was not out of the game, even though it was on the brink of a mercy rule loss. The team battled back in the bottom of the fourth inning with four runs to make it 12-5 and added another in the fifth to make it 12-6. Benji Kerin came in to pitch the final It’s Chip(ped) City After Chris Paul Departure By Adam Serrao Fans can now safely say that they have witnessed the Los Angeles Clippers play the best brand of basketball that their team will ever play. That’s assuming that there will be any Clippers fans left after the midway point of next season. When Chris Paul was traded to the Houston Rockets last Wednesday morning, the Clippers and their fans traded in six years of bravado that they had built up--which, even still, couldn’t get them past the second round of the playoffs. Now, with Paul gone and Jerry West in as a new team advisor, the Clippers will begin the long process of rebuilding with the sole hope of becoming the team that they used to be just two months ago. Chris Paul was the one shining hope of the Los Angeles Clippers that really the team should have never had in the first place. Once the league and ex-NBA commissioner David Stern stepped in and pried Paul away from the Lakers and stuck him in the Clippers locker room, though, the Clippers immediately had hope like they had never had hope before. A team that has never made it past the second round of the playoffs, the Clippers’ best record before Paul arrived was a 47-win season in 2005-06. That is, unless you count the 1974-75 Buffalo Braves team that won 49 games before they moved to San Diego and then ultimately to Los Angeles. Unless you’re a huge fan of Elton Brand, Cuttino Mobley, Sam Cassell and the rest of the Clippers that lost in the Western Conference semis to the Phoenix Suns, you can say that Chris Paul brought the best basketball that the Clippers have ever played to the city of Los Angeles. In the six seasons that he was with the team, the Clippers won under 50 games just once (in his first year in L.A.) and made the playoffs every single year. With the best player in Clippers history now calling Houston home, the team that used to be called “Chip City” by its fans has virtually zero shot at winning a “chip” at any point in the near (or far) future. Even with Paul, there was always a sense surrounding the team that they just weren’t good enough to beat the other squads forming the Western Conference elite--whether it was Golden State, San Antonio, or even Houston in the past. Now, without Paul, the Clippers have immediately regressed into the team that they used to be in what seems to be the blink of an eye--or maybe even the clip of a pair of scissors--despite what team executives will tell you about the five-year, $173 million contract that they just foolishly handed over to Blake Griffin (who has missed a total of 83 games due to injury over the past three seasons). Diehard fans, if they truly exist and haven’t already strengthened Golden State’s numbers, will tell you that every- thing will be okay. Jerry West is there now. The team will rebuild, sign free agents, and be even better in the coming years. The fact remains, however, that anyone wishing to go to Los Angeles to play professional basketball in the NBA isn’t going to choose to play for the Clippers over the team that occupies the neighboring locker room in the Staples Center. Even though the Clippers have outplayed the Lakers over the last six seasons, they still are--and always have been--the Lakers’ little brothers. The Lakers have a certain appeal and a certain aura about them, and the Clippers simply can’t compete with that. Los Angeles is about Hollywood and the bright lights. It’s about winning championships. The Lakers have those banners. Meanwhile, the Clippers have drama between a head coach/president of basketball operations and the favoritism that he showed toward his son that forced one of the best players in the league to take a pay cut to play deep in the heart of Texas instead of alongside the glitz, glamour and ocean breezes of Southern California. “We were knocking on the door of being very successful, and we just didn’t get it done,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said when speaking about the Paul trade. Rivers is right. The Clippers tried, and tried their best, but still couldn’t get past the second round of the playoffs. Paul hasn’t gotten past the second round once in his entire career and there were no indications that next year would be any different. “That part is over. And that bugs me,” Rivers continued. “But we’re not done trying to reach our goal. Sometimes you gotta do it a different way. Because the way we tried to do it didn’t work.” Once again, Doc is right. But the new way in which the Clippers will attempt to approach success won’t be any different than the previous way that featured players like Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. The Clippers roster will crumble sooner, rather than later, and Jerry West will find that the challenge he so longed for will be much harder than “The Logo “ originally anticipated it to be. The Clippers have had their chance at reaching greatness. Fans of the team were able to witness Paul and the rest of the roster play a level of basketball that the Clippers franchise has never played before. Even still, it wasn’t good enough to get anything more than a divisional champion- ship banner up in the rafters. Clipper fans can put all of the hope that they can into Jerry West as a new team advisor because hope is all that they have. Paul’s departure has slammed the door shut on any optimism for the Clippers in L.A. The point guard’s exit to Houston has lifted the veil on a franchise that, despite its win totals over the past six seasons, has been just as dysfunctional as it has always been and now shows no signs of changing. – Asixlion@earthlink.net • SBA loans. Business credit lines. Cash management services. Commercial RE, construction and equipment loans. Ed Myska Senior Vice President 310.321.3285 emyska@grandpointbank.com 1960 E. Grand Avenue, Suite 1200 El Segundo, CA 90245 grandpointbank.com Five-Star Superior Rating by BauerFinancial Visit us online: www. heraldpublications.com Reed Abrams started for El Segundo against Manhattan Beach Little League. See Baseball Roundup, page 8
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