August 6, 2006

World beaters
Ventura County Star
By Scott Keepfer, Correspondent

EASLEY, S.C. — Near the end of the postgame revelry Saturday night, Thousand Oaks manager Ed Kitchen paused to look at his watch.

"I can set this thing back to Pacific time," he said, grinning.

Ahh, going home probably never felt so good.

Kitchen and his Thousand Oaks Big League baseball team — twice runners-up in the Big League World Series — finally will return home with a title in hand after blanking Puerto Rico 10-0 in the event's championship game at the J.B. "Red" Owens Recreation Complex.

Even better news: No Thousand Oaks players appeared to be injured in the jubilant on-field celebration that included massive pile-ons, water cooler baths for the coaches and rib-crunching hugs distributed to one and all by Thousand Oaks Little League president John Short.

As a fireworks display continued overhead, Lisa Ricatto wiped a tear from her eye.

"It's kind of like the third time was the charm," Ricatto said. "It's pretty emotional, especially when you have two boys involved in it."

Her older son, Matt, now a Thousand Oaks assistant coach, was a member of the 2003 team that lost to South Carolina District I in the BLWS championship game. Her younger son, Michael, was an infielder on this year's team.

The celebrating likely will continue Tuesday, as Short has planned a welcome home party for 6 o'clock at the Gardens of the World in Thousand Oaks.

"It was going to be a celebration of this team's accomplishments, regardless," Short said. "Now it's going to be a World Series party."

The victory was particularly gratifying for Kitchen, a longtime youth league coach whose teams had lost to the host South Carolina team on the same field twice in the past three years.

"Everything just fell into place with this team," Kitchen said. "We needed every one of our players to get here.

"Their exhuberance right now is my reward. The only reason I coach is to see them have the opportunity to get here."

Thousand Oaks made the most of that opportunity Saturday.

To fully grasp Thousand Oaks' dominance in the game, one has only to consider Thousand Oaks went through three Puerto Rico pitchers — in the fifth inning.

After grabbing a 2-0 lead in the second inning on Brett Fick's RBI single and Jason Barmasse's run-scoring fielder's choice, Thousand Oaks' bats really came to life in the fifth. Thousand Oaks sent 13 batters to the plate — recording nine consecutive hits during one stretch — and scored eight runs to turn a close game into an early celebration. The game was called when Puerto Rico failed to score in the bottom of the fifth because of the 10-run mercy rule.

The fifth-inning uprising was more than enough for pitcher Max Gutierrez, who was dominant for the second time in as many BLWS starts. Coming off a one-hit shutout over U.S. East champion Delaware five days earlier, Gutierrez allowed just three hits against Puerto Rico and struck out six.

"This is incredible," said Gutierrez, an 18-year-old rising sophomore at Ventura College. "We're on top of the world right now. I just got off the phone with my mom, and she's crying. She said she's proud of me."

She was far from the only one.

"Max was just dominant in both games," Kitchen said. "He's one of the best pitchers I've seen in all the tournaments I've been to here, and there have been some good ones."

Cole Kahle sparked the offense with two hits and two RBIs while Fick and Cody Fierro also had two hits apiece. Every Thousand Oaks starter had at least one hit.

"From top to bottom, every guy contributed on this team," assistant coach Ricatto said. "Every single one of them can go home and say, 'I was a part of that.' "

They can indeed.