FORT MYERS, Fla. – Through the first four days of pool-play at the 11th annual 14u Perfect Game BCS Finals, the squad out of McDonough, Ga., known as the Elite Gamers RWB 14u had done everything their head coach Chris Kaufman had asked them to do. Because of that, come Friday morning – five days into this 14u baseball marathon – the Gamers RWB were sitting in a pretty enviable position.
They had won their first four pool-play games by a combined score of 26-4 and clinched the pool championship and a spot in the 21-team playoffs with their fourth victory on Thursday. Without the pressure of having to win that Friday morning game against their Georgia neighbor, the East Cobb Black Knights, just to get into the playoffs, they could concentrate on getting a win to improve their playoff seeding.
The top-five seeds receive byes directly into Saturday’s second round; seeds 6 through 11 also start the playoffs in the second round and will play each other (9 vs. 8, 10 vs. 7, 11 vs. 6) on Saturday. The 10 teams seeded 12 through 21 were set to open first-round play late Friday afternoon and those five winners face the top-five seeds in second-round games Saturday. Rain and lightning on Friday played havoc with that schedule, and all five first-round games were moved to Saturday at Terry Park and the Player Development 5-Plex, the same sites as the second-round and quarterfinal-round games.
“My mindset going into this, really, is that this is the first bracket game,” Elite Gamers RWB 14u standout Trippe Moore said before his team ran out onto Roberto Clemente Field at Terry Park to face the Black Knights Friday morning. “This is a must-win in my mind; it’s a must-win in all of our minds.”
It was and it wasn’t, of course. Not even a loss to the Black Knights – who needed a win just to get into the playoffs – would send the Gamers RWB spiraling into the consolation round. Win or lose, this group of teenagers from the McDonough, Ga.-area still had a shot at playing themselves into Sunday’s final four. It’s a group that has already done quite a bit of winning over the last five weeks or so, and knows what it takes.
The Gamers RWB played impressively at two Perfect Game tournaments in both the first and last weeks of June. They started the month out at the 14u PG WWBA Perfect Game-East Cobb Invitational in Cartersville, Ga., where they finished 4-1-0 after a loss in the semifinals to the Georgia Jackets, the tournament’s eventual runner-up.
Next up was the prestigious 14u PG WWBA National Championship, also in Cartersville, where they finished 7-1-0 after a first-round playoff loss to the Banditos Elite, who also went on to a runner-up finish. Those results meant that entering Friday morning, the Gamers RWB 14u were 15-2 in their last 17 PG tournament games. The 14u PG BCS Finals marks the team's third straight PG tournament appearance in which they have advanced to the playoffs.
Those two events represented two weeks-worth of swinging wood bats, which might have affected the Gamers RWB during the first couple of days at the 14u PG BCS Finals, which uses metal bats. “I think it took us a couple of games to get adjusted to the BBCOR (bats) and we didn’t hit the ball very well,” Kaufman said Friday. “These last two games, though, we started to get back into it.”
The Elite Gamers RWB 14u won their first two pool-play games by baseball-like scores of 4-0 and 3-2, and even the final score in the third game was 4-1. The story those scores really told was that the Gamers RWB possessed pitching prowess that was stout and steady enough to carry them to a top-five seed in the playoffs. But just to prove they had the necessary offense, as well, they smacked 14 hits and pasted the Teel Ravens Americans, 15-1 in four innings, in their fourth pool-play game on Thursday.
“This team has a lot of heart,” Kaufman said. “We don’t go out and recruit kids from all over the country like some of these teams do – most of them live within about a 45-minute radius of each other – and these kids understand their roles; we have a bunch of role players that do their job. We don’t have anybody that goes out there and throws 88 miles-an-hour, we just have a bunch of guys that throw strikes and we play very good defense. Very good defense.”
This team is typical of many 14u teams in that it has a core group of six or seven players that have been together since they were 11 or 12 years old, and then about the same number that have been added to the roster on a year-to-year basis. The players come from baseball crazy Georgia cities and towns like McDonough and Conyers, Cairo and Covington. There are at least a dozen high-profile programs in the area south of Atlanta they would be welcomed into, but they chose the Elite Gamers.
“This is a good group of guys,” said Moore, who calls Forsyth home. “We jell well together and we have a lot of fun together. We may not be the biggest guys (physically) but I think we have the heart and we just know how to play the game.”
They can obviously play the game at a high level. The all-tournament team from the 14u PG WWBA National Championship has not been released, but six Gamers were named to the honor squad at the 14u PG WWBA PG-EC Invitational: 2019 infielder Langston Taylor, ’19 right-hander/middle-infielder Nicholas Watson-Garcia, ’20 catcher J.T. Andrews, ’20 second baseman/right-hander Ty Kaufman, ’20 right-hander/third baseman Austin Slate and Moore, a 2020 right-hander/infielder/outfielder.
Kaufman started the Elite Sports Complex in McDonough, Ga., as a 1,500 square-foot, stand-alone sporting goods store in 2007. He soon began approaching instructors and coaches to gauge their interest and it wasn’t long before he moved into a 20,000 square-foot facility; the group now has about 30 teams playing both baseball and softball.
The younger teams on the baseball side of the organization are known as the Elite Gamers RWB (RWB stands for Red, White, Blue). The older teams in the program – 15u through 17u – are called the Big Stix Gamers, who for years now have fielded teams highly competitive teams in many of PG’s national championship events.
“It’s a successful program,” Kaufman said. “The kids’ goal when they come into the organization is to one day be a Big Stix Gamer.” And it’s safe to say many of these Elite Gamers RWB 14u players will be Big Stix Gamers next year.
Through six innings late Friday morning, Elite Gamers RWB 14u 2020 left-hander Baylen Sanders out of McDonough was dealing from a winning deck, holding the EC Black Knights scoreless on five hits while striking out four without walking a batter. The Gamers RWB hadn’t given Sanders any support to speak of, and he took only a 1-0 lead into the top of the seventh.
And just like that, the tables turned. The Black Knights went double, single, single, walk and wild pitch to take a 3-1 lead and the Gamers couldn’t get any of it back in the bottom of the seventh. The dream of a top-five seed had somehow evaporated into the hot and humid Southwest Florida air, but all, certainly, was not lost.
They had to wait through a three hour-plus rain and lightning delay but, finally, late Friday afternoon the Gamers RWB 14u learned their playoff fate. They had earned the No. 8 seed and avoided an 8 a.m. Saturday first-round game. They are scheduled to face the No. 9 Florida Burn Platinum 2020 (4-1-0) out of Sarasota in a second-round game at 10:15 at the 5-Plex Player Development Complex.
The teams earning the playoffs' top-five seeds were No. 1 Florida Stealth 14u Red (Delray Beach, Fla.); No. 2 The Court-Kangaroo Court Baseball Club (Tampa); No. 3 Team Elite 14u Prospects (Winder, Ga.); No. 4 Georgia Jackets (Alpharetta, Ga.); No. 5 Giants Baseball Club (San Juan, P.R.); all entered Saturday's play at 5-0-0.
The result of the fifth and final pool-play game at PG national championship tournament can in no way define what the previous six days meant to these young players. There’s just so much more to it:
“This has been a great experience,” Moore said. “I love playing in these (ball) parks and after we’re done playing we get to go have fun on the beach. And, actually, last night we got to go to the Fort Myers Miracle (minor league baseball) game, so that was a lot of fun, too. It’s like the best of both worlds because it’s a vacation and I love playing baseball, too.”
Kaufman asks only one more thing from his young players when they are traveling home in the next day or two. He doesn’t want them thinking there might have been something more they could have done to make this baseball experience even better than it was. He demands two hours of 100 percent effort when they’re out on the field, and if gets that he can leave here with no regrets; the players shouldn’t have any either.
“Baseball is a very humbling game,” he said, making an observation that has been repeated thousands of times for more than 120 years. “It’s not always bad to make an out but it’s always bad to make an error. As long as they’re learning from the mistakes that they make and they compete no matter who’s on the other side of the field, that’s what we try to instill in them. …
“I don’t care if we go 0-8, if I can walk off the field knowing we lost eight one-run games and you gave me everything you had, I’m good with it,” he concluded. “… If they’re making outs and they’re productive outs – they’re moving runners and they understand they can contribute in other ways – that’s what we try to teach them.”