FORT MYERS, Fla. – They gathered around the batting cages near the back practice fields at the jetBlue Park Player Development Complex late Wednesday morning, looking almost regal while awaiting the start of their quarterfinal-round playoff game at the Perfect Game 14u BCS National Championship.
The crisp uniforms were white with black and gold trim, black pinstripes and five gold stars embroidered on the right sleeve. A gold block-letter “F” adorned the front of the gray, black-billed caps, and the word “Mafia” was emblazoned across each player’s chest.
Wait a minute. Mafia? Wasn’t this the No. 1-seeded 5 Star National 14u team that had ran roughshod over six pool-play opponents on its way to grabbing that top seed?
“The Mafia, it’s like maybe our takeover time,” 5 Star National head coach Bernard Crawford explained to PG Wednesday morning. “It’s all related to when we get on the field and the way we approach the game. We want to be ‘Mafia’ and that’s the great takeover, so that’s where that kind of came from.”
It needs to be noted for reasons of transparency that Five Star National’s run at the PG 14u BCS National Championship came to an end early Wednesday afternoon when it was beaten by the No. 8-seeded Elite Squad 14u Outlaws, 2-1, in a quarterfinal game stopped after five innings due to the 2-hour time limit.
The Outlaws came into the game playing with a sense of purpose after beating No. 9 Turn 2 Baseball, 6-0, in a play-in game Wednesday morning; they take a 5-2-0 record into Thursday’s Championship Bracket semifinals at City of Palms Park.
All 38 teams in the field were seeded at the conclusion of pool-play and then placed in four separate playoff brackets: Championship, Platinum, Gold and Silver. This format – an explanation can be found by following this link – guarantees teams at least seven games and gives them a little something more to play for while avoiding consolation games.
The purpose of this piece from the outset was to document the 5 Stars’ – aka “The Mafia” – dominant run to a 6-0-0 start to begin the tournament. They ran roughshod over those six foes, outscoring their first three pool-play partners, 35-0, and the next three, 37-4, for a combined score differential of 72-4.
“They super-ceded my expectations, to be honest with you, because of the amount of talent that we knew we were going to face when we came here,” Crawford said. “For us to put those numbers up – and they’re amazing numbers – it’s just been a great run the last six days. We’ve just put it all together and all the moons have lined up.”
Top-1,000 2023 outfielder Drew Burress is the son of 5 Star program founder Andy Burress, and he agreed with what his head coach was saying: “We just go out every game ready to compete, ready to score a lot of runs, and that’s what we’ve been doing,” he said. “We’ve been able to keep on scoring and as long as we score more than the other team, we win.”
When the scores become as lopsided as they were during the Nationals stroll through pool-play, it can sometimes become a challenge to keep these 14u-eligible players focused on the job at hand; that job is to continue to play smart, fundamentally sound baseball.
“This is no discredit to the other teams that are here – there are good boys, good athletes on all of these teams – we’ve just played above our heads and put it all together,” Crawford said. “But with these kids, in the close games you get more out of it whether you win or lose as opposed to coming out and just going through the motions.”
The core of this team is a talented group, indeed, a nice mixture of 2022s and 2023s who have compiled a 41-10-3 record at PG events during the 2018-19 season to date. 2022 Puerto Rican shortstop Nicolas Perez came into this event as the No. 29-ranked overall national prospect in his class (No. 1 PR) and hits in the leadoff spot in the order, just ahead of Burris.
“It means a lot to play with 5 Star,” Perez said. “All of my teammates, we’re good friends and all, and we really like to play good baseball. … We like to go out there and have fun but our mentality is to win but we’ve got to have fun, too.”
Perfect Game does not yet numerically rank players from the class of 2023 but does place the notation of “High Follow” on some of the more intriguing prospects. 5 Star National 2023s Daniel Parris, James Hays, Brady Neal, Connor Crisp, Andrew Elkhill, Riley Jackson and Dylan Loy have all been given the “High Follow” designation.
Crawford has been coaching for 25 years at different levels and he’s been with 5 Star for the last 10 years. His sons, Rashad Crawford and David Crawford, are PG alumni and still playing ball. Rashad was an 11th round pick of the Cubs in 2012 and is now a Yankees farmhand (Double-A Trenton in the Eastern League) and David, class of 2018, is at Miami-Dade College.
The 5 Star Baseball organization was originally called Chain Baseball and – with 16u, 17u and 18u BCS championships to be played over the next three weeks – the program has won six BCS National Championships at just about every age group: 13u in 2013 (Chain Stealth); 14u in 2018 (5 Star National 14u-King); 15u in 2015 (Chain National); 16u in 2015, 2017 (Chain National, 5 Star National Burress) and 17u in 2017 (5 Star National-Dobbs).
On Wednesday, Crawford was wearing his PG BCS National Championship ring he said dated to the 2013 championship, and he feels like this 5 Star National 14u team belongs in the same conversation with all the others.
“This group is really special; they know the game,” he said. “It’s not just about me lining up the X’s and O’s, it kind of runs itself; that’s how knowledgeable they are of the game. Most of these kids have been playing since they were five or six years old and it makes my job really easy in the sense that they make me look good.”
Even though most of these guys are just beginning their four-year high school careers and may not fully appreciate history and what others who came before them both sacrificed and accomplished, Crawford said they do they’re involved in something special.
They understand that in order to reach the high standards previous 5 Star players have set, they need to play the game the right way, do the right things and then see what happens.
“With what we’re doing as an organization, we try to get the boys to understand how important it is to carry the name the right way,” Crawford said.
The 5 Star National 14u players’ dreams of winning a PG BCS National Championship may have been dashed, but most of them will have serval more opportunities for redemption.
Using Drew Burress as an example, he’s rostered with 5 Star National at the PG 14u WWBA National Championship in Hoover, Ala., which begins Friday; the 15u WWBA National Championship in Emerson, Ga., July 12-19 and at the 14u PG World Series in Sanford, Fla., July 18-22. In other words, a world of opportunity awaits.
“It’s been a hell of run right now,” Crawford said. “The kids have done exactly what we needed them to do. You get to this point in the tournament it’s one game at a time. … We have to be very precise in what we’re doing and make the right moves.”
And with that said, congratulations to the Elite Squad 14u Outlaws, you definitely earned that spot in the semifinals. All that’s left to be said is, go get ‘em on Monday.