Arroyo Seco

ARCADIA — As the sun began to dip low in the sky over Giambrone Field at Arcadia High Friday evening, it was the Arroyo Seco Babe Ruth All-Star team that seemingly had everything to lose. Locked in an extra-inning battle with San Gabriel Valley, an Arroyo Seco win would send the team straight to the Babe Ruth Western Regional Tournament beginning Thursday in Watsonville. A loss in the game that was pushing three hours in length going into the ninth inning would trigger an “if-necessary game” immediately following and keep a dangerous San Gabriel Valley squad alive and kicking deep into the night.

COMPTON - For the first time all tournament long, the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team appeared vulnerable and perhaps even beatable. Yet, that didn't matter. The Saints proved themselves untouchable and clinched a berth in Thursday's opening round of the Palomino League World Series by topping the San Jose Giants, 5-2, in Tuesday evening's West Zone championship at the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy. The victory was the first for Arroyo Seco (32-4-1) in the West Zone finals since 2004 and proved especially satisfying since the Saints were turned away in back-to-back West Zone Finals the last two years.

ARCADIA — Can there really be too much of a good thing? Arroyo Seco Babe Ruth All-Stars Coach Aaron Milam seemed to think so when he expressed concern following his team's 16-1 mercy-rule win over Nevada on Thursday in the second round of the Babe Ruth Pacific Southwest 16-18 Regional Tournament. "That's not the kind of game I wanted today, those kind of games don't make a team better," Milam said. "The close games are the ones where they get better, where they have to do it or else they lose.

COMPTON - With offense and pitching in their favor, the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team kick-started the Palomino West Zone Tournament with a nearly flawless 9-0 victory Friday afternoon versus the Lacey Rainiers at the Urban Youth Academy. "We've been playing good baseball and we've played so many games that these kids have grown used to playing with each other," said Arroyo Seco Coach Aaron Milam, the newly named head coach at St. Francis. "We pitched pretty strongly and our bats showed up today.

COMPTON - Faced with their first challenge within the West Zone Palomino Tournament, the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team responded with force. The Pasadena-based squad broke a tie heading into the bottom of the fourth with a three-run inning and never looked back en route to a 10-4 victory over Team Urban Youth Academy in Saturday afternoon's action. With the victory, Arroyo Seco (30-4-1) clinched a berth into Sunday's tournament quarterfinal at 4:30 p.m. back at the Urban Youth Academy.

ARCADIA — When the Arroyo Seco and San Gabriel Valley Babe Ruth All-Star squads get together, it's not your ho-hum Babe Ruth game. "We go head to head every year," said Arroyo Seco Coach Aaron Milam, an assistant on the St. Francis High team. "It's a big rivalry." In past years, it's a rivalry San Gabriel has gotten the best of, though. After all, it's won the World Series in Ohio two of the last three years. This time around, things are a bit different. "That's a good team," said San Gabriel Coach Phil Torres, who's also the head coach for Crescenta Valley High.

ARCADIA — Riding high off their win over their San Gabriel Valley counterpart on Wednesday in the SoCal Babe Ruth 18 Tournament, the Arroyo Seco Babe Ruth All-Stars turned in a repeat performance on Friday. Behind Leo Madrid, who pitched five scoreless innings and staked the team to an early lead with a three-run homer, Arroyo Seco held defending-champion San Gabriel Valley to one run on three hits to clinch the tournament title with a 5-1 win. "That was Leo's first at bat, first pitch — that was pretty impressive," said Arroyo Seco shortstop and 2007 St. Francis High graduate Joe De Pinto of Madrid's first-inning shot that scored him and Mitchell Maseredjian for a 3-0 lead.

ARCADIA ? It's back to Ohio for the San Gabriel Valley Babe Ruth All-Star squad. But it didn't come easy. Squaring-off against its area counterpart Arroyo Seco in the final game of the SoCal Babe Ruth 18 Tournament on Sunday at Arcadia High, San Gabriel needed every last at-bat to pull out a come-from-behind, 4-3, victory. Now, the team will travel to Newark, Ohio to defend its title in the Babe Ruth World Series beginning August 9. "We never give up," said San Gabriel and Crescenta Valley infielder Kris Kauppila, who was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player.

PASADENA — Thirty-six games into the season and Arroyo Seco Saints Coach Aaron Milam still can't get an accurate read on his team. Milam might have gotten a better read after the Saints suffered a 6-5 loss to the Playa Vista Orioles in an elimination game of the Palomino Southern California Regional Baseball Tournament on Monday night at Jackie Robinson Field. "We are very bipolar when it comes to playing defense," said Milam, whose team committed four errors and will be the third seed from the Southern California Regional in the Palomino West Zone Tournament in Compton beginning Friday.

Hundreds of area Little Leaguers took to various baseball and softball fields around Glendale, Montrose and La Crescenta this summer. A handful of local teams competed outside the area in their quest for championship glory. There were more memorable home runs and outstanding pitching performances from a number of players en route to helping their respective teams win Tri-Cities and District 16 tournaments. The Crescenta Valley-Foothill Junior softball and Arroyo Seco Saints baseball squads extended their respective seasons into August.

COMPTON - Arroyo Seco Saints Coach Aaron Milam said his team thrives when it plays on emotion after it won its first game facing elimination Saturday. Milam found out just a few hours later that his team doesn't do well playing angry, as it saw its season end in a 10-0 mercy-rule loss in a much-anticipated and heated rematch with Chinese Taipei in the 2012 Palomino League World Series at the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy in Compton. The Saints left a total of seven runners on base (five in scoring position)

COMPTON - After going from a lengthy winning streak to finding themselves one loss away from ending their season in the blink of an eye, the members of the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team adjusted well to the sudden application of win-or-go-home pressure on Friday. The West Zone-representative Saints, who had a 15-game winning streak snapped by Chinese Taipei in the opening round Thursday, jumped on Caribbean Zone Carolina Puerto Rico for three runs in the bottom of the first inning.

COMPTON - After two jarring innings, the Arroyo Seco Saints found out that once the damage was done, the bell could not be unrung. Actually, the ring was more like a ping, as the size of the aluminum bats wielded by Chinese Taipei took center stage as the hot topic of the Saints' 17-8 opening-round loss on Thursday in the 2012 Palomino League World Series at the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy in Compton. A rules violation detected only after the completion of the first two innings and a lingering dispute over the semantics of the rule book that still wasn't settled even after the game's conclusion combined to leave a bitter taste in the Saints' mouths, as they never recovered from the early 7-0 deficit and suffered their first loss in 15 games.

They've conquered the west. Next up for the members of the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team - the world. The eight-team, double-elimination 2012 Palomino League World Series kicks off today at noon at the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy in Compton, where the locally flavored Saints will represent the West Zone. "It's an interesting experience for us," said Saints Coach Aaron Milam, who also coaches St. Francis High. "This isn't the first tournament or competition we've been in, but obviously it's the World Series - there's going to be an aura and a World Series-type atmosphere, there's going to be other countries, there's an opening ceremony and a gift exchange - it's a full-fledged event.

COMPTON - As runs piled up, it appeared the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team was on its way to coasting to another victory. They've done that to the tune of a 31-4-1 season, and Sunday's performance seemed to be going that way again. But the Saints found themselves in a bind when they relinquished a five-run lead and trailed by one in the fifth inning of the West Zone Palomino Tournament. So, with its back against the wall and its season on the brink, Arroyo Seco found inspiration and used it to rally to a 9-7 win in the semifinals of the tournament against Team Urban Youth Academy.

COMPTON - Faced with their first challenge within the West Zone Palomino Tournament, the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team responded with force. The Pasadena-based squad broke a tie heading into the bottom of the fourth with a three-run inning and never looked back en route to a 10-4 victory over Team Urban Youth Academy in Saturday afternoon's action. With the victory, Arroyo Seco (30-4-1) clinched a berth into Sunday's tournament quarterfinal at 4:30 p.m. back at the Urban Youth Academy.

COMPTON - With offense and pitching in their favor, the Arroyo Seco Saints baseball team kick-started the Palomino West Zone Tournament with a nearly flawless 9-0 victory Friday afternoon versus the Lacey Rainiers at the Urban Youth Academy. "We've been playing good baseball and we've played so many games that these kids have grown used to playing with each other," said Arroyo Seco Coach Aaron Milam, the newly named head coach at St. Francis. "We pitched pretty strongly and our bats showed up today.

PASADENA - Elliot Surrey patiently defused a potentially explosive situation on the mound for the Arroyo Seco Saints before teammate Tei Vanderford dropped a bomb on the Arcadia Astros in Tuesday night's Palomino League Southern California Region championship game at Jackie Robinson Field. The UC Irvine-bound Surrey, a recent Crescenta Valley High graduate, doubled and scored a run and nailed down a two-inning save in the 4-0 win that included a key two-run triple from St. Francis' Vanderford in the sixth inning.