There’s nothing like the chemistry that comes with bunking with your teammates in Cooperstown.
By Rich Bevensee
“Experience of a lifetime” is the popular sentiment coming from the Central Jersey Yellow Jacks 12U ballclub when players and coaches were asked to describe their recent trip to All-Star Village in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Cooperstown, a small village nestled in upstate New York, is the birthplace of baseball courtesy of Abner Doubleday and home of the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Every spring and summer, Cooperstown hosts thousands of 12U teams from across the country for weekly tournaments. The talent level of these teams ranges from town teams composed of local all-stars to the national club teams which attract the best players from multiple states.
When players are not on the field, they stay with their coaches in bunkhouses on campus, building bonds and meeting players from across the U.S.
The Yellow Jacks, made up primarily of players from the Diamond Jacks program at Diamond Nation in Flemington, recently enjoyed an outstanding performance at Cooperstown’s All-Star Village, going 6-2 to reach the quarterfinals and placing 12th out of 94 teams in an absolutely loaded tournament bracket.
“The kids had a fantastic tournament. We played some great baseball,” said head coach Mike Cust, who was joined by assistants Mike Fonseca and John Kayser. “But really the best part of the tournament is the camaraderie with the kids, trading pins, hanging out with each other.
“To be honest on the drive up I was dreading the trip a little bit because it’s been a long summer, we’ve been playing for a year, and I didn’t know how the kids would get along away from home. But Carter (Cust’s son) told me in the car on the way home, ‘That was the best week of my life.’”
Cust is right, it had been a long year of baseball and burnout could have been an issue. But it wasn’t.
Judging by the players’ comments, and more so by their performance, burnout was the furthest thing from their minds.
“I think it was the best week of my life,” Ben Fonseca said. “We played great on the field, I spent time with all my friends all week and that was amazing because it’s getting boring at home, and I had a good week of baseball.”
The Yellow Jacks’ run-up to Cooperstown was a 3-0 showing in the August Showdown at ‘The Nation,’ beating Gold Coast Prospects of Trumbull, Conn., twice, 11-9 and 7-6, and the New York Longhorns of Levittown, N.Y., 13-4.
Cust said the purpose of playing at Diamond Nation before the team left for Cooperstown was two-fold.
The Yellow Jacks were a collection of players from the 12U and 13U Diamond Jacks teams as well as a guest player from the Morris County Cubs, Everett Stalker, whom Cust recruited for catching depth. Cust wanted the boys to get familiar with each other and begin building on-field chemistry.
The other reason is that the team’s three players who had been playing up with the Diamond Jacks Super 13U team – Carter Cust, Ben Fonseca and Keegan Casey – were used to seeing pitching from 60 feet on the regulation diamond. Cust said they needed to reacclimate themselves to seeing mid-60 to 70 mph pitching speeds on a smaller field, which is 50 feet from the mound to home.
The Yellow Jacks in Cooperstown were made up of primarily Diamond Jacks from Diamond Nation.
Then it was off to Cooperstown and All-Star Village, which like Diamond Nation is a Ripken Baseball/Unrivaled Sports facility.
“The size of all the players was humongous,” Yellow Jacks pitcher Mason Roman said. “People talked about all the home runs they hit so I was excited to pitch against them.”
The Yellow Jacks received a rude reception when they took the field for Game 1 against the Greene County Outlaws 13U of Coxsackie, N.Y. The Yellow Jacks hit four home runs, but the Outlaws offense was so prolific, Cust said, that they hit back-to-back-to-back home runs on two separate occasions.
The game was tied, 1-1, after the first inning before the Outlaws opened the floodgates with 11 runs in the second and eventually rolled to a 25-12 win.
“We came out of the gate and got punched pretty hard in the gut,” Cust said. “It was hard because we couldn’t gauge the competition. I mean, we hit the ball – we scored 12 runs – but the problem was we gave up 25. But the next day we started crushing the baseball.”
The Yellow Jacks placeds 12th of 94 teams in Cooperstown but had that No. 1 feeling throughout.
Indeed. The Yellow Jacks reeled off six straight victories while averaging nearly 13 runs per game during that streak.
Here’s a rundown of how the Yellow Jacks did during that impressive streak:
In Game 2, they out-gunned Team Phoenix 12U of West Hempstead, N.Y., 9-6. Carter Cust’s triple was the team’s only extra base hit and Fonseca went 2-for-3. Roman struck out five in two scoreless innings and Cust and Weston Hoelper closed out the game.
“I didn’t really focus on throwing down the middle,” Roman said. “I focused on hitting my spots, low and outside, so they can’t hit or get barrels on it – or it would definitely go over the fence.”
Roman heard about the home run barrages at Cooperstown, and the rumors were correct, but in Game 2 it was the Yellow Jacks who joined the longball party. Cust, Roman, Henry Gliottone, Keegan Casey, Nate Kayser and Ryan Beardsley all went deep to propel the Jacks to a 13-2 victory over the MA Outlaws 12U of Chicopee, Mass. Gliottone and Daniel Miller combined on a five-hitter.
The Yellow Jacks hit five homers and extended their winning streak to three games after a 16-2 verdict over the Algonquin Titans 12U of Southborough and Northborough, Mass. Cust, Gliottone, Casey, Kayser and Beardsley each cleared the fence, while Fonseca and Gliottone drove in three runs apiece. Fonseca struck out seven over four innings and Mario Armenti pitched two scoreless innings in relief.
Casey was on fire in Game 4 against the Finger Lakes Falcons 12U Gold of Horseheads, N.Y. He went 3-for-3 with a homer and four RBI to lead the Yellow Jacks to a 19-7 win. Fonseca, Gliottone and Kayser also went deep and Armenti drove in three runs. Kayser and Liam Schenkel combined for the four-inning victory.
Game 5 would be the Yellow Jacks’ last pool game before the playoffs began, and for the second time in this tournament six Jacks went deep to trounce the visitors from 2026 City Baseball Green 12U of Seattle, Washington, 14-1. Cust went 3-for-3 with a double, a homer and an RBI. Fonseca, Schenkel, Roman and Kayser each hit homers. Hoelper not only homered, he pitched a four-inning, one-hitter with six strikeouts.
With the Yellow Jacks carrying a 5-1 record into the playoff round, they faced another Seattle team in Rebels 12U, and like their previous game against the invaders from the Northwest, the Jacks’ offense was raring to go.
“I saw that the kids were making comments about how big the other team was,” Mike Cust said, “so I told the kids these guys are 12 just like us. All I ask is you compete and play your butts off.”
Wildcatters 12U Elite, the No. 1 ranked 12U team in the nation, knocked out the Yellow Jackets.
The Rebels claimed a 5-4 lead after scoring five runs in the bottom of the fourth inning, but the Yellow Jacks roared back with 12 runs across the fifth and sixth innings to emerge with a 16-7 victory. Kayser went 3-for-4 with a homer and three RBI, Beardsley homered and drove in three runs, and Gliottone contributed yet another home run. Roman struck out eight over 4⅔ innings and Armenti pitched two frames in relief.
“That was a huge win for us,” Mike Cust said. “We started off the game and their first guy was keeping us off balance, throwing elevated fastballs by my guys. As the game went on we started hitting and getting better at bats. There was a point in the game where I thought we could lose if we didn’t start hitting, but no lead is safe there because the fields are small and the ball flies there.”
The Yellow Jacks’ incredible Cooperstown run came to a halt against the top-ranked team in Perfect Game’s national poll, Wildcatters 12U, a club with a mix of players from California and Texas.
Fonseca, Miller and Hoelper were the only Yellow Jacks to notch a base hit against the Wildcatters who scored 11 runs across the second and third innings and emerged with a 12-0 win in four innings.
The Wildcatters would go on to win three more games and capture the tournament championship.
“Playing that California team was pretty insane,” Fonseca said. “One of the kids was like, 6-5, 230. I felt like a dwarf.”
One of the pleasant surprises for Cust was how Kayser emerged as a leadoff hitter with pop in his bat. Kayser began the team’s nine-game run by hitting in the six- or seven-hole, but he forced Cust’s hand with his consistency at the plate.
Kayser’s .483 batting average and six homers led the team and he drove in 15 runs, one less than team-leader Fonseca with 16. Kayser blasted two leadoff homers, and he and Cust hit back-to-back home runs on three separate occasions.
“I was expecting to hit one or so but something clicked,” said Kayser, who got an All-Star Village baseball with his name engraved to commemorate his longball explosion. “I really caught fire up there. I’m not normally a home run hitter but something just clicked.”
Impressively, the Yellow Jacks had seven players bat over .400 – Kayser, Fonseca (.481), Schenkel (.476), Miller (.476), Cust (.462) and Casey (.458).
Gliottone, the team’s No. 12 hitter, and Cust followed Kayser’s longball beat with five homers each. Casey had four homers and Beardsley, Fonseca and Roman each had three. Casey knocked in 13 runs and Beardsley drove in 10.
Like Stalker, coach Cust had not seen much of Daniel Miller before the Cooperstown trip but he left New York thoroughly impressed. Miller had been called up from the Diamond Jacks Gold 12U team.
“I was pleasantly surprised by how hard he played the game,” Cust said. “He was one of the smallest guys on the team and his at bats were unbelievable. He was a tough out.”
The Jacks’ top performer on the mound was Roman, who went 3-0 with a 2.72 ERA over 11 innings with 17 strikeouts and two walks.
“I thought I was going to give up a lot of home runs based on what people were telling me, but I had a great catcher (Nate Kayser) and I hit my spots,” Roman said.
Skills competition a hit
Every week of All-Star Village tournament play includes three skills competitions – Turn Two, Fastest Man and Home Run Derby. Cust said the Yellow Jacks were the only ballclub to make the finals in each contest.
Turn Two is a timed competition in which teams try to turn 5-4-3, 6-4-3 and 4-6-3 double plays with the fastest combined time. Fonseca, Beardsley, Casey and Kayser handled that drill for the Jacks.
Cust, Armenti and Schenkel competed in the Fastest Man event and Cust turned in a time fast enough to make the finals.
Cust was the Yellow Jacks’ entrant for the Home Run Derby, and he took advantage by going ballistic in the first round with 10 homers to qualify for the championship round. Former major leaguer and Toms River native Todd Frazier volunteered to be his BP pitcher. Torrential rain put a damper on the final round and Cust was limited to five homers.
The Yellow Jacks came together as a team quickly, building an impressive level of chemistry.
Bunking with pals
Two of the biggest aspects of the ballplayers’ week-long stay at All-Star Village is bunking with their teammates and meeting players from across the country.
“I loved hanging out with my team, being in the bunks, learning more about them,” Roman said.
“Daniel Miller and I became good friends,” Fonseca said. “He was on 12U when I was on 13U so we got to know each other better.”
“I thought it was cool living in a room with all your friends,” Kayser said. “It was definitely interesting, a lot different than living with your family. It was a good break.”
“There was so much camaraderie between coaches and kids,” Mike Cust said. “I really enjoyed seeing that. And after watching some of the other kids, I can say our guys were very well behaved.”
Another huge facet of living on campus is the ever-present fascination with pin collection. Players arrive with a handful of their own team pins and are encouraged to trade with other teams.
Kingpin Roman
Roman may have been the unofficial “Kingpin” of the Yellow Jacks, collecting 37 pins, including a coveted pin from the SouthSiders of Toms River. Their coach is none other than Toms River native Frazier.
“Pin trading was super fun,” Fonseca said. “I got pins from Nevada, Texas, California. The very first one I traded, I was there for like an hour and a kid walked up to me from California wanting to trade.”
Of course, no trip to Cooperstown is complete without paying a visit to the Hall of Fame, something Roman did not take for granted.
“It was so much fun seeing everyone’s favorite player,” Roman said. “I loved seeing the old school and classic uniforms and the awards they used to give out.”