Mason Rincon is greeted by his Braves teammates after a solo homer in the fifth inning.
By Rich Bevensee
The experience is what counts, even if the tournament is over for Diamond Nation’s qualifying champion.
The Flores Baseball Braves 12U Red squad earned the right to compete in the Ripken National Championships after winning a qualifier tournament back in April. While the Fairfield, N.J.-based Braves ran roughshod over their competition in the Garden State, competing against the country’s best was a wholly different challenge.
While the Braves didn’t go quietly – the Ripken qualifier out of Diamond Nation in Flemington launched three looong home runs – they were ultimately bombarded by the homer-happy SBA Rebel Nation team from Orlando, Florida, and bowed out after a wild 16-11 decision on Friday morning at the All Star Village in Cooperstown, N.Y.
The Rebels smacked a single-game tournament-high eight homers – three by Andreas Nin – and moved on to the quarterfinals on Saturday to face the Texas-based Dulin’s Dodgers.
The Braves’ Christian Peretti, who hit the second-longest homer of the game – his two-run shot in the fifth struck an apartment window of the players’ lodge high above the playing field, about 235 feet away – said he’ll remember the good times he and his teammates enjoyed before the wins and losses in Cooperstown.
FB Braves Red went 1-2 in pool play before the loss to the Rebels. The Braves lost, 5-4, to SBA JSM X National of Estero, Florida, and 16-5 to Elite RBI National of Houston before earning a 12-6 win over the Tomahawks of Tallassee, Alabama.
“The tournament has been really fun,” said Peretti, who hit three homers in four games this week and pitched the first 1⅔ innings against the Rebels. “Hanging out, seeing all the content creators and meeting new people, that was the best part. This tournament was really big. There were a lot of people watching all the games. The best part for me was hanging out with friends in the bunks.
“But being a part of this tournament was very cool. We got to see stuff that you don’t see every day, see different pitchers and all the good players.”
The Braves (35-9) were led offensively by Julius Donado and Carter Fusco, both of whom had three hits. Donado added a walk, an RBI and two runs scored while Fusco scored twice. Mason Rincon hit a solo homer and went 2-for-4 with two RBI. Hoffman had a two-run homer in the second which cleared the 25-foot brick wall in dead center field and Peretti hit a two-run homer in the fifth.
Dominic Torres dons the Rebels’ honorary motorcycle helmet after hitting a solo HR in the second.
Hoffman, whose two-run homer in the top of the second inning drew the Braves within a run at 4-3, said his national tournament experience will always revolve around his teammates.
“Just hanging out in the bunks, playing games with my teammates is what I’ll remember about being here,” Hoffman said. “It was a great time for bonding for all of us.”
In scoring their second-most runs of the tournament in the loss to the Rebels, Hoffman noted how balanced the Braves offense is. And he’s right. Nine batters reached safely at least once, seven had base hits, seven scored at least once, and five drove in at least one run.
“It shows that no matter where in the order, someone can do something at some point,” Hoffman said. “It doesn’t matter where in the lineup, anyone can make an impact.”
The Rebels (16-4) got three homers from Nin, two from Aven Soto and one each from Eduardo Hernandez, Dominic Torres and Angel Nieves. Nieves’ fourth-inning, three-run shot was even more titanic than Peretti’s, landing on the roof of the players’ lodge, about 255 feet away.
The Rebels’ power also comes in surges. In the bottom of the second inning against the Braves, Soto hit a two-run bomb before Hernandez and Torres followed with back-to-back solo shots. The Rebels went back-to-back again in the fourth thanks to a three-run stroke from Nieves and a solo shot from Nin.
The Rebels have begun a serious longball streak. After opening the tournament by hitting four homers total in their first two pool games, they have hit 15 homers in their last two games. They hit seven homers in their final pool game, an 11-5 win over Prevail-Maroon of Ramsey, N.J.
“It’s crazy, right?” Rebels assistant coach Jay Lleras said. “When we started this tournament they were doubting themselves, thinking they’d hit maybe 10-12 home runs the whole week, and now we’re running it up, three at a time at some points. That just shows these kids have a lot of resilience. They’re not scared to go out there and swing at the ball and hit the ball hard. They’re dogs.
Braves and Rebels meet at first base in a show of good sportsmanship after the Braves’ Christian Peretti (first player on the left in blue) was hit in the head by a pitch.
“Are we home happy? Hey, for us it’s go big or go home. We tell these boys to be aggressive, hit the ball hard and don’t worry about the rest.”
The Braves were on the verge of bowing out due to the run rule. In Cooperstown the game ends if a team leads by 10 after five innings.
The Rebels led 14-3 through four innings and needed just three more outs to end the game. The Braves, however, responded with five runs in the top of the fifth – Peretti and Rincon went deep in that inning – to keep the contest going.
“We didn’t play as well as we could have,” Peretti said. “We gave up a few runs we shouldn’t have, made a few errors, but we fought back. We did what we could.”