My partner here in Williamsport and co-worker at Active Greg Lopez sent me a text message during the game between Park View Little League (Chula Vista, CA) and Logan County/Russellville Little League (Russellville, KY). The text said simply, "What'd I tell ya?"

!http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50994/GL-West2.jpg?blogID=8913|height=432|style=padding:10px;|align=left|width=288|src=http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50994/GL-West2.jpg?blogID=8913!Now Greg is a little prejudiced. It's not just because Chula Vista is located close to San Diego where our Active offices are located that he's excited about this team. Greg went to Chula Vista High School and also played Little League for Chula Vista American Little League. He told me that when he played (a long time ago), Park View Little League didn't even exist.

Before coming to the Williamsport, Greg had gone to the Western Regional tournament in San Bernadino, CA and watched Park View play there. He told me that the team had scored 98 runs in the 6 games they played in. But the most impressive part of those 98 runs? 38 of them were from home runs! Center fielder Kiko Garcia hit 12 home runs and First Baseman/Pitcher Luke Ramirez hit 4. And unfortunately for Russellville, Chula Vista continued the trend.

Things started out looking good for KY as starting pitcher Barrett Croslin took down the first two CA batters. But with two outs Chula Vista had a pair of singles and then a two-run triple from right fielder Bradley Reberto and they took an early 2-0 lead and never looked back.

Luke Ramirez lead off the third inning with a shot over right field that landed up the hill. As you may recall, Little League extended the outfield fences a few years ago to 225 feet. This was to help increase the doubles and triples and reduce the number of home runs. It just didn't matter to Chula Vista. To Russellville's credit, they hadn't allowed a hit since the first inning and Chula Vista's lead was only 3-0 and it looked like we were going to have a pretty close game. Boy was I wrong.

The Park View team did what they do best in the fourth and fifth innings. Things were still looking good for !http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50995/GL-West1.jpg?blogID=8913|height=432|style=padding:10px;|align=right|width=288|src=http://community.active.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/38-50995/GL-West1.jpg?blogID=8913!Russellville with only one out to get... but they didn't get it until Andy Rios and Bulla Graft both got singles and Ramirez had his second home run of the game.

Starting with the first pitch in the fourth inning to the final out in the fifth, the California team had six home runs and scored 12 runs while batting around the lineup twice. Every Chula Vista batter had at least one hit while Rios, Ramirez and Garcia had two!

In the press conference following the game, Russellville manager Kevin Kettings said, “After the fifth inning, it got to the point where it was comical to them (his players). "They were having a good time with it. The trainer came in and asked if we needed to ice any pitchers arms, but, of course, they didn’t throw hard enough to get iced down. So we told her we needed our necks iced down from watching all the home runs being hit over the fence.” And this from the losing team. I think it says a lot about this small team from Russellville, KY.

When I was at the Central Region tournament, I had a chance to interview Kettings and he told me that their total town population was about 28,000 and they only had three Major Baseball teams during the regular season. This gave them a total of 33 players to try and chose an all-star team from and they chose these 10. The team may be small but they have big hearts and are still having a great time in Williamsport.

Unfortunately, they lost their second game as well to the Southwest team from San Antonio, TX 12-0. With two losses, this will eliminate them from moving on to the championship round.

But the kids are not hanging their heads down. They are the champions of the Great Lakes divison. They survived thousands of teams trying to get to the Little League Baseball World Series and only sixteen got here. Congratulations Logan County/Russellville Little League. You are a class act!