Photo of 2015 Seniors.
Article By Ben Baby, SA Express News Staff Writer May 30, 2015 Updated: May 30, 2015 10:10pm
CORPUS CHRISTI— Twelve-year-old Sergio Macias stepped up to the plate with his Del Mar Little League teammates trailing the team from McAlister Park by three runs when it started pouring in Fort Worth.
It was in the fifth inning of the Texas West championship game, and both 12-and-under teams were trying to advance to the Southwest Regional tournament in Waco and eventually the nationally-televised tournament.
Macias never had a chance to bat. The game was called, McAlister Park won 6-3 and eventually played for the Little League U.S. Championship.
“We were all pretty mad about,” Macias said. “We wanted to keep playing but they said we couldn’t because of the rain.”
Six years later, the junior and Laredo Alexander were trying to knock Reagan out in the Region IV-6A semifinals. That will have to wait until Monday.
Rain suspended Saturday’s Game 2 at Corpus Christi Calallen’s Chapman Field in the top of the third inning with Alexander leading 5-1. The game will resume at Wolff Stadium on Monday at a time yet to be determined. Alexander leads the series 1-0 and could eliminate the defending regional champions with a win.
Alexander, the state’s top-ranked team in 6A according to the coaches’ poll, was coming off a 9-2 win in Game 1 at Laredo’s Uni-Trade Stadium. Game 2 was originally scheduled for Saturday at Wolff Stadium but it moved to Calallen after threats of bad weather.
If a game couldn’t be started Saturday, the series would have reverted to a one-game playoff and Alexander would have advanced to face Johnson or Edinburg in the regional finals.
“It would have been the same feeling, just flipped,” said Reagan senior Jace Selsor comparing the situation from 2009 and this weekend’s dilemma. “It would have been a really awful way to lose.”
Selsor and Morrow are the one only Reagan players remaining from that McAlsiter Park team. Del Mar switched youth associations after the contentious incident and have been in the PONY League since, according to Alexander coach Mario Garcia.
It only seems fitting that both teams are playing for another year. Reagan knocked Alexander out in the same round of last year’s playoffs before advancing to the state tournament for the first time in school history.
Back in 2009, it was the San Antonio-area team celebrating when the rain poured.
“They had the tarp out and we just slid across the tarp,” Reagan senior Zach Morrow said. “It was pretty fun.”
About an hour and half after both teams left the field Saturday, they ran into the dugouts, retrieved their respective items and headed back to their respective cities. Six years later, some of the Del Mark kids are on the verge of getting their revenge on the kids from McAlister Park.
“Hopefully we’ll keep it from getting to that,” Selsor said.
bbaby@express-news.net
Twitter: @Ben_Baby