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Last Saturday at Whaley Park, Long Beach Pony threw itself a World Champion-worthy Opening Day ceremony…which is good, since they’re the reigning world champs and all. <\/span>There was a healthy dose of appreciation for the program’s storied recent history (2007 World Champ runner-ups and 2008 World Champs), as well as some looking to the future, as the 2009 squads were announced and the games began.<\/p>\n \n Eddy Van Guyse, who was on mic duty, first announced the 2007 team, the first LB team to advance to the World Series in 42 years—then last year’s fabled squad was brought out, and their run to the championship was recapped, including the audio call of the walk-off home run that sealed the championship game against Chinese-Taipei. <\/span>Dignitaries from the PONY organization were on hand to celebrate the start of the new season, and to reflect on the class of the LB organization as they comported themselves in the World Series. <\/span>Then coach Hall from Wilson, who’s been the beneficiary of a lot of the PONY, before Millikan’s coach Glasser acknowledged the team’s accomplishments as well. <\/span>Glasser also reminisced about having played at Whaley in his youth.<\/p>\n Then coach Rick Romo zipped a fastball to coach Victor Merrill, before the crescendo: the unveiling of the 2008 World Champions sign, which will, if there is any justice, hang at Whaley Park forever. <\/span>Check out the photos of the event below, and a congrats and good luck to Ken Jakemer and the rest of the PONY coaches and players—hopefully we’ll be covering you late into the summer again!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long Beach’s World Champions are at it again, with an opening day ceremony worthy of their status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4405"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4405"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/i304.photobucket.com\/albums\/nn191\/LBPOSTphotos\/Sports\/3-14-09023.jpg\")
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