{"id":93,"date":"2018-08-23T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=999915758"},"modified":"2018-08-23T07:00:03","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T14:00:03","slug":"where-are-they-now-looking-back-on-the-2008-pony-world-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/where-are-they-now-looking-back-on-the-2008-pony-world-champions","title":{"rendered":"Where are they now: Looking back on the 2008 PONY World Champions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/player\/mrymw-97f93a?from=site&amp;vjs=1&amp;skin=1&amp;fonts=Helvetica&amp;auto=0&amp;download=0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>This week on What Up, Long Beach?! JJ and Mike are discussing the Long Beach PONY All-Star success with president and manager Ken Jakemer (2:30).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Subscribe to What Up, Long Beach?! on <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/what-up-long-beach\/id1351623377?mt=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/the562.podbean.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Podbean<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>20:00<\/td>\n<td>Long Beach Football Previews<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>33:00<\/td>\n<td>Either, Or: Hard Knocks or Last Chance U?<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>39:00<\/td>\n<td>Fam Jam<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nKen Jakemer makes his living as a software project manager, but inside his chest there\u2019s a beating baseball where his heart should be. He\u2019s been volunteering at the Long Beach PONY youth baseball league at Whaley Park for more than a decade, and has coached four All-Star teams of 14-year-olds to the PONY World Series in Washington, Pennsylvania\u2014including the group that returned home just last week.<\/p>\n<p>Jakemer has a good eye for talent and an intuitive sense of how to put a team together. Ten years ago, when he stood before his 2008 All-Stars for the first time, he knew it was going to be a special group.<\/p>\n<p>The 14 boys kneeling on the grass at Whaley that day went on to do something that hadn\u2019t been done in Long Beach in a half-century, winning a PONY world title. They did it without losing a single game, a magic summer season of 15 games and 15 wins. The scoreboard in right field at Whaley Park has a picture of the team on it, and the words, \u201cScoreboard Donated In Honor of the 2008 PONY World Champions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody has matched what they did,\u201d says Jakemer. \u201cThey\u2019re by far the best team that\u2019s come out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Starting Out<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The PONY team the year before, in 2007, had made it to the World Series and lost in the championship game to Puerto Rico. It was Long Beach\u2019s first trip to the World Series in a long time, and the 2008 kids had been hearing all year from the 2007 players about how they would never live up to their performance.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999915767\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999915767\" style=\"width: 970px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/L8__4030-970.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-999915767\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/L8__4030-970.jpg\" alt=\"Chase De Jong starting for the PONY team in 2008\" width=\"970\" height=\"1455\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999915767\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chase De Jong starting for the PONY team in 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cWe were tired of hearing about them making it to the World Series,\u201d says Chase De Jong, the 2008 team\u2019s ace pitcher. \u201cWe knew we were better than them, and we were very motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jakemer says that motivation was obvious from the first practice the team held.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a team like that, they pushed each other every day in practice,\u201d says Jakemer. \u201cThey knew the game inside out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Older baseball fans might gripe about the younger generation not playing outside enough, but nobody could have leveled that complaint at the 2008 Long Beach kids. The bulk of the 14-man roster grew up playing baseball together in Little League, at the Tom Hicks Baseball Camp, and on youth travel teams.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a high baseball IQ,\u201d says Thomas Walker. \u201cBaseball was our lives, it\u2019s all we did was play together our whole lives growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Beating Heartwell<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The team easily beat Lynwood 11-1 in its first game, setting up a showdown with its historic rival, Heartwell PONY. Representing the Lakewood area, Heartwell\u2019s PONY program and Whaley\u2019s have been battling it out for more than a half-century\u2014and for most of that time, Heartwell got the better of the rivalry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 2007 we get all the way to the World Series championship game, but we still lost to Heartwell, 5-0,\u201d says Jakemer. \u201cThe 2008 team really wanted to beat them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A good portion of the city\u2019s baseball fandom turned out to see the game, which was held at Whaley.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was probably the most attended game in Whaley history,\u201d laughs Walker. \u201cThere were people everywhere, down both base lines, in the outfield. It was the most important game of any 14-year-old\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Long Beach kids didn\u2019t just win, they won 15-1 via mercy rule, a shocking upending of the status quo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe thought that was our World Series,\u201d says Walker.<\/p>\n<p>Walker hit a grand slam in the first inning, and De Jong, Matt Heavin, and Matt Maccarrone all hit homeruns.<\/p>\n<p>With the Heartwell monkey off their backs, the Long Beach kids kept ripping off wins. They won the Section Tournament, they went to Whittier and won the Super Regional Tournament, and they went to Fullerton to win the Zone Tournament, riding pitchers Oliver Van Buskirk, Brett Harper, Ty Provencher, and Soloman Williams to wins over the best programs from California, Arizona, and Utah and earning a trip back to the big show.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999915760\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999915760\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/L8__4183.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-999915760\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-999915760 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/L8__4183-970x647.jpg\" alt=\"Team photo.\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999915760\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Team photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>The World Series<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jakemer and his assistants Rick Romo and Victor Merrill had just a few days to coordinate the travel of 14 kids and their families across the country to Washington, Pennsylvania. The team arrived with Long Beach swagger, as WIlliams had his barber cut a \u201c562\u201d into the back of his hair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was the trip of a lifetime,\u201d says Heavin, who was a player on the 2008 team and a coach with the 2018 PONY team. \u201cI told the kids this year about going to Pennsylvania\u2014baseball is great, but that trip is where we became best friends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The players were packed in four to a room in the hotel but one of them brought a Playstation, which meant it was often more crowded than that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019d have 14 guys in one hotel room playing video games,\u201d says Walker. The team went to a Pirates game together, and spent practically every other waking moment playing wiffle ball outside the hotel. \u201cWe\u2019d play with any team that was awake in the morning, we played with the kids from Taiwan, we played with anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For some, there was too much playing. De Jong is a famously focused athlete and he likes to make sure he\u2019s rested before game day, especially when he\u2019s pitching.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell I was in a room with Chase and Brett Harper and Jake Hardy,\u201d says Heavin. \u201cWe were playing Playstation and being loud and Chase locked me out of the room. I ended up stuck in a room with Thomas and Soloman and Daniel DeWolf and they had to lay some sheets and towels on the ground for me to sleep on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was bigger than him so I actually picked him up and threw him in the other room,\u201d says De Jong. \u201cI\u2019m still that way. At 10:30 I\u2019m going to bed, I don\u2019t want to stay up and play video games.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Walker says that on another night the team was being too loud, De Jong threw a quarter at the wall in frustration. The 6-foot-4 pitcher was the team\u2019s ace for a reason\u2014the quarter stuck in the wall.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Championship<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In between all that off-field fun, the team played some great baseball, too.<\/p>\n<p>They dispatched the state champions from Florida and Maryland, and earned their way into a championship game against Chinese-Taipei. In the bottom of the seventh inning, Long Beach was trailing 2-1 and feeling the stress, just three outs away from losing a second consecutive world championship.<\/p>\n<p>Maccarrone hit the first pitch he saw through the 5-6 hole to get on base, and then Van Buskirk stepped to the plate as a pinch-hitter and delivered a Hollywood ending. He drove a long fly into right center, and put enough power into it to carry it over the fence. Van Buskirk came in from the dugout and delivered one of the city\u2019s great sports moments: a walkoff world championship homerun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me it was relief as much as elation,\u201d says Jakemer. \u201cWe\u2019d been there and lost in 2007, we were losing again in the seventh. There was elation but it was just, \u2018Thank God.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>De Jong didn\u2019t see what happened.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI felt like I let my team down, we were losing and I felt like it was my fault, so I was in the back of the dugout with my head in my glove,\u201d he says. \u201cThen I hear BAM and everyone\u2019s running out of the dugout.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The players jumped up and down around home plate, screaming at each other not to touch Van Buskirk until he touched home plate and the win was complete. As soon as he did, they mobbed him. The fans in the stands were going crazy, the announcers were screaming into their microphones. Back home, fans had gathered at Legends to watch a livestream of the game\u2014their cheers could be heard for blocks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Decade Since<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Van Buskirk\u2019s jersey went to Cooperstown for a year and now resides permanently in the PONY Hall of Fame. The Long Beach kids came home and went straight to Whaley, where they were greeted by friends and fans. The city threw them a parade, and the kids spent the rest of the summer as local celebrities, honored everywhere they went.<\/p>\n<p>Twelve of the 14 players ended up at Wilson High, with the exception of Walker, who went to Poly, and Avery Flores, who went to Millikan. They all spent their high school years battling it out at Blair Field. The Wilson players won a California Legion state championship in Yountville together in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>As the years unspooled from that magic summer of 2008, Jakemer\u2019s impression that this was an uncommonly talented team was proven correct. According to the NCAA, about 2 percent of high school varsity athletes receive athletic scholarships; a whopping six of the 14 players on the 2008 PONY team went on to play college sports. A seventh could have, but De Jong skipped playing at USC because he was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays.<\/p>\n<p>While Heavin was playing at Chapman, while Provencher was suiting up for the Dirtbags at Blair Field, while Walker went to Oregon and Williams went to Cal State Bakersfield, while Flores was grinding at a college program in Texas, while Harper was playing football at Pomona, De Jong was working his way up through the minor leagues. He made his Major League debut for the Mariners last spring, and is now in the Twins\u2019 system, hoping for a September call-up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve done some pretty cool things in baseball and I\u2019m going to continue to do some,\u201d he says. \u201dBut that summer is one of the most special memories I\u2019ll ever have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The baseball IQ that carried the team through 2008 has continued to show up. Despite the fact that the players are just now entering their mid-20s, several of them have already begun careers as coaches. Williams and Heavin have both coached at Wilson and co-founded a travel team, the Long Beach Quakes. Walker coaches junior college ball and coached the Rochester Honkers over the summer, a college summer baseball program, becoming the youngest-ever head coach of a Northwoods League program, and Provencher is coaching in Orange County.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999915761\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999915761\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/1510647_764177086934075_312859032_n.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-999915761\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-999915761 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/1510647_764177086934075_312859032_n.jpg\" alt=\"Scoreboard today at Whaley honoring 2008 champs.\" width=\"960\" height=\"640\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999915761\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scoreboard today at Whaley honoring 2008 champs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Unbroken Bonds<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re friends with a few of the former players on Facebook, you get to see a lot of their faces pretty regularly. That\u2019s because most of the team has remained close over the last decade.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m getting married in November and four of my groomsmen were on that team,\u201d says Heavin. \u201cProbably 10 of the guys will be going to the wedding. Soloman and I are business partners now, Chase and Thomas coach with us when they\u2019re in town. We\u2019re all good friends still.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Walker says the enduring bonds have something to do with the success they first tasted together in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve played in NCAA Regionals, I\u2019ve played in some big games,\u201d he says. \u201cWhenever someone asks what my greatest memory is, it\u2019s always the 2008 World Series team. It was the best time of my life. It was a group of friends who grew up together winning a world championship for Long Beach, the city we loved, the city we had on our chests. You never break that bond of winning together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat can you say?\u201d asks Jakemer. \u201cIt was a perfect summer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The 2008 PONY World Champions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Coaches: Ken Jakemer, Rick Romo, Victor Merrill<\/p>\n<p>Players: Chase De Jong, Daniel DeWolf, Cody Elder, Irie Elizalde, Avery Flores, Jake Hardy, Brett Harper, Matt Heavin, Matt Maccarrone, Victory Martinez, Ty Provencher, Oliver Van Buskirk, Thomas Walker, Soloman Williams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Jakemer makes his living as a software project manager, but inside his chest there\u2019s a beating baseball where his heart should be. He\u2019s been volunteering at the Long Beach PONY youth baseball league at Whaley Park for more than a decade, and has coached four All-Star teams of 14 year olds to the PONY World Series in Washington, Pennsylvania&#8211;including the group that returned home just last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":16441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[2],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-what-up-long-beach","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","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\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}