Font ResizeTEN DAYS in Ecuador could have been tough for the 14-and-under USA National baseball team at the Pan Am Championships. For one thing, there was the food.
"It was pretty much rice and fish every day, and they also had a lot of goat," Granada High freshman Ryan Kirby said. "I had a little bit. It was really chewy."
The limited menu didn't appear to impact the 14-year-old Kirby or his U.S. teammates. They chewed through six straight games and captured the tournament's gold medal with a 4-3 victory over Puerto Rico on Oct. 24.
Kirby had a blast on the ball field — he hit .500 for the tournament and launched the longest home run of the event, earning himself the best batter and slugger awards in the tournament featuring teams from six Western Hemisphere countries.
Kirby wasn't the only East Bay player to make a significant impact, either.
James Logan's Alex Martinez picked up two pitching victories, including one in relief in the title game. The Union City 14-year-old didn't surrender a run in 41/3 innings, struck out nine and didn't walk a batter.
The road to Ecuador was long and arduous. It started during the summer with a tryout at Archbishop Mitty High-San Jose, featuring players from the Northern California region. A second tryout was held at the Stockton Ports' Single-A stadium to select a team from the NorCal region.
That team participated in a camp in Napa, then
That group of 24 was narrowed to 18, and those players immediately left for Portoviejo, Ecuador, with Kirby and Martinez making the cut.
With all of those steps just to get on the U.S. squad, playing baseball in South America was the easy part.
"I'd never played on a national team before, and I didn't know what to expect, but I thought it would be fun and give me a chance to get my name out there," Kirby said. "It's a USA team so it's a pretty big honor just to play for them."
The U.S. squad already had two standout third basemen, which is Kirby's normal position, so he was switched to the outfield to keep his bat in the lineup, where he hit cleanup. He played in five of six games and 3-for-6 with a homer, three RBI, three runs and three walks.
During his first trip outside the U.S., he learned to appreciate the pleasures of home. He was able to see some of the sights of Ecuador with his parents, and not all of it was pretty.
"There's quite a bit of poverty," he said. "Once you got outside of the cities, most of the people lived in shacks."
The Americans outscored their first four opponents 50-0, but the semifinals and final proved considerably tougher, as the U.S. had to come from behind to beat both Brazil 5-3 and Puerto Rico 4-3.
"There's a lot of soccer down there," Kirby said. "Everywhere you looked, people had soccer balls. But they're starting to play some baseball, too."
For the past year, Kirby has been playing for an elite NorCal travel team. He figures to be a fixture for Granada over the next four years and hopes to play college ball after high school. He said he enjoyed his national team stint so much that he's going to give the 16-and-under team a try in two years.
Contact Carl Steward at csteward@bayareanewsgroup.com.
