Alpine bows out in West Region semifinals

But with three outs to go, and Alpine trailing by 11, the fellas were climbing the walls of the dugout with the pure joy of the game that makes Little League one of the best baseball shows on earth.

“We knew it was our last inning that we’d play in Little League, so we wanted to have fun and try to be as loud as we could,” Alpine’s Teddy Hourigan said. “We thought we could still win, even though we were down by a lot.”

It was a tall order after Monday’s emotional loss 4-3 in extra innings to Hawaii state champion Honolulu. Alpine had burned ace right-hander Nolan Levinson for Wednesday’s game — meaning the number of pitches he threw against Honolulu required him to rest two days, making him unavailable until Thursday — and Bodhi Bedner was also unavailable to pitch after throwing 80 pitches through 5 1/3 hitless innings against Honolulu.

Not that Monday’s workload took much of a toll on the unbreakable Bedner, who said his arm was feeling fine two days later.

“It was more sore yesterday, but it wasn’t too bad today,” Bedner said.

So, Alpine turned to Max Turner for the semifinal showdown with Golden Hill, and the right-hander did not disappoint. While the score would get out of hand in the later innings, Turner locked horns with Golden Hill starting left-hander Jacob Woo, as the two battled through three scoreless innings.

“I felt pretty confident,” Turner said. “But as it got proceeding through the game, I got a little nervous.”

Turner’s two-pitch repertoire was locked in from his warmup pitches prior to the first inning. And as soon as he peeled off a fastball for a strike to open the game, catcher Derek Armstrong knew Alpine’s No. 2 starter had his “A+” stuff.

“The first pitch,” Armstrong said, “he threw it, it was just perfect.”

Going up against Golden Hill’s No. 2 starter, Alpine shook up its lineup. The biggest change was the flip-flopping of the top two hitters, with Patrick Breslin moving into the leadoff spot, and Levinson moving into the 2-hole.

“I saw [the lineup] and I was a little bit shocked,” Breslin said. “I didn’t know I was going to be first. I thought Garrett (Weiss) was. And I thought the lineup was pretty good.”

Breslin led off the bottom of the first with a single, then opportunistically motored from first to third on a wild pitch. But Woo battled back to strike out the side. As it turned out, Alpine would have a runner reach third base in each of the first two innings, but stranded them both.

“I think we were all a little bit thrown off by [Woo’s] velo of the curveball,” Alpine’s Kogan Flannery said. “He would throw a fastball, and then the next pitch he’d throw a curveball, and it would pretty much throw every lefty before me off. If we would have kept him in longer, I think we would have adjusted and started hitting some off his curveball.”

The shocker was when — after Charles Saste drew a leadoff walk against Woo to start the second inning — Golden Hill turned to right-hander Gavin Janicke. Janicke is undoubtedly the staff ace, and was dialed in with his electric fastball. Janicke went the rest of the way, working five innings, allowing one hit and one walk, while striking out 14.

“He threw gas and he was really good,” Nolan Levinson said.

Dylan Dossola was the only Alpine batter to get a hit against Janicke, and had to dig himself out of a two-strike hole to do it. This is something Alpine has done all summer long — produce in two strike counts. This was a little different, though, as Dossola got the bunt sign from manager and third-base coach Dave Levinson for the first two pitches of the at-bat, with Dossola missing both.

Then with a 1-2 count, Dossola roped a line drive over the second baseman’s head for a clean single to center.

“I was just trying to put it in play,” Dossola said. “To be honest, I’m not the best bunter, and I wasn’t very confident going up to do that. But I felt like I could hit that guy. So, I swung and the barrel hit the ball.”

Then, in the top of the fourth, Golden Hill broke through. No. 5 batter Evan Cho got his team on the board with a two-run single, and he later scored on a bases-loaded walk to Jacob Morris. That was the last batter Turner faced in the game, turning the ball over to Breslin, who entered for two innings of relief.

Golden Hill added three more runs in the fifth, with an RBI single from Janicke, followed by a two-run single from big left-handed hitting No. 3 batter Lincoln Ploog. In the sixth, Golden Hill broke it open with a five-run outburst, sparked by a leadoff triple from Cho, who scored on the play when the throw to third from the outfield went into the dugout. Enzo Catota and Nolan Saldana added RBI singles, Raegan Pak drove home a run on a groundout, and No. 12 hitter Kellan Tucker doubled home a run.

Saste was called upon to pitch with two outs in the sixth, and retired the only batter he faced. It was the first time the right-hander pitched since the opening game of the Northern California tournament in Petaluma.

“I was the third-string today,” Saste said. “I just woke up, I was ready. I didn’t feel any pressure today.”

The last baserunner of the night for Alpine came in the fifth inning, when Simeon Ouellette-Massiou hit a chopper to the left side of the infield and ran like the wind. When the shortstop’s throw erred high, Ouellette-Massiou hustled his way in position to duck under the swipe-tag attempt.

“I really wanted to get on base,” Ouellette-Massiou said. “I wanted to make my last at-bat really count for the team.”

Alpine played three games in the West Region tournament, including a 5-1 victory over Arizona state champion Arcadia in Saturday’s opener.

“Here, all the teams are very strong,” Weiss said. “The first game we played, Arizona, the first guy he was tough to hit, but I did get a couple good hits off of him. And then Hawaii we knew there were going to be really good ... but that was a really close game. I think we could have had it.”

And to see Alpine’s players climbing all over one another to whoop it up in the cage-style dugout in the sixth, as Hourigan, Turner and Dossola took the last at-bats of the summer, you would have believed they still thought they could have had it.

“It was really crazy,” Ouellette-Massiou said. “We were having such a fun time. We just wanted to make sure we were just having fun with our last ABs.”

It was quite a ride for Alpine, a team that went 12-2 on the summer, picking up three championship banners along the way — District 52, Section 3 and Nor Cal. It all started in early June, when the team held its first unofficial practice on the Atherton diamond of Sacred Heart Prep.

“First practice, I remember driving to the field and being super happy, and just excited to start the season,” Chambers said. “And I couldn’t wait.”

Alpine was coached by Jamie Breslin and Michael Hourigan. And then there is Cool Uncle Dave, manager Dave Levinson, who is in fact not Nolan Levinson’s father, but his uncle.

Heading into the summer, Dave Levinson’s goal was simply for Alpine to take home the District 52 banner — something this group of players hadn’t done in two previous seasons, though they did advance to the tournament finals of the 2024 District 52 11s tournament.

Dave Levinson’s team accomplished its mission, becoming the first Alpine/West Menlo squad to capture the District 52 12s title since 2001. Then they just kept going.

“We were so locked in on districts,” Dave Levinson said. “We were like: ‘We’re going to take down districts! It’s San Mateo, we’ve gotta get ’em! It’s gonna be epic!’ And now we’re in frickin’ San Bernardino. I did not see that coming.”