Little League home run derby a one-man show
May 16—A sign that something special was about to happen came when 10-year-old Finnigan Evans smacked his bare hand into is baseball mitt, looked over his left shoulder toward the outfield fence and watched a bunch of kids hop over it and shuffle away in the opposite direction.
"Darrell," Evans said, turning his attention back toward home plate. "Better get ready."
About 150 feet away, Darrell Carbajal dug into the batter's box at Alto Park, kicking up a tiny cloud of rust-colored dust as he looked through his glasses and out at the pitching screen about 40 feet away. Long before he started the final round of Saturday's T-Mobile Home Run Derby, he had secured his place as the undisputed long ball champ of the Santa Fe Little League.
He'd launched five out of the park in the opening round and was well on his way to a memorable final trip to the plate, putting on the kind of show that will have people buzzing for years to come. Using a 33-ounce wood bat that would have some high school players opting for something lighter, he smacked 30 home runs before the competition was over.
"That's the future of baseball in Santa Fe right there," said Aaron Ortiz, the president of Santa Fe Little League that has seen its player rosters nearly double in size since the last time Little League took the field in 2019. "All these kids are our future. I think baseball in Santa Fe is in healthy place. The league is growing and the talent is getting better."
Saturday's competition was part of a national campaign that will send the country's best and most dangerous hitters onto a bigger stage later this summer. Whether the 5-foot-4, 165-pound Carbajal gets there is anyone's guess. All that anyone really cared about was bringing 19 players from the local Little League together for a chance to do what the big league all-stars do every summer.
"Let's see, the secret to winning this thing is, I don't know, stay positive, I guess," said second-place finisher Logan Gallegos, a 12-year-old sixth grader. "Maybe the only thing I do different is do an uppercut and crush, you know?"
Decked out in a No. 4 Braves jersey, the switch-hitting Gallegos had 10 home runs to earn a $25 gift certificate to a local sporting goods store while Evans, wearing an untucked Aaron Judge pinstriped Yankees jersey, finished third with three line-drive homers in his final go-round.
Carbajal got a $100 gift card that was already burning a hole in his pocket before he even left the field.
"I know exactly what I'm getting with this," he said. "Seeds. I want sunflower seeds."
Asked about the possibility of buying a new bat or a brand new set of cleats, he said his shoes were fine and his bat collection is right where it needs to be.
"I don't need a bat, but I do need seeds," he said.
As he watched one ball after another sail off Carbajal's bat and over his head in left, Evans couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to be standing on deck when watching that kind of power during a game.
"He's not on my team but, yeah, I wish he was," Evans said as the longest of the tape-measure shots bounced off the artificial turf well beyond the waist-high fence, sending a group of about 10 kids chasing after it.
The longest Carbajal blast was measured at just over 280 feet, further than his previous best of 272, according to his dad. One of them cleared a tree beyond the left-field fence and bounced off a nearby bench. Another landed just short of the fence and nearly took out Ortiz's daughter who was chasing down loose balls.
"First time I put a bat in his hands was when he was 3, and right away I saw his potential," said Andrew Carbajal, his son's coach on the Little League Rangers — and the one who had him switch exclusively to wood bats. "Using wood forces you to use better mechanics because it's you hitting the ball, not the bat."
Carbajal's exploits had an interesting effect on the parents, families and passersby who watched Saturday's event. Even Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber stopped by, pausing from his interactions with his constituents to lean against the chain-link fence near the dugout and watch each of Carbajal's missiles whiz by.
"I don't see any of those people and I don't hear anything, either," Carbajal said, sounding more like a 32-year-old big league veteran than a sixth grader who took a year off from baseball because of the coronavirus pandemic. "I just concentrate on the dirt, on the field and my bat."
The fact that Saturday's event even took place puts a smile on Ortiz's face. He said player participation jumped from 250 kids last year to 453 this spring. About the only problem he's got now is having the infrastructure to make his league run.
"We're a volunteer league and we need people to lend a hand," he said. "If anyone was, I don't know, interested in lining the fields, being a team mom or assistant coach, maybe umpire or just be around to help us run the finances and keep the kids playing, I'll take the help. Look at our numbers; we're growing. Baseball has a place in this city and we'll take anything."
On Saturday, he also could have used a few ball-shaggers.
