Roosevelt Park players pose with state championship trophy back in 2001.
(Photo courtesy of Steve Schuitema)
By Tom Kendra
LocalSportsJournal.com
The Roosevelt Park Little League baseball team was certainly “the boys of summer” back in 2001.
“The Park” did something that no Muskegon-area team had ever done since the tournament began in 1957 - and hasn’t done since - winning a traditional 11- and 12-year-old Little League baseball state championship.
But they didn’t stop there.
Roosevelt Park headed to the Great Lakes Regional in Indianapolis and resumed their winning ways, knocking off the state champs from Wisconsin, Ohio and Illinois, and coming within one win of a spot in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn. RP lost the title game to Indiana, 4-1, which was a night game and televised nationally on ESPN2.
“It was just magical and the greatest summer of my life,” said Roosevelt Park manager Steve Schuitema, who is now the long-time baseball coach at Muskegon Catholic Central.
“Those kids captured the hearts of the whole area and people were having watch parties for that final game. We had a special group that loved to play baseball, loved to compete and they were all focused on the same goal.”
Those boys are now men in their mid-30s, but they will reunite on June 6 at The Event Center at Fricano Place on Muskegon Lake, when they will be inducted into the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame - becoming the first youth team to enter the hall in its 39-year history.
“You look back and realize that our lives were so simple back then,” said Troy Forton, a pitcher and first baseman on that team who went on to play Division I baseball at Western Michigan University. “You wake up and either play or practice baseball. To have that many talented and like-minded kids from the same little area is crazy.
“You don’t know that you are literally living out the movie “The Sandlot” until it’s over.”
A gathering storm
Roosevelt Park certainly didn’t come out of nowhere in the summer of 2001.
The core group of that team first made their mark in 1998, going undefeated and winning the Muskegon County championship for 8- and 9-year-olds.
The following year, Schuitema skippered that talented group to the state championship for 9- and 10-year-olds, becoming the first team from the Muskegon area to win a Little League title in any age division.
With many of those kids on the team as 11-year-olds, Roosevelt Park made a deep run in 2000, but came up short of the title - setting the stage for a drive for area history when that talented nucleus was a year older.
“Looking back and thinking about it, we had a star at every position,” said Jake Polanyi, who played centerfield and moved into the critical leadoff spot in the batting order when Andrew Carlson got injured in Indianapolis. “I could go around the horn at every spot and I wouldn’t trade the guy we had at every position for anybody.”
Jordan Bundt was a stalwart at catcher, who played the critical position with the savvy of someone twice his age. Forton and Andrew Callow were scooping machines at first base and Justin Judd was fearless at third base, often creeping up onto the grass to prevent bunts.
Up the middle, RP was rock-solid with Carlson at shortstop and Chris Mattson at second base (with backup from Scott Schuitema), with the speedy Polanyi in centerfield.
Matt Ulfsax, Josh Sharpe and Kyle Mattson shared the other outfield positions.
As good as the team was defensively, the strength may well have been its pitching depth. RP was so deep on the mound that twin brothers Chris and Kyle Mattson (the only 11-year-olds on the team) rarely took the mound - and those two ended up being the aces the following year, when RP advanced all the way back to the state championship game, coming within a whisker of repeating.
Schuitema spent many a night leading up to the 2001 tournament wondering who would emerge as the ace, the guy he could call upon in dire situations or against a loaded opponent.
He got his answer in the final game of the district tournament, when he decided to insert David Mowers, a tall, quiet kid who threw hard, but had control issues.
“He couldn’t find the plate during the regular season,” said Schuitema, who noted that Mowers worked with Elite Training coaches in Grand Rapids that summer, which paid dividends.
“He came into that district game and threw absolute gas right over the plate.
“I looked over at my assistants and said: ‘OK, he’s throwing strikes, we’re ready to go.”
Taking the show on the road
Half of the team’s players lived within walking distance of Delmar Field, located near the center of the one-square mile city of Roosevelt Park.
The other players lived not too far away in Norton Shores, truly hometown kids that ventured up to the Little League State Tournament in unseasonably warm Norway, located near Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula.
Roosevelt Park used its team chemistry and unselfish play to knock off one traditional powerhouse after another - St. Clair, Taylor, Midland and Georgetown - areas which had well-established travel programs, indoor training facilities and many choices for private, individualized instruction.
“The Park” countered with a bunch of kids that loved to get together on their own on Saturdays and Sundays at Delmar just to play the game, occasionally grabbing a roll of quarters and heading to the batting cages at the Bat ’N Club on Sherman Boulevard.
“We had good players at every position, but we had great chemistry because our core group had been playing together for four years in a row,” said Forton.
Forton also noted that the team was blessed with outstanding coaching, notably the deep baseball knowledge and attention to detail of Schuitema. He was assisted all season by third base coach Dale Carlson and bench coach Craig Bundt, then added Randy Forton for additional help on the tournament run.
Schuitema had a knack for knowing which pitchers to use at what time.
A prime example of that was the third game at the state tournament, when RP faced a very good Midland team, which had given them fits two years ago as 10-year-olds. Schuitema and Bundt had a feeling that the unorthodox style of Callow would befuddle them and, sure enough, he threw a gem in a 9-1 victory.
After capturing the winner’s bracket title, the Park suffered its first loss of the entire postseason against Grosse Pointe Farms, 8-3.
But no one on the team panicked, because Schuitema had saved Mowers for the championship game of the double-elimination tournament. “The Mouse” delivered the next day and RP made history with a 4-2 win over that same Grosse Pointe team.
One win from Williamsport
The Roosevelt Park boys became the toast of the town, with a front-page article in The Muskegon Chronicle with the headline “State champs!” and a special segment on WOOD-TV out of Grand Rapids.
It wasn’t all positive heading into Regionals, as arguably the team’s top all-around player, Andrew Carlson, popped his hamstring in the state championship game. In Indy, Carlson chipped a bone in his ankle and then broke his arm, taking him out of the lineup.
But once again, nothing could slow down RP, which won its first three regional games over Wisconsin, Ohio and Illinois, before losing to Indiana state champion and traditional powerhouse Brownsburg.
That set up a win-or-go-home rematch against Illinois in the regional semifinals. RP held a tenuous one-run lead heading into the sixth inning, when Illinois loaded the bases with nobody out. Calmly, Schuitema turned to Mowers, who mowed down three straight batters to preserve a 9-8 victory and put the Park into the title game against Indiana - just six innings from Williamsport.
“It wasn’t too big for them down there,” said Schuitema. “Us coaches were nervous as heck, tapping the fence three times and doing all kinds of superstitious stuff, but the kids were just out there playing ball, just like back home.”
They stayed in dorm rooms and were basically sequestered from their parents before that final game, as ESPN came in and did a media day of sorts, filming pre-game interviews with the players and coaches.
The championship was a well-played, tight game, with Indiana holding a slim 2-1 leading heading into the sixth inning. The hosts would add a pair of runs in the sixth for a 4-1 win, ending the Park’s magical run.
The baseball may have been done at that point, but the tributes were just getting started. RP was honored at a Detroit Tigers game, a West Michigan Whitecaps game, given a key to the City of Roosevelt Park and served as grand marshals of the annual Roosevelt Park Day parade.
It was a whirlwind and the memories still give the now-adult players goosebumps.
“When we lost that final game, I remember we huddled in the middle of the field and we could see all of the people that drove down to Indiana to watch us play, still standing and cheering,” said Jake Polanyi, getting a little choked up thinking about it.
“That’s when it hit us about how big this was and how us kids had impacted an entire town.”
LocalSportsJournal.com
The Roosevelt Park Little League baseball team was certainly “the boys of summer” back in 2001.
“The Park” did something that no Muskegon-area team had ever done since the tournament began in 1957 - and hasn’t done since - winning a traditional 11- and 12-year-old Little League baseball state championship.
But they didn’t stop there.
Roosevelt Park headed to the Great Lakes Regional in Indianapolis and resumed their winning ways, knocking off the state champs from Wisconsin, Ohio and Illinois, and coming within one win of a spot in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn. RP lost the title game to Indiana, 4-1, which was a night game and televised nationally on ESPN2.
“It was just magical and the greatest summer of my life,” said Roosevelt Park manager Steve Schuitema, who is now the long-time baseball coach at Muskegon Catholic Central.
“Those kids captured the hearts of the whole area and people were having watch parties for that final game. We had a special group that loved to play baseball, loved to compete and they were all focused on the same goal.”
Those boys are now men in their mid-30s, but they will reunite on June 6 at The Event Center at Fricano Place on Muskegon Lake, when they will be inducted into the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame - becoming the first youth team to enter the hall in its 39-year history.
“You look back and realize that our lives were so simple back then,” said Troy Forton, a pitcher and first baseman on that team who went on to play Division I baseball at Western Michigan University. “You wake up and either play or practice baseball. To have that many talented and like-minded kids from the same little area is crazy.
“You don’t know that you are literally living out the movie “The Sandlot” until it’s over.”
A gathering storm
Roosevelt Park certainly didn’t come out of nowhere in the summer of 2001.
The core group of that team first made their mark in 1998, going undefeated and winning the Muskegon County championship for 8- and 9-year-olds.
The following year, Schuitema skippered that talented group to the state championship for 9- and 10-year-olds, becoming the first team from the Muskegon area to win a Little League title in any age division.
With many of those kids on the team as 11-year-olds, Roosevelt Park made a deep run in 2000, but came up short of the title - setting the stage for a drive for area history when that talented nucleus was a year older.
“Looking back and thinking about it, we had a star at every position,” said Jake Polanyi, who played centerfield and moved into the critical leadoff spot in the batting order when Andrew Carlson got injured in Indianapolis. “I could go around the horn at every spot and I wouldn’t trade the guy we had at every position for anybody.”
Jordan Bundt was a stalwart at catcher, who played the critical position with the savvy of someone twice his age. Forton and Andrew Callow were scooping machines at first base and Justin Judd was fearless at third base, often creeping up onto the grass to prevent bunts.
Up the middle, RP was rock-solid with Carlson at shortstop and Chris Mattson at second base (with backup from Scott Schuitema), with the speedy Polanyi in centerfield.
Matt Ulfsax, Josh Sharpe and Kyle Mattson shared the other outfield positions.
As good as the team was defensively, the strength may well have been its pitching depth. RP was so deep on the mound that twin brothers Chris and Kyle Mattson (the only 11-year-olds on the team) rarely took the mound - and those two ended up being the aces the following year, when RP advanced all the way back to the state championship game, coming within a whisker of repeating.
Schuitema spent many a night leading up to the 2001 tournament wondering who would emerge as the ace, the guy he could call upon in dire situations or against a loaded opponent.
He got his answer in the final game of the district tournament, when he decided to insert David Mowers, a tall, quiet kid who threw hard, but had control issues.
“He couldn’t find the plate during the regular season,” said Schuitema, who noted that Mowers worked with Elite Training coaches in Grand Rapids that summer, which paid dividends.
“He came into that district game and threw absolute gas right over the plate.
“I looked over at my assistants and said: ‘OK, he’s throwing strikes, we’re ready to go.”
Taking the show on the road
Half of the team’s players lived within walking distance of Delmar Field, located near the center of the one-square mile city of Roosevelt Park.
The other players lived not too far away in Norton Shores, truly hometown kids that ventured up to the Little League State Tournament in unseasonably warm Norway, located near Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula.
Roosevelt Park used its team chemistry and unselfish play to knock off one traditional powerhouse after another - St. Clair, Taylor, Midland and Georgetown - areas which had well-established travel programs, indoor training facilities and many choices for private, individualized instruction.
“The Park” countered with a bunch of kids that loved to get together on their own on Saturdays and Sundays at Delmar just to play the game, occasionally grabbing a roll of quarters and heading to the batting cages at the Bat ’N Club on Sherman Boulevard.
“We had good players at every position, but we had great chemistry because our core group had been playing together for four years in a row,” said Forton.
Forton also noted that the team was blessed with outstanding coaching, notably the deep baseball knowledge and attention to detail of Schuitema. He was assisted all season by third base coach Dale Carlson and bench coach Craig Bundt, then added Randy Forton for additional help on the tournament run.
Schuitema had a knack for knowing which pitchers to use at what time.
A prime example of that was the third game at the state tournament, when RP faced a very good Midland team, which had given them fits two years ago as 10-year-olds. Schuitema and Bundt had a feeling that the unorthodox style of Callow would befuddle them and, sure enough, he threw a gem in a 9-1 victory.
After capturing the winner’s bracket title, the Park suffered its first loss of the entire postseason against Grosse Pointe Farms, 8-3.
But no one on the team panicked, because Schuitema had saved Mowers for the championship game of the double-elimination tournament. “The Mouse” delivered the next day and RP made history with a 4-2 win over that same Grosse Pointe team.
One win from Williamsport
The Roosevelt Park boys became the toast of the town, with a front-page article in The Muskegon Chronicle with the headline “State champs!” and a special segment on WOOD-TV out of Grand Rapids.
It wasn’t all positive heading into Regionals, as arguably the team’s top all-around player, Andrew Carlson, popped his hamstring in the state championship game. In Indy, Carlson chipped a bone in his ankle and then broke his arm, taking him out of the lineup.
But once again, nothing could slow down RP, which won its first three regional games over Wisconsin, Ohio and Illinois, before losing to Indiana state champion and traditional powerhouse Brownsburg.
That set up a win-or-go-home rematch against Illinois in the regional semifinals. RP held a tenuous one-run lead heading into the sixth inning, when Illinois loaded the bases with nobody out. Calmly, Schuitema turned to Mowers, who mowed down three straight batters to preserve a 9-8 victory and put the Park into the title game against Indiana - just six innings from Williamsport.
“It wasn’t too big for them down there,” said Schuitema. “Us coaches were nervous as heck, tapping the fence three times and doing all kinds of superstitious stuff, but the kids were just out there playing ball, just like back home.”
They stayed in dorm rooms and were basically sequestered from their parents before that final game, as ESPN came in and did a media day of sorts, filming pre-game interviews with the players and coaches.
The championship was a well-played, tight game, with Indiana holding a slim 2-1 leading heading into the sixth inning. The hosts would add a pair of runs in the sixth for a 4-1 win, ending the Park’s magical run.
The baseball may have been done at that point, but the tributes were just getting started. RP was honored at a Detroit Tigers game, a West Michigan Whitecaps game, given a key to the City of Roosevelt Park and served as grand marshals of the annual Roosevelt Park Day parade.
It was a whirlwind and the memories still give the now-adult players goosebumps.
“When we lost that final game, I remember we huddled in the middle of the field and we could see all of the people that drove down to Indiana to watch us play, still standing and cheering,” said Jake Polanyi, getting a little choked up thinking about it.
“That’s when it hit us about how big this was and how us kids had impacted an entire town.”
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