Hill: Little League champs bring big pride to Southern Nevada
A question stopped me in my tracks Thursday night to the point it took me far longer to answer than it should have.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know the answer. It simply took a moment to process because it was so out of character from the source.
“Gallegos can pitch again on Saturday, right?”
The query was obviously in reference to Summerlin South standout Garrett Gallegos, who had scrapped and battled his way through a winners bracket game against South Carolina a few days earlier, matching zeros with tournament darling Joe Giulietti until Summerlin got him to his pitch count and found a way to punch across a run in extra innings against the bullpen.
But it was posed by a friend of my mother who not only doesn’t know that Tom Brady is now a minority owner of the Raiders, but probably couldn’t even tell you what team he played for during his career. She certainly couldn’t tell you how many players are on the ice at one time in a hockey game or what baseball team is moving here in three (or four or five) years.
We like to think of sports as the great driver of civic pride. I certainly believe that. But I’m also in a bubble, rarely socializing with people who can’t instantly calculate an earned run average.
Beyond sports
The truth is there are many people who don’t really care about sports. Again, I don’t really know them nor do I really care to, but they do exist.
But there really is something about a local team making a run in the Little League World Series that is special for a city. It transcends sports.
It’s not something I necessarily would have expected as we continue to steadily expand our footprint as the sports capital of the world. One would tend to think those large-scale events would start to erode the appreciation for such hyper-local bonding moments, but it has almost worked the other way.
It also hasn’t mattered that the expanded field that moved Nevada into a far more favorable region in 2022 should make local teams playing in Williamsport a far more common occurrence. It’s the kind of thing the whole valley will get up for every year, regardless of which neighborhoods the team represents. Summerlin South may as well have been wearing “Southern Nevada” hats.
People everywhere are locked into games. The players became almost household names over the two weeks.
On the elevator at halftime of the UNLV football game, three of the four people on board had the game streaming on their phones and the attendant asked for a score update. The score was flashed and announced on the scoreboard during the game to a rousing ovation.
There will always just be something so special about it for the community.
The stunning three-run blast by Gallegos on Thursday that turned a sixth-inning deficit into a win and landed somewhere in Philadelphia after drink service from the flight attendants.
Ethan Robertson’s complete-game to beat Washington and preserve arms on the pitching staff.
Nine different players driving in runs in a blowout of the team from Illinois in their first game of the World Series.
The raw emotions of Luke D’Ambrosio. An absolutely spectacular at-bat by Grayson Miranda on Saturday.
So many moments produced in such a short period of time.
Still going
And it’s not over yet.
Gallegos was able to pitch Saturday and he was, as expected, fantastic. He added another home run for good measure.
Then he made a massive diving tag to end a rundown in a pivotal situation in the fifth inning after an absolute gem of a throw by Cutter Ricafort in right field, because why not?
All of that led to the blond locks of manager TJ Fechser bouncing as he jubilantly rounded the field in celebration as his team became the first Nevada squad to win the U.S. title on the field.
The hometown heroes are now the national champions.
They will have one more game in the global spotlight, taking on the juggernaut squad from Chinese Taipei on Sunday.
The outcome of that game is irrelevant in the big picture. Summerlin South are champions today and they will be champions tomorrow.
They helped bring the city together once again.
But to answer the question that is undoubtedly coming from my mom’s friend at some point in the next 24 hours: No, Gallegos can’t pitch Sunday.
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.