York High baseball didn't win, but the season was a success. What's next for the team?
The York High baseball team was down to its last out.
The smallest player on the field grabbed a bat, stepped to the plate.
What could he possibly do at the end of another lost cause? His team could barely score a run the entire spring, never came close to winning a game. They were mostly ninth- and 10th-graders thrown together at the last minute, and forced to play the best varsity teams around.
They had just one more shot on senior day.
And 5-foot-4 third baseman Kelinthon Made just about stunned everyone. He swung confident and big, and the ball soared higher and longer than any other all day. The opposing center fielder turned and retreated, fortunately no fence or outfield wall to concern himself with.
He tracked down the ball, made the catch, ended the game − and these losing Bearcats erupted in cheers anyway. They mobbed Made as he jogged back toward the bench, laughing and yelling and swallowing him in hugs and back-slaps, almost as if to show how far they had come.
And they just kept celebrating. They raced each other down the first base line. They dumped a water cooler over one of their unsuspecting coaches.
They had made it through the season, against the odds, and seemed to have more fun than possible doing it.
Some of the opposing fans understood what was happening. They paused as they left Small Athletic Field, to applaud what just may be the most important winless team around.
This one-of-a-kind, all-Spanish-speaking team that keeps finding joy in just being.
They are the teenagers struggling to absorb a new language and culture. The ones dealing with the worst facilities in the league, playing for the school that can barely field more than a couple of competitive teams. The ones growing up on the most dangerous streets in York and Adams counties.
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"It’s a life-learning situation here," said Roberto Vazquez, one of the team's two bilingual coaches. "The hardest thing in life is learning how to lose somebody, how to lose something. By playing sports and losing they’re learning how to get through this.
“Even though we didn’t get to win … they see that there are people in the city who do care for them, who are there for them, no matter what the consequences are. These kids are going to school and getting their grades up and doing everything they need to be doing."
'Thank God we had a team'
York High has struggled to support any successful sports teams beyond football and boys' and girls' basketball over the past decade, and the situation has only worsened. The school district cut baseball and four other athletic programs a decade ago for budgetary reasons. They attempted to re-instate them in 2016, but rebuilding even scant foundations has proved daunting.
Instability in the coaching ranks and administration, financial shortcomings, academic performance and lack of player buy-in has forced nearly every sport but football and basketball on life support. The new softball coaches, for example, had to teach most of their girls how to catch a ball when they held tryouts in March. The girls learned and improved quickly but did not win a game this spring.
The baseball team hasn't won a game since 2019 (spring sports were canceled in 2020 by COVID).
Baseball finished 0-19 this season, inexplicably forced to play in Division I, the toughest in the YAIAA, because of enrollment size. (School officials could have petitioned the league to move down in competition; they never tried).
Nevertheless, this baseball team may be one of the only all-Spanish-speaking sports team in the entire state, each player with roots in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico. Many still struggle with English, if they speak it at all.
Most had never played on any type of high school team before.
Some quit part-way through; others struggled to stay academically eligible.
Only four seniors finished, including Dylan Rodriguez, the lefty center fielder with the team's most refined skills. His family came here from Puerto Rico when he was 5.
He just wanted a place to play this spring before graduating, saying how "baseball's in my blood."
"Thank God we had a team. If we lose, it’s OK, we can take it, we’re still happy.
"We can take the losses, but in our hearts we did good out there. We worked to get here," he said, then paused for a few moments. “Yeah, I’m really proud. Thankful for all this, for real."
Baseball dreams, from Nicaragua to York
Consider that the Bearcats didn't even have a coach until 10 days before their first game. Gym teacher Jim Bray stepped up in the final moments to lead and organize it. His Spanish-speaking assistants, Christian Miranda and Roberto Vazquez, both school district employees, became the linchpins in communicating and teaching.
Vazquez's two oldest sons play on the team. He also helps coach in the York City Little League.
Miranda, 26, said the experience energized him, in part because he once was just like these kids. He eventually followed his mother from Nicaragua to York City as a 10th-grader. Back then, he was uneasy about everything at first, from how to speak to what to eat to how to fit in and try to make friends. He had never lived around so many buildings packed together, never experienced cold weather.
He had to leave his grandfather behind in Nicaragua, the old man who instilled the love of baseball in him and still coaches it at 89. Miranda said he's been compelled to teach the game to others, too, since his playing days ended at York High and then in the amateur Susquehanna League.
He worked factory jobs before latching on with the school district as a hall monitor, now at McKinley Elementary. He jumped at the baseball coaching chance this March and was non-stop movement on the field each game: waving instructions to his fielders, giving commands in Spanish, laughing along with whoever he could.
He was the one who halted an early-season game to explain basic rules, in Spanish, to his shortstop and then his pitcher because they did not understand the umpires.
Though their team got younger and thinner as the spring progressed, the kids became more confident hitters and adept at making routine catches and throws in the field.
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They cheered loudly at the most basic successes, from inducing three quick outs in the first inning of their blustery season-opener ... to Made's long outfield fly on senior day ... to their first baseman lunging at the last moment to secure a towering pop-up in the season finale.
Though they were outscored by a stunning 228-26 overall, Bray said they considered each run "as a win for us. ... Every time we scored a run we had a celebration.
"These kids need something positive to pursue. Not having a program was not an option. They needed it more," perhaps, than every other school in the league, he said.
When their season finale at Northeastern was postponed by torrential rain, the Bearcats jumped into an impromptu game of pickup basketball, in their socks, in the Bobcats' gym. The teams shared doughnuts afterward.
“I love my team right now, but I love them as a family too," Miranda said. "If they need help I’ll be there for them.
“I just want them to have fun, be out of the street and enjoy this game. This game’s so beautiful. Every day you learn something new."
The next step will be keeping the youngest players involved in summer baseball in the city's youth league and working out together when the new school year begins in the fall.
School district officials, meanwhile, will be left to uphold their end: develop a promising relationship with the York Revolution, petition the YAIAA to play in a lower division against more equitable opponents, continue pressing for facility upgrades. Athletic director Jeff White said a proposal to install artificial turf for baseball, softball and track and field has been tabled for budgetary reasons − so he must search for donors, such as alums, to help push it forward.
(Artificial turf, he said, would deter geese from littering the fields with their droppings and cut maintenance costs).
At least, Bray said, he does expect approval to purchase an indoor, netted batting cage so his team can practice more efficiently during the cold months and bad weather.
“The kids got to want it" to keep improving, White said of the school's struggling sports. "It can't be with 'sideline kids,' though. We got a lot of sideline kids (in the city). Why does the allure of the streets take them more than organized activities?"
These baseball coaches promise to keep fighting that and building their program − one they hope will prove more lasting, this time.
They point to signs like like freshman first baseman Luis Gonzalez, a top student, who spent the team's daily study hall helping his teammates with their work.
"We'll be back," Vazquez said. "Next year, if the eighth-graders we have stay and don't go to York Tech or somewhere else ... Those eighth-graders coming up are pretty good, they have discipline."
Something, finally, to look forward to.
Frank Bodani covers sports stories for the York Daily Record and USA Today Network. Contact him at fbodani@ydr.com and follow him on Twitter @YDRPennState.