Zack Reynolds said he tried not to think too much about the huge crowds and television audiences while he and his 12- and 13-year-old Bend North teammates played at the Little League Baseball World Series last month in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

“You don’t really notice (the crowd) until something great happens,” Reynolds said Saturday. “You don’t really realize that you’re on TV. You just block all that stuff out. You’re there to play the game, not be on TV.”

But Reynolds’ teammate, Bugsy Jensen, said he enjoyed the attention of competing in a setting he described as “kind of unbelievable.”

“You feel like you’re a star, a celebrity, and everybody’s watching you,” Jensen said. “It’s very fun.”

Many of the Bend North players said they had dreamed of reaching the Little League World Series for years, but Jensen said he did not fully understand the magnitude of his team’s accomplishment until Bend North arrived at the World Series complex.

“At first, we thought, ‘OK, we won another tournament to get to Williamsport; we’ve won a lot of tournaments in the past,’” Jensen recalled.

“But once we got to Williamsport and we heard the numbers, that there are 7,500 teams and only 16 were at the World Series, and there’s 2.5 million kids, it settled in right then.”

During the tournament, Bend North and the 15 other teams lived in dorms and spent their days in a baseball complex Reynolds described as “over-the-top.”

“There’s two rooms on the bottom floor, and we shared the bottom floor with South Korea, and there was a bathroom that linked it together,” Reynolds described. “It was fun hanging out with them all the time. They’d come into our room, and we’d mess around with them. It was really fun.”

Evan Ullman said the East Seoul Little League team, which won the International Championship and lost to Endwell, New York, in the finals, would come and visit Bend North after each win, despite not having a language in common.

“South Korea was fun to watch, and it was fun to hang out with them after they won a game,” Ullman said. “They’d sit on people’s beds and we’d try to talk to them and we’d listen to their music, so that was kind of fun.”

Chase Terry said he and his teammates also spent a lot of time with the team from San Nicolas, Mexico.

“We had an arcade room where all the teams would go, and we could play video games and pingpong there,” Terry said.

Bend North lost its first two games and won a consolation game against Emilia, Italy, but since the team was staying in Pennsylvania until the end of the tournament, the coaches organized a friendly game against Japan on Aug. 25. The game was planned for a field that was not in use, but a series of rain delays necessitated a change in plans. So Bend North and Chofu (a Little League located in Tokyo) played on Carl E. Stotz Field — the site of the first Little League championship held in 1939.

Al Yearick and Bill Bair, who participated in the original championship as children, threw out the first pitch.

“I don’t know about the boys, but I was mesmerized,” Bend North coach Joel Jensen said. “It was a great way to wrap up the season. It’s hard to imagine that a team from Oregon was playing on that field against a team from Japan. They’ll look back in 15 or 20 years and realize this might have been the coolest game they played all season.”

The field had not hosted a Little League event in 70 years, and for good reason: The fences of the “Cracker Jack box,” as Joel Jensen called it, were only 165 feet out from home plate, a short distance even for Little Leaguers.

“Yeah, it was tiny,” Ullman said. “They used wood bats back then, not metal ones. It was cool to be on the original Little League field that they played on a long time ago, because not many kids can do that.”

Many of the Bend North players said they are not quite sure what to do with themselves now that they do not have baseball practice to fill the final days before school starts. But Sam Palermo, the president of Bend North Little League, said he is excited to see how the run to the World Series affects younger all-star teams and overall participation in the league, which this season included 620 players ages 5 to 14.

“Our 11Us went to state this and year won in Portland,” Palermo said. “This gives them incentive to perform and try and match and do what this team did and go back (to Williamsport). They want to accomplish what the older boys accomplished this time, so it will be interesting to see what they can do. And there’s no reason they can’t do it.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0305, vjacobsen@bendbulletin.com.

Bend umpires went to World Series, too

The Bend North majors all-stars were not the only Central Oregonians to make their way to a World Series this summer. Dave Kramer and Derek Gillespie, both longtime volunteer umpires for Bend North, were both called on to officiate events last month: Kramer called games at the Big League Softball World Series in Lower Sussex, Delaware; Gillesepie worked the 50/70 World Series in Livermore, California.

“Derek said, ‘Do you realize, out of the 130 World Series umpires, we are the only two that are out of the same league?’” Kramer said. “It never dawned on me like that, but when you think about it and how many factors go into determining the umpires, just to have two from the same league is a rare occurrence.”

It was the first World Series assignment for both umpires, although they had previously worked state and regional tournaments.

“It was amazing (to get the news),” recalled Kramer, who learned of the assignment early this year. “My wife handed me the letter from Williamsport and I opened it up and said, ‘Wow.’ We call it our golden ticket, when you get to do a World Series. From that moment on, we knew the upcoming season we were going to work hard and stay focused.

“I think the biggest part is to make sure you never let anyone down from your home area or your state, local or district league when you get up there.”

Kramer said that, in some ways, it was easier to officiate at a higher level of competition because the plays were more predictable.

“The biggest difference is the speed of the game, because the players are so much more skilled,” Kramer said. “It makes it a lot easier, because the plays you’re anticipating and are prepared to have happen are the ones that do happen. With the skills on defense, you don’t have too many balls that aren’t caught. The players are faster and stronger and they can throw the ball with more accuracy, so I know the plays I had on bases were much closer. Behind the plate, it was easier because the pitchers had a lot more control and could put the ball where they wanted to.”

Big League softball is open to girls ages 14 to 18, and Kramer said he saw some players who are likely to compete at the highest levels of adult competition.

“We had a team from China represented at the softball World Series, and that had never happened before,” Kramer said. “I got to do two of their games, and interacting with the interpreter and watching them play, they were very regimented and disciplined. I found out that team is being groomed for the 2020 Olympics, so hopefully most if not all of those players will represent China in 2020.”

— Victoria Jacobsen, The Bulletin