MACSA’s Junior Giants arrive just in time for march at SBC
Park
SAN FRANCISCO – It wasn’t the ideal beginning to the Gilroy Junior Giants’ planned trip to SBC Park.
As around 50 baseball players, coaches and parents boarded a school bus on their way to San Francisco Saturday morning, problems with the emergency hatch arose.
Thirty minutes after they were supposed to leave, the group was transferred to a new bus.
Scheduled to take part in a parade before the Giants-Cubs game, the restless Gilroy players were late, but were within sight of the swarm of kids already marching into the stadium from McCovey Cove.
Then they were told the Third Street Bridge was closed.
“The kids saw the great big park and then we had to get back on the freeway,” league commissioner Gabriel Duenas said. “Let’s just say they were getting pretty anxious.”
Just as the last of the 4,500 kids were filing into the stadium, though, here came the Gilroy gang. Holding up signs and waving to the crowd, they were the final group to step onto the field.
And at that moment all else was forgotten.
While the morning provided some anxious moments, the afternoon compensated with several unforgettable ones.
“This is really fun,” said 11-year-old Adrianna Osuna as she walked around the field where her favorite team plays ball.
Proudly carrying around a Gilroy sign, nine-year-old David Holliday could barely contain his excitement.
“We finally made it and I’m happy,” he said. “My dream was always to come down here on the field.”
In a ceremony just before the game, Holliday joined Duenas as representatives from Gilroy.
“We were standing about seven feet from (Cubs’ superstar) Sammy Sosa,” Duenas said. “David just looked at me and said, ‘I think I’m gonna faint.’ ”
Think Holliday was star-struck?
In the bottom of the third inning, 10-year-old Priscilla Chavez of San Martin took the microphone before a sellout crowd of over 42,000.
From Las Vegas to San Luis Obispo to southern Oregon, 10,000 kids take part in Junior Giants baseball, a 10-year-old program in which the Giants Community Fund completely pays for 62 leagues in the region’s inner cities and rural suburbs.
Out of those thousands of kids, Chavez was selected as the day’s Junior Announcer. With her own little enthusiastic flair, she introduced the first three Giant batters of the inning, including personal favorite Barry Bonds.
“That was really exciting,” said a bubbly Chavez as she left the announcing booth and returned to sit with her teammates in the center-field bleachers.
“I was a little scared right before I started, but once I let out the first name, I wasn’t that nervous.”
Some of the Gilroy kids went to a Giants’ game last season, but miscommunication prevented them from taking part in any pre-game ceremonies.
“It’s so much better this year,” 14-year-old Alonso Castillo said.
For Chavez and a good majority of the players that traveled from Gilroy, though, Saturday offered the first opportunity to see Bonds, without question the overwhelming favorite of the kids.
“He’s the man … he hits it so far,” said Devin Tomaseto, who brought a glove for a possible home run shot. “I’ll be ready.”
For once, that Bonds homer never came. And the hometown Giants lost 8-4 as Chicago pitcher Greg Maddux recorded his historic 300th win.
But good luck telling the group the trip wasn’t a success.
“I tell you what … we’ve got a lot of excited little kids out here today,” said Joel Olvera, a father of two players, Joshua and Druscilla, and an assistant coach on one of Gilroy’s six Junior Giant teams.
Group chaperon Marc Padrom agreed, saying the day’s activities more than fulfilled the group’s expectations.
“From the beginning of the season, it’s all the kids have been talking about,” said Padrom, Tomaseto’s stepfather. “And I know they’re really enjoying it.”
The Gilroy league, administered by the Mexican-American Community Services Agency (MACSA), is mostly made up of players who never played baseball before.
And prior to this weekend, a good majority of them had never attended San Francisco’s sparkling downtown ballpark – or any major league stadium for that matter.
Duenas, who plans on writing a thank-you note to the Giants organization, said his group of kids had the experience of a lifetime.
“I think as adults, sometimes we take for granted things like this,” he said. “But to see their faces when they walked onto that field and to see how excited they were to watch Barry Bonds, that’s when it really starts to sink in.
“They’ll never forget this day.”
