- May 4, 2024
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Ormond Beach has some new, pint-sized baseball historians. At least that’s the impression you might get from chatting with any of the players on the 12U Golden Spikes, fresh off their trip last week to the National Tournament of Dreams in Cooperstown, New York.
Cameron Ore, 12, might tell you that running through first base could get you tagged out in the olden days, or that snagging a one-hopper resulted in an out before mitts were commonplace.
“My favorite part of the trip was probably the pin trading and all of the cool stuff you can see in Cooperstown,” Ore said. “And Cooperstown, being in New York and stuff, I would’ve thought it would be a big city — but it’s really calm there. There’s not many people, and it’s real old school.”
The Golden Spikes, based out of Ormond, played in a field of 104 teams — all vying for a national title at Cooperstown Dreams Park. The team went 4-5 in tournament play but hit 22 home runs and batted .354 as a club. They were aided by the stadium’s short porch — a 200-foot fence, the same distance as in little league.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Carl Davis, who hit three of the dingers, “because the more games you play, the more chances you have to win.”
Off the field, the teams exchanged custom-made lapel pins, with Ore collecting 97 of them. The pre-teens also got an advance of dorm life, bunking as a team in a nearby barracks.
“It was really smelly and pretty small,” Ore said. “You get one big barrack, and you have to split it in half. Our team was just the smelliest team. I felt trapped in there.”
But if the bunk situation was rank and confining, the team’s visit to the National Baseball Hall of Fame was a welcomed reprieve and breath of fresh air.
“We visited the whole thing, it was really big and there was a lot of marble,” Ore recalled. “My favorite part was probably the displays of Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and all the great baseball players.”
For head coach Mike Vecchi, the squad’s visit to the Hall was also his first. What jumped out at him was the assortment of World Series rings dating back to the 1940s and 1950s.
“They’ve increasingly gotten bigger,” Vecchi said. “It was pretty ridiculous.”
In the end, the Golden Spikes fell one win short of advancing to the next round of the tournament. Ore smacked two homers in the finale — a grand slam and a two-run blast — to keep the score close, but the baseball gods had other whims.
“I’m glad I had the experience, and the best thing was just all the home runs and the great plays,” he said.
