CV Baseball Trio Winners Even in Defeat

recognized the District 45 Big League All-Star baseball team was going to be a monster even before the first pitch of the summer was thrown.

“As soon as I went to the first practice and saw most of the people on the team that I had played against, I knew how good they were,” the pitcher said of the 17- and 18-year-olds from rival high schools who had come together to form the All-Star team. “I knew this year was the year we could definitely be going somewhere.”

And go places they did. Lederman, Marc Engler and Zach Serrao represented Castro Valley as the District 45 club won tournaments in Redwood City, Benicia and Bremerton, Wash., en route to the Big League World Series in Easley, South Carolina.

The team was led by several members of James Logan’s North Coast Section championship team, but the Castro Valley trio – all of whom played for the Indians during the Big League regular season -- certainly contributed to the success.

Lederman, the No. 2 pitcher on the Castro Valley High staff in the spring, got the call in the Regional semifinals against the Arizona representative, a win-or-go-home situation for the District 45 team. He called it “the most exciting game I ever pitched in,” yet performed brilliantly, giving up one run in six innings in a 7-2 win.

Engler, an outfielder at Castro Valley High who was the Big League team’s starting right fielder, saved two of his hits for the World Series, during which District 45 beat the eventual champion from South Carolina but also suffered three one-run losses that led to an early elimination.

And Serrao, who hadn’t played baseball in several years since graduating from the Castro Valley Independent league, demonstrated what his Indians coach Ken Sears called the ideal “first kid to practice, last to leave” attitude that made him a great teammate to players who were strangers at the beginning of the tournament.

“Of course I was nervous,” Engler admitted of the South Carolina competition. “It was a shocking experience. I always watched the Little League World Series and always dreamed of being that kid on TV. It was one heck of an experience.”

Turns out, traveling across the country was no big deal to the 18-year-olds. Lederman had been to France before. Engler to Japan.

But none of that had prepared them for the heat of climate and hospitality of the people in South Carolina.

“We met some really nice people, especially the host people,” Lederman recalled shortly after returning home this week. “Playing ping-pong with the players from Puerto Rico, The Netherland, Canada … we made some new friends.”

And many baseball enemies along the way. After all, District 45’s path to South Carolina proved to be the end of the road to many of the teams they played.

One was the Southern California entrant in the Regionals. Playing for the championship, District 45 scored in the bottom of the seventh inning to break a 1-1 tie and earn a spot in the World Series.

Engler called it his most memorable game. But in the end, what all three Castro Valley boys surely remembered most was the heartbreak of being on the losing end three times in South Carolina.

“It’s frustrating because we know we could have won those games,” said Lederman, who was taken out of the second World Series game with his team up 8-4, only to watch it slip away. “Those teams were definitely not better than us. If everything had been going our way, it could have been us (winning the championship).”

Added Engler, “We were the only team to beat South Carolina. We feel we should have been in that championship game. What we saw of the competition, all those other teams we know we could have beaten.”

The Castro Valley trio graduates from Little League this year, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be strangers next baseball season. Lederman, Engler and several District 45 teammates are planning a reunion of sorts at Chabot College.

“That will be very exciting,” Lederman predicted. “That’ll be a really good team.”