At 5 years old, AJ Tapia used to giggle when he stood on second base after blasting yet another double to right field. Connor Reed decided to try switch hitting when he was 6 and shocked everyone when he hit the ball well from both sides of the plate. Connor Oliva put on the catching gear when he was 7 and quickly became so good at the position that I called him Johnny Bench. They were little kids who played baseball with joy and determination. They got dirty and sweaty and smiled the whole time they were on the field. They had passion for the game long before they knew what the word meant. Now they are part of the Bayonne team in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, preparing for the Little League World Series. They will play a team from Massachusetts on Wednesday, Aug. 19. It can be seen on ESPN at 7 p.m. Story continues below photo gallery.
“This place is Disney for baseball,” the Bayonne head coach, Justin Smith, said of Williamsport after he and his team arrived by bus early Saturday, coming from Bristol, Connecticut, where they won their regional championship to qualify for the World Series. I’m a Little League lifer, a guy fortunate enough to have coached eight of the 12 Bayonne players who are now in Williamsport before they turned 10 years old. Some were on teams I managed, and others played in the summer sandlot program I run, which is essentially pickup games during July and August. I remember when these Bayonne kids were so young they walked around with ice cream all over their faces without a thought of wiping it off. I saw them cry when they struck out and watched them wave to their parents from first base when they singled. In coach pitch divisions, I learned where they liked the ball. One player on Bayonne’s Williamsport team would crush high, outside pitches. So that’s where I threw to him, to build his confidence, until he was ready for the challenge of turning on inside pitches. In time, they outgrew me, moving on to curve balls, delayed steals, trick pickoff plays and the ultra-competitive world of travel baseball. Never give up. Work hard. Dream big. Have fun If you watched Friday night’s regional final on ESPN, you saw an amazing comeback. The Bayonne team was losing to Connecticut 4-0 in the first inning but eventually ended the game jumping up and down in celebration, hugging each other, throwing their gloves in the air, ecstatic over their 8-6 victory. I was standing behind the right field fence, wearing my “Bayonne vs Everybody” T-shirt, part of a contingent of several hundred people from the Peninsula City who made the trip to Bristol. Never give up. Work hard. Support your teammates. Have fun. Dream big. Those are some of the things we’ve been telling Little Leaguers in Bayonne for generations — the same things coaches all over the world tell their players.
The odds are always stacked against any team’s chances of getting to the Little League World Series. There are about 6,500 leagues in the United States and the rest of the world. Just 20 teams make it to Williamsport each year. But six years ago, I knew Bayonne’s 12U class of 2026 would be special. COVID had forced the cancellation of our spring season in 2020, but as health restrictions were slowly lifted, our league president, Roger Malone, decided to go ahead with fall ball. 'Smooth as velvet,' 'Mr. Excitement' In the minors that autumn, there were two tiny 6-year-olds — Gabe Garcia and Chase Klimkowski — striking out opponents two years older and twice their size. On top of that, they could hit ropes off those bigger kids and make eye-popping plays in the field. Gabe has been smooth as velvet at shortstop during the 2026 district, sectional, state and regional tournaments. That’s the same way he handled the position when he was 6 years old in 2020. He’s always played the infield like a man in a boy’s body. Chase, meanwhile, has been this team’s “Mr. Excitement,” a kid whose stellar play on the field has always been as animated as his grandfather Buddy’s antics on the sidelines.
Buddy is a couple of years older than Bayonne Little League, which was formed in 1951. But don’t expect to see the septuagenarian sitting in the bleachers. During Chase’s games, Buddy stands near the dugout and paces back and forth, ready to engage anyone and everyone in a conversation about what’s happening on the field. Gabe and Chase were the two top players in 2022 when Bayonne’s 8U team won the first-ever northern New Jersey championship for that age bracket. Four years later, in the Metro championship, Gabe went 3-for-3, and Chase lofted an RBI single that provided the final two-run margin of victory. By 2024, Jett Bridges became the third part of that triple threat. At 6, Jett wasn’t as talented as Gabe and Chase. But Jett was a hard worker, determined to get better, a kid with the gift of a father, Terell, who was always willing to practice with him. I remember Jett struggling during summer sandlot in 2021 when he started pitching. Fast-forward to the New Jersey state finals tournament. There was Jett on the mound in Game 2 with a dominant performance, unflappable when kids in the opposing team’s dugout tried shrieking and screaming to distract him in his windup. By the way, Jett singled home the go-ahead run in Bayonne’s Friday night comeback. In the shadow of the Bayonne Bridge Our Little League Field is right next to the Bayonne Bridge, and on spring and summer evenings as the sun sets, the span casts a shadow across the playing field. I was in one of those shadows, running a fall ball practice around Labor Day in 2023, when 9-year-old Owen Tapia and his parents walked up to the fence asking if he could sign up to play baseball. It was his mother who did all the talking. Neither Owen nor his father spoke English. The family — including Owen’s younger sister — had moved to Bayonne just a few weeks earlier from the Dominican Republic. My team was the worst one in Bayonne’s Majors fall ball program that year, and we had just lost our best player, who quit because the squad was so weak. Owen was happy to fill his spot and almost immediately became the most popular player on the team, even though he couldn’t carry on a conversation with his mostly non-Spanish-speaking teammates. Owen didn’t need a translator to convey his buoyant personality and ever-present smile. At first, I communicated with Owen only with hand signals and baseball language. As the season went on, the English-as-a-second-language classes in the Bayonne school district solved our communications problem. If you missed Friday night’s regional final, Owen had two doubles and five RBI in Bayonne’s big win. The Road to Williamsport Facebook page ranked him as the 12th-best American player going to the World Series. Four players on the Bayonne team — Mason Rincon, Dex Zimmerman, Joey Dwyer and Leandro Anaya — joined our Little League after they already were older than the age groups in which I coach. Mason is the kid who hit three home runs in the New Jersey championship, prompting Metro regional opponents to walk him intentionally again and again. I would have loved to see Mason playing when he was 6. Missing the team, then hitting a bomb There’s one Bayonne player I haven’t mentioned yet: Brayden Gaitan. Brayden didn’t get picked for the team in 2022, 2024 and 2025. He was close to making the squad each year but was edged out. Setbacks like that often discourage kids. They complain they were treated unfairly and use those sour grapes to stop trying to improve. Brayden did the opposite. Every year, he played in the spring, summer sandlot and fall ball programs in Bayonne. On opening day of our spring 2026 season, Brayden hit a bomb over the left field fence. That was his way of saying he belonged on the all-star squad. Brayden reflects the grittiness of the city that has rallied behind this team. Bayonne is best known for a boxer who bled a lot and a fictitious bowling team scorned by Ralph Kramden in "The Honeymooners." Now we have a group of 12-year-olds who are trying to make history in Williamsport — kids who already have made the city proud. This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: I knew Bayonne's amazing Little Leaguers way back when | Exclusive