Toms River East 10 Years Later

(note: no Hometown View on Wednesday, 8/28/08)

In the last few days there have been a couple of stories about the tenth anniversary of the Toms River East American All-Stars winning the Little League World Series. That anniversary is officially tomorrow as it was on August 29th, 1998 when the group of 11 & 12 year olds beat Kashima, Japan 12-9 on a warm Saturday afternoon in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. If you were not living here at that time you’ll never appreciate how big of a story the dozen young ballplayers were as an entire community got caught up in the excitement of their achievements and success.

I followed the team nearly all the way from the sectionals of the state tournament to the Eastern Regional’s and then to Williamsport. We carried all their games on the radio from Bristol, Connecticut to Pennsylvania and they were page one news for the final two weeks of August. Names like Todd Frazier, Scott Fisher, Joe Franceschini and manager Mike Gaynor were as well known as major leaguers and especially in Toms River the team was a source of incredible pride.

The stories of their incredible run became almost legendary from the fact they nearly got knocked out of the district tournament by another Toms River team to the unlikely heroics of Chris Cardone in the championship game victory over Japan. The 12-year old outfielder was struggling in Williamsport but came off the bench to homer twice in the late innings, including the game-winning blow. Next thing you knew he was on late-night television and the subject of a story in Sports Illustrated.

A day after winning it all the team was greeted by thousands as they returned to their Little League complex on Windsor Avenue and later a planned parade in downtown Toms River drew somewhere around 35,000 people before a ceremony on the football field at Toms River South which I MC’d. There would even be a formal banquet in which the team would receive championship rings and jackets.

It was indeed a wonderful time and brought plenty of positive attention to Toms River and Ocean County. Now ten years later there are still signs of that championship and those little kids have grown into young men with many of them recently graduating college. Time has marched on but they will always have those memories of the summer of 1998. For those who would like to relive them tomorrow on my show “The Locker Room” we will replay the radio broadcast of the championship game with manager Mike Gaynor and some of the players joining me. The show airs from 3-6pm on 1160 WOBM AM and Fox Sports 1310 and can be heard online at ShoreSportsNetwork.com.