AUBURN – The third baseman is a hockey goaltender at St. Dom’s High School. The center fielder skis for Edward Little, and the left fielder plays football for the Red Eddies.

Binding them together this summer, and for summers since they were 9-years-old, is baseball. On Thursday morning, for the third time in six years, the goalie, the football player and the skier will join 11 other teammates in what has become a biennial pilgrimage to a Little League East Regional tournament.

“This group of kids has come right up through the ranks,” coach Bob Blackman said. “They have been together for so long, it’s almost like it’s one last hurrah.”

The “group of kids” is the Auburn Suburban Senior Little League All-Star team made up of 15 and 16-year olds, and in the past six years have won three state Little League titles: One at 11 and 12-years-old, one at 13 and 14-years-old and again this year.

“They went to Bristol (Connecticut) to the regional that most people are familiar with,” Blackman said. “The one that gets on T.V. That was the start of the run with this group, really. Two years later they went again at 13 and 14 and went to New Jersey.”

This year, the team is headed for New Jersey again, this time to Thorofare, for the 2004 Senior Little League Regional.

Consistency

The inevitable question arises every time they mention it in the community. How did this team get to be so good, but only in even-numbered years?

“Really,” Blackman said. “The biggest thing with this team is that we focus so much on the fundamentals. The hitting, we feel, will take care of itself because they all know how to swing a bat. We focus so much on situational play and on defense.”

And as far as the kids themselves, because of age limits, a certain number of the players move up each year, and then the rest follow the year after that, making the shift a two-year cycle.

The other factor is the state-wide setup. In District 5, there are just two teams, Elliot of Lewiston and Auburn Suburban, that field a Senior Little League team. Most of the communities in the district field Babe Ruth teams, or do not have enough players.

“You see it set up where there are really three different things tugging at these kids,” Blackman said. “There is Babe Ruth, American Legion and Senior Little League. This year, they changed the rules and said that once tournament play in Senior Little League started, the players could not play for another organized team.”

With New Auburn not fielding an American Legion team this year, a conflict never arose, not that it would have anyway.

“They all decided that once this tournament came around, they would focus here, for one more try together as a team,” Blackman said.

The three-time state championship winners still playing on the team this year are: Brady Blackman, Justin Ciszewski, Tyler Dorris, Derek Doucette, Kyle Giguere, David Lutz, Jacob Marcum, Chad Merchant, Chris Merrill and Kevin Smith.

Mechanics of a team

When asked why their team is so good, most of the players point to pitching.

“We have seven good starting pitchers,” said Ciszewski (the football player). “Pitching drives this team.”

“It’s the defense and clutch hitting,” offered skier Tyler Dorris. “We don’t hit for power, but for average and in the right spots.”

“Team chemistry is huge on this team,” added Brady Blackman (the hockey goalie), Bob’s son.

So which is it?

“It’s everything that they told you,” Bob Blackman said. “They just have a knack for the game when they are playing together.”

The numbers don’t lie. In two games against Elliot in the District finals, Auburn Suburban outscored the Lewiston entry 32-3. In three games in the state tournament, the Auburn team plated 21 runs and allowed just four.

“I don’t know that they made a single error in those games, either,” Bob Blackman said.

If pitching, defense and clutch hitting win championships, Auburn Suburban is on its way.

“We’ve seen a lot of what is out there now,” said infielder Dave Lutz. “I think we actually have a chance this time, because no one on this team will get intimidated by what we will see.”

At the 11 and 12-year-old level, Auburn competed alongside the storied Bronx team that featured Danny Almonte.

What’s next

When the East Regional is completed, and if the team should come back without a title to its name, for many of the players it will be the end of a long baseball journey.

“This group has been to regionals enough now, we’re used to it,” Lutz said. “Still, we’re going to have fun with it now, because there won’t be a next time for most of us.”

Parents and businesses have donated time, effort and money to making this trip a reality one final time for this seemingly charmed group of high school-aged baseball players, including brand new uniforms that they will keep once their run is over. All they are hoping for now is that they can repay these fans in wins.

Incidentally, if Auburn Suburban does advance to win the East Regional, the Senior Little League World Series would take the team to Bangor, this year’s host city for the world-class event.