Fargo baseball team heads to Babe Ruth World Series

FARGO - The perseverance shown by the Fargo 15-year-old Babe Ruth All-Stars has paid off in a big way this summer.
Twice, in the last month, the team has played through the loser’s bracket to come back and win postseason baseball tournaments – the latest being the Midwest Plains Regional in Albia, Iowa last week.
As a result, the Fargo All-Stars have extended their season to the limit and are set to compete in the Babe Ruth 13-15-year-old World Series, which begins Wednesday and runs through Aug. 28 in Longview, Wash.
“Since the fourth of July we have been playing great baseball,” said Fargo All-Stars head coach Jim Honl. “I think we are 21-3 since then.”
Players on the team include: Jaden Anderson, Jimmy Reynolds, Luke DeVries, Cole Birch, Connor Ostendorf, Matthew Veit, Tyler Anderson, Matthew Thibert, Ben Swanson, Matt Pietsch, Jacob Honl, Luke Sandy, Ben Bryant and Jackie Ross. The team is made up of players from Fargo South, Fargo North, Fargo Davies and Fargo Shanley.
Honl’s assistant coaches are Jeff Reynolds and Paul Honl.
“They are excited,” Jim Honl said. “Anytime you can say you are getting on an airplane to go play baseball it is pretty special and to be honest we as coaches are just as excited. We’ve been grinning all week.
“We have been coaching this group of kids for the last three years and our goal was to win a state tournament and play at a regional. This year we won the regional and now are going to the World Series. To accomplish this just shows how far the team has come.”
Fargo is 42-10 heading into the World Series. The All-Stars are the first Fargo Babe Ruth team to qualify for a World Series tournament after winning both their state and regional tournaments since 1984.
“It is unreal,” Jimmy Reynolds said. “It is cool to say we are one of the top eight teams in the country playing at the World Series.”
The Babe Ruth World Series is a pool-play tournament with eight regional champions and two host teams divided into two pools. The three teams with the best records in each pool then advance to a single-elimination tournament format.
Fargo opens the tournament playing tournament host Longview, Wash., at 7:35 p.m. Thursday.
“We have to play well defensively,” Jimmy Reynolds said. “We have been playing good all-around baseball and haven’t made many errors so if we keep making the plays in the field it will give us a great chance at winning games.”
In addition to defense, comebacks have also been Fargo’s specialty.
In order to punch its ticket to Washington, Fargo needed to defeat St. Paul, Minn., twice on the final day of the regional. Earlier in the tournament, Fargo fell to St. Paul 9-8 in extra innings forcing the All-Stars to carry on through the loser’s bracket before earning a rematch.
Fargo forced a second championship game with an 8-7 victory over St. Paul by scoring the winning run on a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the seventh inning.
With his pitching staff thin after playing five games in four days, Jim Honl sent Ben Bryant to start the winner-take-all game hoping he could get the first six outs before inserting a reliever.
Bryant ended up getting all 21 outs tossing a complete game in Fargo’s 7-3 win.
“We planned on me throwing a couple innings,” Bryant said. “I gave up two runs early, but I settled down and just kept going. I didn’t know I had it in me. As a team, we never gave up and think we may have surprised ourselves a little.”