Apart from reporting on the Herts adult and youth teams, the Herts Baseball Newswire also keeps Herts fans updated on news from overseas related to Herts Baseball Club.
This summer Herts was represented in the European qualifiers for the Little League World Series. Herts Little Leaguer, Mikito Ariga, was selected to play for team England. The games were played at the baseball complex in Kutno, Poland. Despite a difficult start losing to Italy (L0-10), England bounced back with wins over Lithuania (W7-1), Belgium (W7-3) and Poland (W10-0). Mikito’s team rounded up their group stage schedule with a loss to the Netherlands (L5-4). England’s 3-2 record placed them third in the group standings and they qualified for the next stage where they beat Ukraine 10-0. This took them to the Semi-Finals where they once again faced Italy and once again the Italians came out on top (L2-9). England came very close indeed to qualifying for the World Series and potential live coverage on ESPN, but it wasn’t to be.
Mikito and his family have now returned and are getting ready for another exciting postseason with the Herts All-Stars next month. Mikito was a member of the 2009 Herts All-Stars who produced the incredible run of 5 consecutive wins to reach the final where they lost 1-0 to the London Mets.
Another player representing Herts overseas is Jesse Reinebold. He and his father, Jonathan, joined the club this year and apart from appearing for the Herts All-Stars Jesse played alongside his father for both the Herts Raptors in the British Single-A League and the Herts Hawks in the AA League. Jesse is now in America where he is the official bat boy (pictured right at work) for the South Bend Silverhawks, which is the Single-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Like Mikito, Jesse is also scheduled to return in time to join up with the Herts All-Stars in the postseason.