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BHS’s Toma, St. Mary’s
McGuinness and Lawson
on Alameda Select team at
international tournament 

The baseball exchange between the U.S. and Japan is a time-honored tradition. We introduced them to the game, and decades later, we get the flash and dash of Ichiro. We gave them an unproven Cecil Fielder, and a year later we got Major League Baseball’s first 50-homer season in a decade. 

An Alameda Select team of 15-year-olds from the East Bay will head off to Japan today to play in the Japan Boys’ League Tournament, an event the team hasn’t won in nearly 30 years of competition. They will bring back with them memories, some spare yen and perhaps a trophy. 

Berkeley High junior Walker Toma is one of the players who will get on a plane this afternoon, and even a battle-tested ballplayer such as Toma can’t help but get excited. 

“It’s really exciting,” said Toma, who has played at the Junior Olympics and an international tournament in Atlanta with the Oakland Oaks this summer. “I’m a little nervous, mostly about the language difference. I don’t know if anyone’s going to speak English.” 

The Alameda team is one of three American squads participating in the tournament, the others being from Fresno and San Diego. The 12-team tournament will also feature teams from Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Korea, Taiwan and China, as well as two Japanese teams. Team manager Mike Ballerini said while he hopes the team can win the tournament, it’s more important for the players to represent their country well. 

“I want good ballplayers, sure, but I was also looking for kids with good character to go over there,” said Ballerini, an Alameda High assistant coach. “They’ve got beer-vending machines on the street corners. They’re trusting, honest people, and it takes kids of character to appreciate that.” 

The Alameda-Japan connection stems back to 1973, when a Japanese youth team came to the U.S. looking for games. They played a team in Alameda, then invited a team from California to play in their home tournament in 1978. What started as a team made up of kids from Fresno and Alameda has spawned three California teams that participate just about every other year. Ballerini took the Alameda team in 1999, and when he decided to make a repeat appearance, he called high school coaches all over the East Bay looking for players. 

The resulting squad hails from all over the area. Players from Livermore, Alameda, Oakland, Union City and Fremont will all head over, as well as two St. Mary’s High students, David McGuinness and Andy Lawson. Most of the players have spent the last few weeks playing games as a team, but Toma only recently returned with the Oaks from the Caba World Series in Atlanta, so he doesn’t know much about his teammates. 

“I just know I’m going to pitch a lot,” Toma said. “Other than that, I don’t really know how things are going to go.” 

The tournament will be held in Osaka, where the teams will stay at an activity center built built for the city’s 2008 Olympic bid. But the Alameda players will also homestay with families in the small town of Fukuoka for a few nights, allowing for a little cultural immersion. 

“It’s a neat cultural experience for the kids,” Ballerini said. “Life over there is so different from how we live here. It’s good for the kids to see that.” 

The team will also visit the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima and attend a professional baseball game in Osaka. Toma said he wants to play well on the trip, just taking his first trip overseas will be the highlight no matter what. 

“Everyone says we’re going there to represent the U.S., so of course I don’t want us to do badly,” he said. “But just being there in Japan is the important thing for me.”