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Lake Mary Little League nabs regional championship
After clinching the regional championship, the Lake Mary Little League All-Star team returned home on Wednesday afternoon to a warm welcome at the Lake Mary Sports Complex.
Fox – 35 Orlando
Lake Mary’s All-Stars overcame last year’s heartbreak and punched a ticket last week to the Little League World Series.
Southeast Region runners-up in 2023, Lake Mary will take the diamond at historic Lamade Stadium at 7 p.m. Wednesday to face the Midwest champs from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The annual tournament, held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, runs through Aug. 25.
Florida fields a Little League World Series team for the first time in 16 years. And though the Sunshine State has had eight squads finish as runners-up, it has never crowned a champion since the event’s inception in 1947.
Still, Florida boasts a proud history of producing major leaguers — some of whom enjoyed their first taste of stardom on Little League’s grandest stage. Here is a list of notable native Floridians who competed in Williamsport before turning pro.
Boog Powell, Lakeland Orange, 1954
One of the Baltimore Orioles’ standouts in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Powell shares the honor of being the first athlete to compete in both the Little League World Series and the World Series with former Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Jim Barbieri.
Powell pitched for Orange, but made it to the bigs as a hitter — a dangerous one at that. He crushed 339 home runs across 17 seasons, posting a lifetime .266 batting average and .361 on-base percentage.
Named the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1970, Powell, now 82, made four All-Star Game appearances and won two championships in Baltimore.
Carl Taylor, Lakeland Orange, 1954
Taylor, Powell’s stepbrother, carved out a six-year major league career in his own right, suiting up for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals.
In 1969, Taylor maintained a .348 average in 261 plate appearances for the Pirates. He socked a career-high six homers the following season in St. Louis.
Taylor, 80, suited up for 411 MLB games before calling it quits in 1973.
Vance Lovelace, Tampa Belmont Heights, 1975
Tampa blossomed into a baseball hotbed in the early ’80s, specifically Hillsborough High School, which produced first-round MLB draft picks in 1980, ’81 and ’86. Lovelace was the first of that trio, taken 16th overall by the Chicago Cubs.
Cubs fans likely won’t remember Lovelace since he was dealt as part of the 1983 trade to acquire Dodgers star Ron Cey. The 6-foot-5, 205-pound left-handed pitcher did not make an appearance for the Dodgers either, but he broke into the majors in 1988 for the crosstown California Angels.
Lovelace, 61, pitched in nine games with a career 5.79 ERA, two strikeouts and 10 walks in 4⅔ innings. He returned to the Dodgers following his playing days and held a position in the club’s front office for seven years (2009-16).
Gary Sheffield, Tampa Belmont Heights, 1980
Sheffield, arguably the most accomplished player in the list, was the last of those aforementioned Hillsborough first-rounders; Dwight Gooden (1981) is the other, for the sake of trivia. He launched one home run and drove in nine RBIs as Belmont Heights reached the final, ultimately losing to Taichung, Taiwan.
Home runs — and a simply spectacular bat waggle — became Sheffield’s calling card over 22 MLB seasons. The nine-time All-Star became the 25th player in league history to join the illustrious 500-home run club in 2009. Sheffield, 55, collected five Silver Sluggers, finished in the top-10 of MVP voting on six occasions and won the World Series with the Florida Marlins in 1997.
Sheffield, who played for eight franchises, finished with 509 homers, 1,676 RBIs and a career OPS of .907. However, in January, he fell short of the Hall of Fame in his 10th and final year of eligibility on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot. He appeared on 63.9% of ballots, with the threshold set at 75% for induction.
Derek Bell, Tampa Belmont Heights, 1980-81
Runner-up in both the 1980 and ’81 Little League World Series, Bell eventually got his hands on hardware. He was a rookie on the Toronto Blue Jays’ 1992 world championship roster, drawing a walk and scoring a run against Atlanta.
Only four MLB alumni have played in two Little League World Series: Barbieri, Bell, Sean Burroughs and Randal Grichuk.
Bell, 55, enjoyed an 11-year stint in the majors with stops in Toronto, San Diego, Houston, New York and Pittsburgh. He topped the 20-homer and 100-RBI marks twice apiece, stole 170 bases and sported a .276/.336/.421 slash line across 1,210 games.
Jason Varitek, Altamonte Springs National, 1984
A core member of the Red Sox’ curse-breaking teams of the mid-2000s, Varitek played all 1,546 games of his major league career for Boston. He captained the team, made three All-Star Game trips and won both a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger in the same season (2005).
The switch-hitting Varitek, 52, caught four no-hitters and clubbed 193 home runs. He’s a member of Boston’s coaching staff, signing a three-year extension in November 2022.
Varitek is one of just three players, along with Michael Conforto and Ed Vosberg, to appear in the Little League World Series, the College World Series and the World Series — which he won twice. He helped Altamonte Springs National win the U.S. title in 1984, but the team lost 6-2 to South Korea in the final.
Kevin Cash, Tampa Northside, 1989
Cash, 46, is in a category all his own, the only person to play in the Little League World Series and manage an MLB club in the World Series.
He went 2 for 7 with a double and two runs scored for Tampa Northside in the 1989 event, and spent eight years in the show as a journeyman catcher. Cash had a lifetime .183 average with 12 home runs in stints with Toronto, Tampa Bay, Boston, the New York Yankees and Houston.
He’s shined in the dugout, becoming one of the game’s most successful coaches. Cash earned consecutive AL Manager of the Year awards (2020-21) and surpassed Joe Maddon in May as the Rays’ all-time leader in wins.
Clete Thomas, Panama City R.L. Turner, 1996
Thomas’ team from Panama City started hot at the 1996 LLWS, going unbeaten in pool play, but lost in the semifinal round to Cranston, Rhode Island.
Thomas, 40, opted for college ball instead of signing with the Minnesota Twins as a fifth-round pick in 2002. Instead, he went in the sixth round after a three-year stint at Auburn.
Oddly enough, Thomas split his MLB career with the Tigers (145 games, three seasons) and the Twins (104 games, two seasons). He cracked seven of his 13 lifetime homers for Detroit in 2009, batting .233 in the bigs.
Lastings Milledge, Bradenton Manatee G.T. Bray East, 1997
Big things were expected of Milledge in the Big Apple, but it never quite came to fruition.
Milledge, who pitched, played third base and hit third in the lineup for Bradenton’s 1997 LLWS squad, went 12th overall to the Mets in the 2003 draft. Rumors swirled that New York pursued Oakland left-hander Barry Zito at the ’06 trade deadline, but refused to include Milledge — considered a top-10 prospect in baseball at the time — in the deal.
Milledge, 39, only played 115 times for the Mets despite his pedigree. He was dealt to Washington in 2008, shipped again to Pittsburgh the following year and was done in the majors by 2011.
In total, Milledge had a .269 batting average with 33 home runs and 40 stolen bases across 1,500 MLB at-bats. He played an additional four seasons for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in Japan, batting .272 with 39 home runs and 129 RBIs.
Devon Travis, East Boynton Beach, 2003
During ESPN’s lineup introductions for the 2003 LLWS, Travis said Sheffield was his favorite player. As fate would have it, they share the same list.
Travis was one of the top hitters in Williamsport, belting a two-run homer in the U.S. championship game and securing East Boynton Beach’s spot in the final. He eventually played at Florida State and was a 13th-round pick of the Detroit Tigers in 2012.
Traded to Toronto at the end of the 2014 season, Travis won the second base job for the Blue Jays in spring training and was named AL Rookie of the Month for April ’15. Persistent knee injuries limited him to just four MLB seasons, but Travis had a .274 average, .751 OPS with 35 home runs, 153 RBIs and 155 runs scored.
Max Moroff, Maitland, 2005
Florida’s most recent LLWS alumnus to make the majors, Moroff returned to Williamsport in 2017 as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Maitland, whose coaching staff included MLB vets Dante Bichette and Mike Stanley, lost to Chula Vista, California, in the U.S. semifinal round.
“It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to bring back some memories, just to see the kids out there having fun,” Moroff told MLB.com ahead of the Pirates’ Little League Classic matchup with the St. Louis Cardinals. “It’s going to be a great time. I’m looking forward to going back to see if there’s any changes [at Lamade Stadium]. I think they moved the fences back. That might be the only change. Just see how it looks.”
Moroff, 31, played parts of five MLB seasons with Pittsburgh, Cleveland and St. Louis. He had a .175 lifetime batting average with seven home runs, 35 RBIs and 29 runs scored.
