LYNNWOOD — Robley Corsi Jr. walked into his kitchen one morning prior to the Washington State Little League tournament and saw an odd sight.
There was Kam Jordan, one of the Pacific Little League All-Star team’s top pitchers, standing at the stove, cracking eggs.
With one hand.
“We team bond every weekend at least once a week and everyone goes to coach’s house,” Jordan said. “We watch a movie together and it’s really fun.”
It’s these kinds of team bonding activities that have helped galvanize the Pacific All-Stars, who open Northwest Regional Tournament play at 4 p.m. Sunday against Wyoming in San Bernardino, California.
“You gotta buy into my crazy, and my crazy is that we love each other,” Corsi said. “Once we step in-between these lines there is nobody else and it’s tough. Now rather than being an individual out there they have to play for each other.”
If the story about a Corsi-led Pacific team advancing to regionals sounds familiar, it should: Corsi also coached the 2014 squad that advanced all the way to the Little League World Series when his son, Robley Corsi III was on the team. This year younger son Lane Corsi is on the squad.
This team’s mettle hadn’t been tested much until last Saturday when it took on Redmond North for the state title. Pacific entered with a 4-0 state tournament record having already beat Redmond North 8-5 two days prior. But Redmond took the first game of the championship round 4-3 in 10 innings to force a winner-take-all second championship game.
Pacific prevailed 4-3 in another extra-inning game — this one went seven — to advance to regionals for the fourth time in league history. The team is now 10-1 after sweeping five straight at districts and going 5-1 at state.
“We went into (districts) feeling good, but we were learning the whole time,” Corsi said. “We were working on stuff the whole time. We were working on our game, what we needed to do and we just kept progressing at a crazy rate. Once we got to state it was the same thing. We just kept talking about doing our thing, playing our game, doing our stuff. Who cares about the other team? Let’s just go out and get better, and they kept doing it.”
Many of this year’s Pacific All-Stars had a front-row seat two years ago when the older group went to Williamsport.
“I knew a lot of the people on the team because we practiced together basically every day,” said Jordan, who is only one of several Pacific hurlers whose fastball pushes 70 miles-per-hour.
There is also surfing enthusiast Gibson Marshall-Inman, whose long golden locks make him a prepubescent Noah Syndergaard doppelganger, as well as Jacob Gabler, Koli Faaiu, Remi Heckman, Tyreek Curley and Maddox Stojkovic. All can be summoned to the mound.
“Where these guys are still getting it is in that sixth tool — in that brain. Knowing what their job is, knowing how to do it, why they do it,” Corsi said. “(They’re) not as big as 2014 team but what they lack in size they have in heart. They’re making it happen.”
Corsi is big on goal-setting, mottos and focused routine. The team’s motto of “Thirteen equals one” — the number of players coming together to form one unit — attests to that.
There is also the team’s pregame “Minute of Focus.” The team sits in the dugout, completely silent focusing on the task at hand. After the passes, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” blasts from a coach’s phone. That’s the signal to take the field.
“It’s been fun playing baseball every single day,” Jordan said. “It’s a lot of hard work but it’s really fun.”
The six-team Northwest Regional includes Idaho, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming and Oregon. Within a week someone will claim the regional title and be one of eight American teams to reach Williamsport.
Pacific Little League believes it can be that team, and if it is, there are plenty of more bonding activities ahead.
Follow Herald Writer Jesse Geleynse on Twitter @jessegeleynse.
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