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By Jed Blackwell
Sports Editor
A group of young baseball players from the area will soon learn first hand about the game’s greatest players.
The Upstate Braves, a 12-and-under travel team built on players from District Five and one from Boiling Springs, will head to Cooperstown, New York for a tournament at the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“It’s a big deal for the kids especially,” coach Mike Green said. “We’re taking our team. Not a statewide all-star team, but the team that plays together in every tournament, all the time.”
The field of 98 teams is one of eight that will play throughout the summer. The winner of each tournament will be invited back at the end of the summer to compete for a national title.
At this tournament, though, the side trip is almost as important as the competition. Green is excited about his team getting to visit the Hall of Fame.
“They’ll get to learn what baseball is all about,” he said. “The origins, the game as it’s supposed to be played. A lot of them don’t understand.”
The Braves have been playing together for two years, for the most part. The level of dedication from the players is tremendous, but the coaches are quite dedicated as well.
Green even built a field in his backyard for the team to practice on.
“It was my wife’s idea,” he said. “She’d been asking me forever, and I said no. When we turned the team into a travel team, we needed a place to practice, and here it is.”
The field came together in six months, and boasts a grass infield. Green said practice time on the field was the biggest advantage for his team.
“You have to schedule practice time everywhere,” he said. “Here, if it rains today, we’ll just practice tomorrow. There are no scheduling headaches.”
Green said the team was looking forward to the trip to Cooperstown, and would travel much like it was a family vacation.
“We’ll caravan as much as we can, stop to eat, and have fun,” he said. “But we’ll try to play some pretty good baseball, too.
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