Baseball, Andrew, and the Robbery in Center

Castle Rock Sports Fields, May 21, 2025

There are moments in youth baseball—just as there are in the big leagues—when a game becomes a story. Not just a box score, not just who hit what and when, but a story that grows in the telling. The Diablo Red Viperz vs. White Sox game on a sun-warmed Tuesday evening at Castle Rock was one of those stories. And like all good stories, it began with trouble.

The Viperz were down 4–0 before they had even swung a bat. A wall-scraping double from Joaquin T cleared the bases and stunned the home bench into an early hush. But as any coach or fan who has ever tucked sunflower seeds into their cheek will tell you, baseball is never about the first inning. It’s about what happens next.

And next came Andrew D.

Andrew didn’t just have a good game. He had the kind of game that your teammates talk about at lunch the next day. Three hits. Four RBIs. A double. A single. And a towering triple that scored two, the kind of hit that makes outfielders turn and run without looking back.

But Andrew’s swing was just the spark. Blake C followed with a single. Ryan S grounded out but brought a run home. Logan S slapped a base hit. Suddenly, the game was tied. The dugout bounced back to life. Parents leaned forward in their folding chairs.

In the second, the Viperz flipped the game, scoring six runs on six hits, capped by a two-RBI single from Nikolai F.

But before that rally could even begin, the Viperz had to hold the line. And that’s when Joe Ventura took over.

The top of the second looked dangerous. The White Sox were pressing. First, Joe calmly settled under a fly ball in center for the first out. Then a groundout. Two down. But the third batter, Ronin R, caught hold of one. A moonshot. Off the bat, everyone thought it was gone. The White Sox bench was halfway out of the dugout. The crowd drew breath.

And then—Joe Ventura at full sprint, back to the fence, glove up against the ivy and sky—and he caught it.

He robbed a home run, a clean theft, and held it aloft like a badge. That play didn’t just end the inning. It cracked the game wide open.

Because in the bottom of the inning, the Viperz returned to the plate like a team lit by belief. Jack S doubled in two. A wild pitch brought in another. Joe V singled. Henry M followed. And Andrew? He stepped in and tripled again, driving in two more. The Viperz hung eight runs in the frame, and it was all but over.

On the mound, Liam S recovered from the first to strike out two. Joe V closed things out with a clean frame. The Viperz finished with 14 hits, multiple-hit games from Henry, Max S, Blake, and Joe V, and zero errors in the field.

The White Sox kept swinging—Joaquin T knocked in two, and Santiago W, Enzo D, Panagiotis K chipped in—but the tone of the game had changed.

The story, when told again, will be about Andrew’s four-RBI day. But just as much, it will be about Joe Ventura, standing alone under a high, arcing shot, glove raised, with a fence behind him and the whole game in front.