What was your Little League highlight? And what was your lowlight?
For most members of the Milwaukee Brewers, the first question was easy and the second one a challenge.
Not for DL Hall, though.
“I have a good answer for that one,” the left-handed reliever said.
“When I was 11 I got a letter in the mail I had been playing for this travel team in Atlanta,” said Hall, a native of Valdosta, Georgia. “They basically told me I wasn’t good enough and they were cutting me. In that moment, my dad was like, ‘Don’t ever leave any doubt.’ I was still young but when I turned like 16, I remembered that moment and it fueled me.”
Hall wasn’t without a highlight, too, though.
“Probably winning the Dizzy Dean World Series,” he said. “We didn’t have Little League where I was at. We had what’s called – it’s like Little League – but it’s the Dizzy Dean Organization. We went to Mississippi. Won it. Pretty sick.
“I remember this kid named Pierre who was not 12 years old. I wonder where he’s at. We played the championship game and played on a 325 foot (fence) field, 370 to center. This kid was hitting [expletive] nukes out of there. I’ll never forget. He had these big [expletive] letters on his helmet that said ‘Pierre.’ And he was disgusting. He threw like [expletive] 87 [mph] at 12 years old.”
Hall’s travel ball team went 146-2 over three years until he was 12, he added. There were four or five Division-I college recruits on the team in addition to Hall, who became the 21st overall pick in the draft out of high school but wasn’t even the best pitcher on the team.
That honor? It belonged to his former Brewers teammate Connor Thomas.
“Shoot,” Hall said, “He was better than me. We were absolutely disgusting.”
From the manager to the far reaches of the roster, here’s what the rest of the Brewers remember as their highlights and lowlights of Little League before playing in the Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 22.
Pat Murphy
Highlight: “Merchants Bank [in Syracuse], my first team, 8U baseball. Champions. What was our record? 8-1. We got beat by Swathmore Paint, 3-2. I pitched every game. Every game. I wasn’t replaced in a baseball game until I was in college. I pitched a game, 14 innings. It was 32 degrees. There was snow on the field. Lost on a suicide squeeze.”
Lowlight: “The first hit I ever gave up in Little League was about six games in. Five straight no-hitters. John Pallotta got the first hit. It was a swinging bunt. I’d walk people here and there but I didn’t give up any runs. No hitter after no hitter after no hitter. First hit I gave up was John Pallotta. It might have been his only hit all year. True story. Eastwood Little League. You can check the tape.”
Trevor Megill
Highlight: “I mean, [Bryce] Harper took me deep twice. That’s one little fun thing I have from back then and facing him at the same age. The team I was on won 106 games the year we were 12.”
Lowlight: “Four games on Sundays was never fun. I was a good hitter back then, and then everyone started throwing sliders and really good pitches.”
Quinn Priester
Highlight: “I remember very vividly when we went to Cooperstown and the All-Star Village. We were 11 or 12. I had a two-homer game and they gave me the balls. I still have them right now in my childhood bedroom.”
Lowlight: “It might have been that same tournament, I made the last out of summer. And then that team, a couple kids moved away and it broke up. There were a couple. I remember a tournament in Appleton I had a passed ball while I was catching that ended up being the winning run. I cried the two-hour ride home. I was always super competitive. My parents told me I needed to relax.”
Shane Drohan
Highlight: “The high point was the week I had [playing] in Cooperstown. I had a good start too.”
Low point: “I was 12 years old, the year you could go to Williamsport. We had a really good team and we lost in sectionals on a walk-off home run to end the season. I was in right field. A homer to left-center. If we won that game, we would have gone to states, then regional, then Williamsport. We weren’t too close but we had the kind of team to do it. One of those fields where it’s 180 feet all around. The other team had a good arm on the mound, and then the kid who pitches hit the walk-off home run. It was his day. Season was over.”
Logan Henderson
Highlight: “My memory isn’t all that good. I remember my first over the fence home run with the ‘Kiddy Cowboys.’ I hit a grand slam and then had a three run homer in the second game of the doubleheader. I wanted to hit. I dreamed about being a hitter in the big leagues until the game told me that I needed to pitch.”
Lowlight: “Probably punching out to end the game.”
Kyle Harrison
Highlight: “Probably finally getting to play shortstop. My dad was the coach for one year so I got the play there a couple innings and that was fun when I was 10 or 11. I think we were losing one game and he’s like you know what, screw it.”
Lowlight: “A low light was in outfield, I was young, probably 8 or 9. I tried to catch a fly ball and caught it in my glove but my glove was so old and saggy that it came down, broke through the glove and hit my tooth and I had to get a root canal.”
Chad Patrick
Highlight: “The highlight of my career was getting to play against my cousins who I’m super close with. My family ended up moving to a different town and we ended up playing in the championship game against them to move onto the next round and got beat. But it was the highlight of my childhood days because I always wanted to play against them.
Lowlight: “Losing the championship. Yeah, probably. Or I’d say the lowlight was not playing with [my cousins].”
Jackson Chourio
Highlight: “I got to play in the [Intermediate] Little League World Series. It was at an older age than Williamsport. We didn’t make it to that. We ended up losing, but it was a tremendous opportunity. I played pretty well, to tell you the truth. We had a lot of talent. We didn’t win, but we played well. My dad was the manager. It was a special time.
“We had to win the championship in Venezuela. Once we won in Venezuela we had to beat the Dominican Republic in Reynosa, Mexico. We won, we were the champions and then we went to the tournament. It was a team I played with all my life from Maracaibo. I’m still close with some of them today.”
Andrew Vaughn
Highlight: “We had a tournament of champions. It wasn’t all-stars but it was the best teams from each league in the region played against each other.”
Lowlight: “Probably being told I couldn’t have another hot dog before the game.”
Garrett Mitchell
Highlight: “My dad reminds me of it: In T-ball I had an unassisted triple play. Caught it, tagged second and ran to first. One of my earlier baseball memories.”
Lowlight: “I don’t know what it would be considering I was – not selfishly – better than most. When I was 11, I was tied with one of my buddies for the most home runs in the league going into the final game. We were facing each other and I was pitching. He hit a ball and broke my finger. I had to go get a splint and he ended up hitting a homer to win the championship. Insult to injury. But I won it the next year when I was 12. I got my redemption.”
Jake Bauers
Highlight: “I broke the record for most home runs in a season in Ocean View Little League.”
Lowlight: “When I was 11, my friends were all 12, our team was so good we were booking flights to Williamsport and we didn’t make it out of the first round. It wasn’t even the regional. It was like the district. We didn’t even make it outside of our own city.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: These were the Brewers’ Little League highlights (and lowlights)
Reporting by Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
