Foresters look to defend World Series title

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

One year ago the Santa Barbara Foresters boarded their team bus and headed east to the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kansas with revenge on their minds. The revenge they were looking for stemmed from a heart wrenching loss in the championship game the year before to Prairie Gravel of Illinois. It was a loss that at the time, Forester’s Manager Bill Pintard said was one of the toughest of his 13-year tenure with the semipro club.
The bad taste of that loss was quickly washed away however, when the Foresters swept through the World Series brackets last August, decisively claiming the team’s first top finish at the tournament.


Last night the Foresters, who finished the regular season with a 43-8 overall record, boarded that same bus, but unlike last year they will arrive in Wichita as the tournament’s No. 1 seed and as the reigning NBC World Series champions.
“We’re going in there with the best record our team has ever had,” said Forester’s Assistant Coach Pat Burns. “Last year was a little desperation. This year it’s confidence. Fulfilling our destiny.”
Despite the strong record, Pintard hasn’t written any of his team’s opponents off.
Because of the Forester’s No. 1 seed, Pintard said his club will enter the tournament later than any other team, arriving in Wichita after some teams have already been forced to pack their bags and head home. As a result, Pintard said the Foresters will be forced to face tougher teams earlier than normal.
“I think our guys have something to prove,” Pintard said. “I know I really want to win and put an exclamation point on last year.”
If the exclamation point ends up showing itself at the end of the World Series, which began on Tuesday and runs through Aug. 12, the Foresters will have pulled off the repeat victory with only one returning player from the 2006 club.
That player is pitcher Chris Bodishbaugh, who wracked up an 8-0 regular season record with a 2.2 earned run average.
“I’ve been excited since day one to defend it and make the trek back [to Wichita],” Bodishbaugh said. “The second time around is going to be more fun to defend.”
Bodishbaugh said he’s looking forward to a possible matchup against last year’s championship opponent the Derby (Kansas) Twins, and their California rivals the Santa Maria Indians and the Maxim Yankees.
Despite the lack of familiar faces on the 2007 squad, the team’s hunger for winning game after game seemed as strong as it ever had.
The regular season was capped off last Sunday at UC Santa Barbara’s Caesar Uyesaka Stadium where a record crowd of more than 1,500 people watched the Foresters stomp the Santa Maria Indians in a 16-2 victory.
Regardless of whether or not the Foresters bring home another title, the summertime wood bat league that draws some of the brightest college baseball stars to Santa Barbara is officially thriving.
Burns said Sunday’s crowd was the biggest and so were merchandise and food sales.
For Pintard, who eclipsed the 500 win mark at mid season, the past four years have been what he called a “wonderful run.”
In 2002 the Foresters narrowly lost in the World Series to a team from Taiwan. In the 2005 loss against Prairie Gravel, Pintard said much of his club was injured by the time the final game rolled around.
“To get that far was an accomplishment,” Pintard said.
Baseball won’t be the only thing on the Forester’s minds while in Wichita.
Pintard said he and the rest of the Foresters will visit cancer patients at a Wichita hospital on Friday. Throughout the season the Foresters organization hosts several fundraising events to benefit the Hugs for Cubs program, which provides money and support to local cancer patients.
As Pintard, Burns and about 30 of his players took their seats on the the team bus yesterday in Carpinteria for the 28-hour journey, the lighthearted relationship the coaches have with their players, which brings them back year after year, was on display.
When asked what he has liked most about being a Forester, Bodishbaugh said without hesitating, “the coaches.”
“All they ask of us is to play hard and compete,” Bodishbaugh said. “That’s all they expect of you.”
There’s little doubt this year’s club has done just that, and as far as Burns is concerned, they know it.
“These guys believe they’re the best team in the country,” Burns said. “Now they’ve just got to go out and prove it.”