Former Little Leaguer Luke Ramirez reminisces about winning the LLWS
The following is a transcript of a segment from this week's episode of the Cut4Cast podcast. To hear more of the Cut4 staff's weekly banterings about which position player is the best at pitching or how baseball would work in outer space, subscribe to the Cut4Cast by clicking here.
Luke Ramirez was a member of the famous Blue Bombers of Chula Vista, the California team that took home the Little League World Series championship in 2009. Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman of Cespedes Family BBQ caught up with him on this week's Cut4Cast, and took a trip down memory lane. He went over who the toughest (and biggest) competitors were, got compared to Joey Gallo, and was reminded of how outstanding he actually was several years back:
Jordan: We went back, and Little League does an outstanding job of posting the box scores and all the history back more than 10 years. So you can find all that on littleleague.org. We wanted to quiz you and see how well you remember your numbers. Do you have any sense of what your approximate batting average was?
Luke: What I do remember is either going yard or striking out with a few walks mixed in there, so I wanna say my strikeout to walk ratio was probably even, maybe? Average wise, I would say 8-for-21.
Jake: You were 7-for-13. Over .500. Do you remember how many home runs?
Luke: I had four home runs. I remember that for sure.
Jake: Do you remember how many singles you hit?
Luke: Gosh, probably zero.
Jake: Three! You had four home runs, three singles and no doubles.
Luke: That must have been when we were mercying a team and going station to station because I don't remember getting that many singles back then.
Jake: You were basically like Joey Gallo.
Luke: I like to think of it maybe as like
Jordan: We know you're a San Diego native and a big Padres fan. I'm not sure anyone else from any other city would be able to make that comparison.
Jake: My favorite statistical anomaly is that you were walked three times, but you were also hit three times. Do you think the pitchers were trying to save pitches on the pitch count?
Luke: That's a good point. It's tough to say. I don't think kids in Little League would be doing that on purpose. If I was in their shoes, it doesn't seem like a bad idea because pitch count is huge.
Jake: Also, you were enormous.
Jordan: Right, we knew you were one of the biggest kids at the World Series. Were you the biggest kid in Williamsport or was there some competition?
Luke: The Georgia team had a kid that was just as big as me, but he might not have been as tall. He was right up there with me as far as weight. It must have been the year before me, but the Middle East/Africa team had a giant kid who was like 6-foot, 7-inches.
Jake: The Saudi Arabia guy. He was like 6-foot-7.
Jordan: That made little Luke look actually little.
