Fans of the L.A. Dodgers can almost taste it, the sweetness of a World Series championship after 28 dry years. All they have to do is continue what they’ve been doing — chalking up the best record in major league baseball with their solid lineup — and make sure Clayton Kershaw is healthy for the postseason.
Thirty-five years ago, a bunch of 15-year-old man-boys from Goleta and Santa Barbara showed how it’s done. No team has ever fulfilled its destiny more convincingly than the Goleta Valley South Little League All-Stars, who stormed to the championship of the 21st annual Senior League World Series at Gary, Indiana.
In that summer of 1982, the Goleta Valley team swept through five tournaments without a defeat in California, Hawai‘i, and Indiana, compiling a perfect 20-0 record. Butch Wells and Bill Oakley recently visited the GVSLL complex, where the names of the 14 world champions, including theirs, are embossed on a plaque. As they gazed across the Senior League diamond, where outfield fence borders the Goleta Cemetery, they forgot they were 50 years old. “I have memories on this field of many guys hitting into the cemetery,” Oakley said. “We had a lot of power.”
