Thursday, June 8, 2000

Future stars still flock to Moody games

Contributed Photo

Future Moody players Ricky Recio (left), 7, and Rene Recio (right), 5, pose with Steve Castillo, who eventually coached the boys when they played baseball for the Trojans. Moody baseball has inspired a multitude of young fans, many of whom grow up with hopes of playing for Castillo’s team.

   The old photograph has stayed in Steve Castillo's baseball scrapbook for years, taken one night long ago after a Moody baseball victory at Cabaniss Field. He is much younger in the shot, as are the small boys standing next to him, wearing the Garcia Elementary T-shirts.
   That night when they posed next to the Moody coach, Ricky Recio was seven and his little brother Rene was five. Their parents approached Castillo after the game, gave him a "Coach, can you take a quick picture with our boys?" and snapped away. Later that summer, the family gave him the photograph as a keepsake.
   Years later, Castillo sometimes looks at that photograph and laughs.
   Ricky Recio later became a key player for Castillo's 1997 team that made it to the state tournament. And now, if the Trojans make it to Friday's Class 5A championship game, it will be Rene Recio's game to pitch.
   It is the beauty of the Moody baseball program: kids grow up watching Trojan games, idolizing Moody players. When some of those kids grow up, they get the chance to try out for the team. For those who do not make it, many still support the team from the stands anyway.
   Castillo's is a program that perpetuates itself.
   "It's been like that ever since I've been at Moody," Castillo said. "These guys used to get autographs from their favorite players. Now they're giving them. It's just a circle. They all grow up looking up to the players, wanting to be a part of it. Because they see the stands."
   Castillo stopped, turned around and peered up at the bleachers of Cabaniss Field, which on this recent afternoon was peppered with children and adults watching a Moody practice.
   "Who doesn't want to be a part of a program that fills the seats like this stadium?" he said. "It's a family thing."
   Starting young
   I remember walking onto the grass at West Martin Field in Laredo in 1995, moments after Moody's 3-1 victory over San Antonio Churchill that sent the Trojans to that year's state tournament, and seeing first-hand what Castillo is talking about.
   Joe Luis Lopez, Moody's ace pitcher, stood on the mound, a trail of young boys and girls extending from him, through the infield and past the third-base foul line. They held papers, autograph books, baseballs, caps and programs, and they thrust pens upward in his direction.
   Go to any Moody game at Cabaniss Field, take a look beyond the playing field and behind the stands and bleachers, and you will find the future of the Trojans' baseball program. Dozens of children flock there behind the concession stands, bathrooms and ticket booths, playing pretend games by bouncing a tennis ball off the walls, then chasing it down.
   "I've been having camps for the last four or five years," Castillo said. "You have to be between the ages of eight and 13, but some of the boys try to register when they're only five or six. I just ask the parents if their son can at least catch the ball."
   Dreams fulfilled
   When Moody beat San Antonio South San last Saturday at Cabaniss to earn their state berth, sophomore first baseman Andrew Casares spoke not of his tie-breaking, two-run home run in the fifth inning, but of the completion of a Moody dream.
   When he was a child, Casares said, he longed to someday not only be a Trojan, but to be a Trojan star. He has grown up. He wears the Moody uniform. And now he is one of the ones making children dream of someday taking his place.
   As soon as Moody dispatched McAllen Rowe two weeks ago in Game 2 of the regional semifinals, many of those children flooded Cabaniss' diamond. This time, it was players like Gene Flores, David Castillo and Rene Recio who were asked for their signatures.
   Continuing the cycle
   Today, the Trojans take their sixth shot at a Class 5A state championship. Win or lose, the Trojans win because that circle will continue. How many families will make the drive up to Austin? How many more will listen to the game on radio? And how many of those families will include children - future Moody students - who will watch or listen and root for the Trojans?
   As the Trojans' team bus left Corpus Christi on Wednesday, the placard on the front windshield bore the words "Getting there is half the fun." For the Moody baseball program, at least, those words are as good as gold.
   District championships are fun. State and national rankings are fun. Community pride is fun. And when you're a kid and you're a Moody fan, making your favorite Trojan player your hero is fun, too.
   It's the kind of fun that keeps the Trojans' program going.
   And it will keep going, as long as Castillo continues to fill his scrapbook with photographs of young children, and players are asked to sign caps and baseballs from future players.
  
  
  

 
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