‘Stealth’ Team Is a Big Hit for Cypress

For six weeks, the boys from Cypress have played baseball like nobody’s business. They won a dozen games in a row. They trounced teams by 11 runs or better. Once, they pulled in eight home runs by seven players.

And they did it quietly, without so much as a single victory party.

“Call them the stealth team,” said Ray Frankeny, a recreation coordinator for the Cypress Parks Department who has proudly kept track of the team’s success. “They just motored on through, right to the top.”

Tonight, the Cypress Federals play their first game in the Little League Western Regional Tournament in San Bernardino, becoming Orange County’s second team in two years to get within batting distance of the World Series in Williamsport, Pa. Last year, the Mission Viejo All-Stars missed being crowned the world’s best in Little League by one run, in a heartbreaking loss to Guadalupe, Mexico.

The 14 Cypress boys, however, have yet to feel the frenzy of support that surrounded Mission Viejo’s journey to Williamsport, a trip that earned them celebrity status and a Disneyland parade in their honor. There have been no television interviews or rallies, dedications or lighted marquees. They are not being called Orange County’s boys of summer. Not yet, that is.

So far, this group of 12-year-olds can boast of a simple hand-drawn sign--propped in the window of an International House of Pancakes restaurant in their hometown--that announces the exciting secret they are living: “Congratulations Cypress Federals! Regional Tournament Little League Championships!”

“They don’t have much in their scrapbooks, that’s for sure,” said Cypress resident Kevin Wesley, whose son Zachary plays first base. “But they will. We keep telling them a team this good can’t be ignored forever.”

The boys’ arrival Sunday in San Bernardino, where they will square off with 13 teams from 13 states, came as no surprise to those who have watched them for the past two years.

Parents and coaches were saying then that these boys were the ones to watch. The ones to beat. The ones who could, just maybe, be Orange County’s first Little League world champions.

“Personally, I thought two years ago that this team would get this far,” said Robert Ulate, Orange County Little League vice president. “When they were 10-year-olds, they went all the way to the state championship and lost. At that point I thought in a couple of years, this will be the team to beat.”

Besides the Mission Viejo All-Stars, only three Orange County teams have made it to Williamsport: Yorba Hills Little League, which won the Western Regional Championships in 1995; another Cypress team, which took the same title in 1990; and Northwood Little League of Irvine, which won in 1987.

Until recently, even many Cypress city officials were unaware that their hometown Little Leaguers had made it so far.

“We are of course very proud of these boys,” Councilman Tim Keenan said. “We only just found out about them, true, but wow . . . what a treat. They should know they have big support back here.”

Added Mayor Mary Ann Jones: “We’ll be cheering them on, all the way to Williamsport.”

The lack of fanfare surrounding the boys’ undefeated record may have been a blessing, said Coach Dave Koscielak, whose son Eric plays left field.

“They’ve just been out there doing their thing, and I don’t think they’ve felt a lot of pressure about it,” he said. “Now is when things start sinking in, and they could probably use a few pats on the back.”

The test begins tonight at 8, when they pull on their blue, white and red uniforms and play Alaska on the small, dusty field between the San Gorgonio Mountains and Interstate 215.

“They are a great team, the best kind of team, because they know what the word means,” Koscielak said. “You just gotta see these guys.”

Times staff writer Paul McLeod contributed to this report.