NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A team from Elizabeth, New Jersey will play its first game of the Little League World Series Friday night.
The Elmora Troopers, the Mid-Atlantic Champions will face a team from Salem, Oregon team at 7 p.m. in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
The game will air on ESPN.
Fans are packing buses Friday afternoon to make the trip.
“It’s Disney World, Christmas, all into one right now. It’s unique and overwhelmingly awesome,” coach Jairo Labrador told the New York Post. “It’s been a jam-packed schedule. Mostly not baseball stuff. But the kids know why we’re here.”
The Elmora homefield is named after Thomas Hanratty, a lifelong Elizabethan, former Elmora player and a New Jersey State Trooper who was tragically killed by a passing vehicle when he made a routine traffic stop at age 24 in 1992.
The Troopers are named in Hanratty’s honor and still wear his badge number, 4971, on their sleeve.
Col. Patrick Callahan of the New Jersey State Police, will be making the trip to Williamsport to support the team.
“Elmora and the youth league team has carried on [Hanratty’s> memory and his love of baseball,” he told the Post.