Part 1: First fame, then fate

The promise of youth was never brighter for the 14 players on the Brooklyn Center Little League team than on the evening of Aug. 22, 1994.

That was the night Brooklyn Center stunned U.S. West Region champ Northridge (Calif.) 4-2 in the opening round of pool play in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. The West representative was the traditional American powerhouse, having won the 1992 and '93 World Series.

The victory thrust Brooklyn Center into the national limelight, thanks to a new cable network, ESPN2, that carried the game live, and a strike by major league players that left fans hungry for a compelling baseball story line.

Brooklyn Center starter Steve Kruger was told he was destined for the pros after outpitching Northridge's fabled flamethrower, Nathaniel Dunlap. Jermar Larkins watched ESPN replays of his defensive gems for several weeks after returning home. Krissy Wendell was a media sensation as the first girl to start at catcher in the Little League World Series.

"It was wild -- a totally extreme high knowing California was always the favorite," said Chris DeMars, whose two-out double started a three-run fifth inning that broke a 1-1 tie against Northridge. "To be a team from Minnesota and win the regional and just make it there was something. To beat a California team, that was such an outstanding achievement."

And then, just as quickly, it was over. Brooklyn Center lost its next two games and was out of the tournament. The team stayed in Williamsport and watched Northridge bounce back to win the U.S. championship, then lose 4-3 to Latin America in the World final.

This weekend another Minnesota Little League team, from Coon Rapids, became the fifth state team to advance to the LLWS. What does the experience mean in the big picture that is life?

The Brooklyn Center players from 1994 can tell all about the fickle, fleeting nature of fame, especially for 12-year-olds. The BC players are now about 25 years old, most of them still trying to map their paths in the world.

Their stories reflect the highs and lows so many have experienced in youth sports. And the stories attest that the significance of 1994 is clearly a matter of individual perspective.

At his best

Kruger had been used as the closer during district, state and regional tournaments, when BC lost only one game. But faced with the prospect of taking on Northridge and Dunlap in the opening Series game, BC manager Larry Wendell and coach Dan Erklouts concluded that their best chance for victory was to start Kruger. Even then, BC was a long shot against Dunlap.

"We heard he was the best pitcher to come out of Southern California in the last 15 years," Larry Wendell said. "And he was that good. I told the kids to guess knee-high fastball and let it rip, because you couldn't see it."

But on this day, Kruger was better.

"The best pitching performance I've ever seen," teammate Jerry Cogswell said of Kruger's outing.

Kruger said he was told frequently in the days after the game that he was destined for a pro baseball career. Kruger was bigger and stronger than most peers in 1994. But he grew only a couple more inches to his adult height of 6-1.

"Everyone else caught up and surpassed me," he said. "It's sad to think your life peaked at 12, but athletically it did for me. Every day after that was kind of a decline."

He was a good, but not great, high school player at Park Center and then, as a senior, at Totino-Grace -- a move made in vain to attract the interest of college and pro scouts. He tried junior college ball, then moved to Arizona and attended several pro tryout camps. The official end of his dream came when his arm started hurting, but in retrospect he said his hopes for a baseball career were over long before that.

"I think the result of all the World Series stuff was that I thought, 'Oh, yeah, I'm a shoo-in to go pro,'" he said. "I got to the point where I almost expected it to be handed to me as opposed to putting in the work."

After baseball, he struggled for several years, working blue-collar jobs, toying with the idea of becoming a pilot and then a golf course pro. He calls his first few years after high school "a roller coaster ride."

Kruger said he found his calling in the field of psychology. He has a degree from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, and is working with troubled youth in the area. He said he plans to attend graduate school and become a college professor and therapist.

"I don't look back [on the World Series] as a bad thing," he said. "That's something I look back and I'm proud of. I don't think I'd change a thing that's happened to me since then. It's all been a learning experience, and I'm happy where I am."

Accepting his role

The BC team was a group of all-stars, basically the top two players from each team in the Brooklyn Center American League.

Paul Neshek, younger brother of Twins righthander Pat Neshek, didn't feel like an all-star at Williamsport. In three games his playing time amounted to a pinch-running appearance against Northridge. Several other players had similar reduced roles.

"It's not like I was a bad player," Paul Neshek said. "To make it all that way, it's like I should have gotten a chance to at least hit or play in the field. That kind of angered me."

The Little League at the time had no minimum participation rule, and several Brooklyn Center parents wrote letters to the national office after the team's appearance, protesting the lack of such a rule. The rules changed in the late 1990s after a change of top national officials. Current rules guarantee everyone on the roster of playing six defensive outs in the field and having one at-bat.

The BC coaches said they did what they thought was right, trying to put their best players on the field to win the tournament. They noted some players on opposing teams never left the bench, while at least every BC player appeared in the tournament.

"When you have 14 kids on a team, it's tough to get all of them playing time," Erklouts said.

Neshek said that when he returned home and people asked him about the Series, he made stuff up.

"It was definitely embarrassing," he said. "It affected me by having to tell stories about the Series. But as I got older, I decided it was wrong to keep holding the truth in. I told people the truth, and I got over it."

The big hit -- and hurt

Eric Tauscheck admits a bit of luck was involved in his two-run home run that capped the fifth-inning rally. The smash came on the first pitch after Kruger's single had given BC its first lead.

"[Dunlap] was still striking out people left and right," Tauscheck said. "I guessed first-pitch fastball and had a split-second to react."

And in that split second, the game was decided. Tauscheck's legacy from the Series, however, ended less heroically.

That the players were still children would be made abundantly clear by Tauscheck the day after Brooklyn Center was eliminated from the Series. A steady rain had left the tall hills behind the stadium wet and slick, perfect for one tradition of the Little League World Series: players sliding down the hill, usually on large pieces of cardboard, after their team is eliminated.

Cogswell's parents recently had welcomed a baby into the family, and Tauscheck remembers being offered diapers for sliding. Rather than sit on the diapers, Tauscheck strapped them to his feet, took a run and tried to ski down the hill.

He didn't make it far before falling. The result: a broken right arm.

Tauscheck's 1994 teammates to this day remember the broken arm as readily as the home run.

Tauscheck isn't exactly philosophical about what the experience taught him.

"As a 12-year-old," he said, "you don't learn life lessons. But you sure walk away with a lot of great memories."

The big catch

That Brooklyn Center was in position to take the lead in the fifth inning was in large part because of a diving catch by center fielder Larkins on a line drive by Dunlap in the fourth.

Larkins still has the video of the game, still relishes his moment of glory. There were fewer highlights in the years that followed.

Perhaps the best all-around athlete on the BC team -- Wendell notwithstanding -- he quit playing basketball and baseball as a senior at Park Center. He also quit trying in the classroom.

"To this day, I couldn't even tell you what happened that year," Larkins said. "The ladies became more important. I was partying. My priorities at the age of 18 were in a completely different direction."

Larkins failed to graduate with his class. He said he went to summer school and eventually received his diploma.

"I paid the price to get back on my feet, but here I am," he said.

Larkins is working the third shift -- 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. -- as a quality technician for a medical supply company. He has promised himself that within the next year he will start college classes.

While Larkins has experienced his share of low moments, his self-esteem has remained intact. He credits part of that to his experiences from the summer of 1994.

"I've always been a winner," he said. "I don't know how to lose. If I was a loser, my life might be a completely different story. But the guys on that team, and Krissy, started winning at an early age. Whatever we did, we won, and if anything, that's what made me who I am today. I was born a winner."

The real deal

Athletic glory was short-lived for most team members. Many of the players stayed together on an AAU team coached by Erklouts the next two summers, but success was more modest.

When high school came, the area's boundaries split team members among Brooklyn Center, Park Center, Robbinsdale Cooper and fledging Champlin Park, and three team members attended Totino-Grace.

Most played at least one varsity sport in high school. Sean Aasen played in the Prep Bowl for Champlin Park as a junior and quarterbacked the team as a senior. DeMars was the quarterback for Park Center. Both also started on their school's basketball teams.

But only one team member, Krissy Wendell, went on to become an elite athlete, leading the University of Minnesota to two women's national hockey championships and playing on the 2002 and 2006 Olympic women's hockey teams.

When her former BC teammates are asked if it was uncomfortable to go to Williamsport with a girl as their catcher, they appear as taken aback by the question as they did 13 years ago. By the age of 12, most had played with or against Wendell for several years in base-ball, and some had been playing on boys' hockey teams with her for a half-dozen years.

"I guess, from an outsider's perspective, maybe having Krissy on the team was a big deal," Aasen said. "But it wasn't to us. There was nothing ever that was controversial about Krissy being on the team. She was one of our best hitters and one of the best catchers in the Series. She did it all."

The attention brought by being a girl in a boys' world apparently was a distraction to only one player: Wendell.

"I wasn't so cooperative [with the media]," she said. "I didn't want to do all the interviews and stuff. I just wanted to be part of the team, to go play pingpong and swim in the pool. But my dad sat down with me and said we had to select certain [interviews] to do."

Wendell was married last weekend to former Gopher and current Toronto Maple Leafs player Johnny Pohl. She said it's "50-50" whether she'll resume her hockey career and make a run at another Olympic team.

And if she doesn't, she will have plenty of memories. Just like her teammates from the summer of 1994.

"It went by so fast at the time that it all seems kind of like a blur," she said. "But I think about it every time I turn on TV in August and see teams playing in the Series. I think, 'Wow, that was so cool to have played there.' It also makes you realize how old you are, to think it was 13 years ago."

Thirteen years of gaining perspective.

Dennis Brackin • dbrackin@startribune.com