S A N TA M O N I C A
REFLECTING THE CONCERNS OF THE COMMUNITY smmirror.com
August 5 – August 11, 2022 Volume CLII, Issue 156
INSIDE
Santa Monica College Named One of 40 Best Film Schools in U.S. and Canada
PAGE 2
Santa Monica Baseball Team Wins 2022 Easton Elite World Series Coach Eric Beckerman speaks about the challenges and the triumphs of the season BY DOLORES QUINTANA For a long time, the best baseball players on the Westside have been obligated to go to the South Bay or the San Fernando Valley to get the best training for the sport and to advance to teams that play on the national level in scholastic sports. This is no longer the case. Coaches Eric Beckerman, Zach Smith and John Urena founded Top Level LA Baseball Academy on the Westside to address this lack of high-level coaching for students in the area and even after some serious challenges this season, including one coach having a heart attack, the Academy is now the home of the 2022 Easton 14U USSSA Elite Florida World Series Champions and the #1 ranked 14U team in California. We spoke to Coach Beckerman about the challenges and the triumphs of this season and how they got a brand new team and training facility to the championship in such a short time. Dolores Quintana: Could you give me a little bit of a background on how this came about. Coach Eric Beckerman: Sure. I am the Crossroads high school coach in Santa Monica. I got the job three years ago, and started a start a new organization to help develop players in the Santa Monica and westside areas. But then the COVID pandemic and came along and we
got shut down for a couple of years, obviously. When things finally broke, in the summer of 2021, we were able to quickly get the program back up in July which became very popular. Then we formed a 14-year-old team in September. We set a goal to win a qualifying event for the World Series in Florida. The team actually didn’t do very well the first few tournaments, but then started to improve and get better. In February, their coach had a heart attack, but he was okay. He was going to have open heart surgery that got moved to July. He was able to return to the team about a month after taking it easy. In the very final qualifying tournament of the year at the end of April, that team really played well and came together. They ended up winning the tournament to qualify for the Florida World Series in July. This happened three days after their coach was scheduled to have open heart surgery. Dolores Quintana: Wow. So there’s a lot of uncertainty because the team hadn’t won one unit the very last tournament and the coach wouldn’t be available. There was uncertainty if the team would even go, even though that was the goal from the get-go. We had a meeting with everyone. We got everyone in the same room and said, Yeah, let’s go. We we’re able to go with the core of the team. I had actually been to the tournament three other times with very strong teams. All those teams had always sort of underachieved compared to the talent level of the teams. I wasn’t really sure if it was the humidity or the three-hour time difference or the strong level of competition. But the teams had always underachieved. When we were in the very first game of the tournament of Florida. we were actually losing two to
Photo: Courtesy Santa Monica-based Top Level 14U Baseball Team pose for a photo after winning the 2022 Easton Elite World Series in Florida.
nothing as we were going into the very last inning. I remember thinking, “Here we go again.” You know, why do our teams just not do well in Florida? But fortunately, the the team broke it open in the very last inning and scored seven runs to win seven to three and then they really never looked back after that. They were almost dominating every team after that and ended up being the top-seeded team from Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina. Lucky in the championship game they beat the number one ranked team from Texas six to one to win the World Series. Dolores Quintana: That’s fantastic. Yeah, very, very fun. It was a lot of fun out here again. I don’t ever recall seeing a team just put everything together like that at the right moment. I mean, they hit better than every other team, they pitched better than every other team, they did better than every other team. It all just really really came together. They played well.
Dolores Quintana: How did you, as a coach, how did set up the program? From what I understand, before your academy, if players wanted to get the best coaching and play nationally they had to go to the San Fernando Valley or to the South Bay. Coach Beckerman: It was when me and my assistant coach, Coach, Zach, got the job at Crossroads. A lot of the players from Santa Monica and the Westside did have to leave the West LA area and go to San Fernando Valley or east or down south to South Bay to find high-level development. There wasn’t a lot of high-level development in the local area. Crossroads, it’s not an easy school to get into. But we figured the more we could develop the players from Santa Monica and the Westside, obviously, the ripple effects would help any players that do play at Crossroads or get into the school at Crossroads. So I hired a lot of
Youth Baseball, see page 6
City Council Approves Ballot Measures Relating to Cannabis Business Licenses, Transfer Taxes and More Santa Monica City Council approves four ballot measures for November 8 general election BY SAM CATANZARO Last week, Santa Monica City Council approved placing multiple measures on the November 8, 2022, general election ballot relating to transfer taxes, a business license tax for cannabis-related activities and changes to the Personnel Board requirements that would allow non-Santa Monica residents to serve on the board. Council on Tuesday voted to place on the ballot competing real estate transfer tax initiatives, one sponsored by Mayor Sue Himmelrich and the other one sponsored by
Councilmember Phil Brock. Himmelrich’s measure, the Funding for Homelessness Prevention, Affordable Housing, and Schools measure would establish designated funds for schools, homelessness prevention, and affordable housing, and an eleven-member resident oversight committee, and provide a third-tier transfer tax rate of $56 per thousand dollars of value for property transfers of $8 million or more. Brock’s measure, the Real Property Transfer Tax Measure would establish a third-tier transfer tax rate of $25 per thousand dollars of consideration or property value transferred. The transfer tax rate would apply solely to the amount of consideration or value transferred in excess of $8 million, would sunset after ten years with an option to extend an additional five years with a council supermajority vote, and is subject to certain exemptions. An
Ballot, see page 4