Nicknamed Chicken Little, Deivis Ordoñez gets as small as he can in the batter’s box prior to the first pitch.
Don’t worry. The sky’s not falling.
If Ordoñez can get an easy ball on the first-pitch, he’s all the more likely to get on base.
With the Little League World Series underway, the world has seen a mix of cultures, styles and simply entertaining children playing baseball.
This Venezuelan player has one of the more unique approaches.
With that first pitch, he crouches low to minimize the strike zone.
If you’re being generous, it’s reminiscent of the crouch Ricky Henderson took at the plate, only Ordoñez’s is much deeper and he’s clearly looking for a ball. If you’re looking critically (and probably more realistically), it’s a page out of “The Benchwarmers” when a player crouched on four straight pitches to draw an easy walk.
In this LLWS game, it didn’t work. The Australian pitcher got a strike in.
After the first pitch, Ordoñez stood back up to a natural batting stance.
Nickname: Chicken Little
Strike Zone: Littler#LLWS pic.twitter.com/1OCr2Rc26E
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) August 17, 2019
But Ordoñez’s bag of tricks wasn’t empty. A longer ESPN video shows him dropping down a beautiful bunt down toward third base to get on first.
Hyped, he waved his arms to get the crowd into it, too. Ordoñez wanted to make something happen.
And that he did. He got to third and a base hit drove him home. Ordoñez pulled one more thing out of his bag: some dance moves.
After crossing the plate, he turned toward the crowd and broke out in a little dance before returning to the dugout.
Over the top or not, that energy shows the love and excitement a 12-year-old has for the game of baseball. And all in all, isn’t that what the Little League World Series is all about?
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