Little League, Big Dreams

by Charles Euchner

  Blankets claim space for the Little League World Series championship game and make a giant quilt.

  The first few days in Williamsport entail a lot of waiting around. The players get fitted for uniforms. Camera crews from ABC and ESPN shoot features and short clips for “bumpers,” the transitions from commercials to game coverage. Some teams practice from early in the morning till late at night. Some of the teams occupy the fields and batting cages all day.

  Others—like California’s Marty Miller—disdain working out too much.

  “We haven’t taken infield practice in four weeks,” says Miller, an Idaho native who owns a construction company and has been playing or coaching baseball for more than four decades. “Give them six or eight balls and they’re okay. You can kill them by over-practicing on defense. If you do 200 grounders, you’re going to wear your arms off. There are some coaches that can’t teach pitching or hitting so they hit ground balls all day long. But fielding is not that hard to teach—butt down, gloves out front, eyes on ball.”

  When they’re not practicing, what can the players do? Most teams don’t let their kids swim in the pool because they might overtax some muscles or stub a toe. There’s a game room with free video games and pool tables, but eventually even that gets boring. They can roam around the complex and make new friends. Some do, some don’t.

  “I try to tell the kids don’t be overwhelmed, and I was overwhelmed,” manager Rick Hale of Kentucky told me. “It’s a big stage, and there are a lot of people and a lot of attention. There was so much time you had to fill with the kids. We got there on Monday and didn’t have a game till Saturday. I wish I had come up with activities like they were in school. You can’t practice them to death. It’s a carnival atmosphere. I turned them loose, and they ran back and forth to the game room and left the complex and went to fields and the tents. That makes for some locker room rumbles. All because we were cooped up together for too long.”

  Shon Muna, Guam’s coach, balanced baseball and fun with a strict/loose system of discipline. The team practiced many hours a day. And when they practiced, they worked hard. If Muna couldn’t think of anything else to have them do, he told them to run “until I get tired.” The team worked hard on infield drills and hitting mechanics. The Guam kids were usually the last team on the practice fields.

  But when they weren’t practicing, the players were allowed to roam as far as they wanted—so long as they responded when Muna called.

  I was talking with Muna one time in a pavilion as his kids were running around, eating, trading pins, shadow boxing, flirting. The group was wild—all over the place. But when Muna calls, they respond. “Want to see how it works?” Muna asked me. “Watch.” He paused for a moment, then called out, loudly: “Oyyyy!” Within five seconds, every player on the team surrounded Muna. “What’s up, coach?” “What you want, coach?”

  For a town that gets so much of its identity from Little League, Williamsport has not done much to celebrate its event. But in 2005, Williamsport decided to throw a parade. The Grand Slam Parade took place the night before the opening day of the World Series and was followed by fireworks over the Susquehanna River.

  Maybe 1,000 people set up butterfly chairs and lawn chairs and laid rugs by the side of West Fourth Street. They sat for almost an hour, listening to music blare on a public address system while waiting. American flags, large and small, were everywhere. Otto’s Bookstore set out carts and tables with baseball books on the sidewalk. The city’s grand hotel, Genetti’s, sold hot dogs and cokes from a pushcart. A twenty-five-foot blow-up baseball took up space on the sidewalk. The Clother, on old-timey haberdasher, put some sale items out on the sidewalk. Aluminum stands provided seats for a couple hundred people. At least a dozen storefronts along the street shut down.

  California’s Nate Lewis reacts after getting hit with a pitch in a game against Hawaii.

  Williamsport had not held a parade for its signature event since the 1950s, and people seemed happy to wait for this one to happen. The start time of 5:30 p.m. passed with nary a word. Then 6 p.m. passed. And people sat and waited.

  A group of Mexican women—parents of players on the team from Mexicali—broke the monotony by walking down the center of the street waving green pom-poms. People started cheering. The PA system played “That Old Time Rock and Roll” and “Downtown” and “Dance to the Music.” Was this the parade?

  No. But about fifteen minutes later, the procession finally began. The leader of the parade was Governor Edward Rendell, a man who’s still getting used to little town ways after serving two terms as mayor of Philadelphia. Rendell was stuffed into a bright blue suit, the jacket button holding his girth inside. His gray hair matted across his pate, Reddell wore a pol’s smile on his ruddy face and waved as his six aides surrounded him on all sides during the promenade.

  Then came a Hummer with an Iraq War veteran, followed by the usual small-town figures. The Montgomery High School Red Raiders marching band performed, followed by the Red Raiders cheerleaders, who carried plastic white blowup bats. Antique cars, one carrying Karen Stotz Myer, the daughter of Little League’s founder, followed. The Sons of Italy had a car. The Lycoming County Dairy Princess, a blonde in a flower summer dress, tilt-waved at the crowd. Then came teams from the Original Little League, the organization Carl Stotz set up after his bitter split from Little League. And there were a couple of furry cartoon characters—Little League’s mascot, a huge furry rodent named Dugout, and Puxatawny Phil, the symbol of Groundhog Day. Finally, on flatbed trucks, all sixteen teams in the Little League World Series arrived. The players, dressed in their uniforms, tossed candy and waved.

  Before the Little League World Series starts, all the teams are undefeated—and they all have a chance to go home as champions. It’s a time of optimism. All but about a half-dozen teams know, deep down, that they’re not going to win. But like a governor from a farm state who gets mentioned as a long-shot VP candidate, they all have elegant scenarios in which they could win, if only…

  Waiting for the games to start, the reporters hunt for stories.

  The big story in baseball in the summer of 2005 was the steroids scandal shadowing the major leagues. In the first year of regular testing for the drugs, a number of major leaguers got caught taking the performance-enhancing drugs. But as much as they tried, there wasn’t much of a story to be gotten in Williamsport. I saw repeated variations of the following conversation:

  Reporter: There seems to be a problem in the major leagues with steroids. What do you think?

  Player: Well, I guess it’s bad.

  Reporter: Do you think major leaguers should be role models?

  Player: Yeah, I guess.

  Reporter: Who’s your favorite ballplayer?

  Player: Barry Bonds.

  At this stage of their development, players are not going to have the kind of layered political opinions that the reporters were seeking. They like to play the great game of spotting contradictions when it suits their immediate interests—Why does he get to do it and I don’t?—but they’re not interested in cross-examining players to the nth degree. Logic and consistency are not the ultimate values of childhood.

  I spent about a half-hour one afternoon hanging out with the players from Kentucky as they waited on The Hill for the bus that took them to the parade in downtown Williamsport. We talked at length about their favorite players and teams, what they want to do for a living, and what they think of steroids and greed and other flaws of modern major leaguers.

  They alternated between saying what they thought I wanted to hear and defiantly sticking to their guns, no matter what the evidence.

  I asked them to name the greatest living ballplayer. One said Barry Bonds, which was a reasonable pick, but then he backed off when I mentioned steroids. I suggested Willie Mays and Henry Aaron. Politely, they agreed. Yes, that makes sense. Mays and Aaron it is. But I sensed they were just being polite with an adult.

  Then one of them renominated Bonds.
“You know, I don’t care about steroids,” he said. “Just look at the way he hits the ball.”

  These kids are not going to agonize over the misdeeds of major leaguers. They get an image of what they like, mostly from TV, and they idolize it. They don’t want to be critical of salaries or steroids. They don’t want to talk about who’s a selfish player and who’s a team player. They just want to fasten onto an idol and forget about the rest.

  Every year, ESPN shoots short instructional clips for use during the week and a half of games. Harold Reynolds, a twelve-year veteran of the major leagues who now works as a broadcaster, guided a bunch of Little Leaguers through the paces before the TV cameras at Lamade Stadium.

  Reynolds is a trim and outgoing African American man with a short haircut and a wisp of a goatee, and he wears a powder blue golf shirt with an ESPN logo, baggy khakis, and white sneakers. He moves easily around the field. He hasn’t exercised seriously since ending his career but says he’s going to start running again. “I just got so burned out after playing all those years,” he said.

  He pointed to a couple of players who were recruited to star in the instructional spots. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he told them. “You guys are going to be first basemen. There are two ways of scooping up the ball. Are you good at the stretch? Let me see.”

  Andrew Stevenson, who played for the all-stars from Lafayette, Louisiana, and Paul Kelsch, who played for the Saudi Arabia team, listened and followed his motions. Oleg Khudyakov, one of the all-stars from Moscow, Russia, stood nearby. Reynolds tried talking to him, then started to motion, but gave up quickly. “Can anyone translate for Oleg?” No answer. “Oleg, I’m going to use you to hit. Okay?” No response. Reynolds gently pushed him back to the dugout.

  Three girls watch the game from The Hill.

  Reynolds tried to chat up Mitch Burns, a player for the team from Surrey, British Columbia, in Canada. “I’m from Spokane. You know where that is? Washington State. Washington State?” Burns shook his head. Then he walked over to Zachary Ranit of Ewa Beach, Hawaii: “Hey, you hit a home run the other night? Yeah, you did!” He hit the bill of his cap.

  The camera people set up a light screen to do the spot. “ I’m here with Andrew and Paul,” Reynolds said to the camera. “As you can see, they’re different sizes. It doesn’t matter how big you are. What’s important is you catch the ball.” Cut! The players were distracted and didn’t know where to look. Reynolds walked over and hugged them. “Re-lax and have some fun,” he said. They got the spot right in four takes.

  The other players waited to play their parts. Zachary Ranit demonstrated Hawaii’s shaka sign, which can be translated as “Hang loose” or “Aloha.” The thumb and pinky extend outward, and the other fingers close in a fist. Dylan Demeyer, who plays for the Vista, California, team, played hackeysack with a ball. Ranit and Stevenson played catch for the camera.

  Once the camera stopped shooting, they stopped playing. Little League in the age of TV.

  Throughout the Little League World Series, fans slide down the hills overlooking Howard Lamade Stadium.

  For decades, boys and girls have gathered at the Original Little League Field to try out for the new season.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Rise of Little League

  ON ONE OF THEIR OFF DAYS, the team from the Brateevo Little League in Moscow took a pilgrimage to the Eden of Little League Baseball.

  They went like they were visiting the Hermitage in St. Petersburg or Red Square in Moscow. They took cameras and walked around, inspecting the objects in the museum and looking over the field as if it was hallowed ground.

  To get to the heart of Little League, you drive up West Fourth Street from downtown Williamsport, beyond the elegant mansions and into the territory of auto parts stores and check-cashing outlets and a struggling residential area. Finally, right across the street from Bowman Field, the home of the Williamsport Cutters of the New York-Penn League, you find a bright greensward and a small stone building.

  Carl Stotz Field is where Little League staged its World Series games before Howard Lamade Stadium opened in 1959. It’s a smaller, cozier version of Lamade Stadium, nestled into a small hill on the other side of the Susquehanna River. Like Lamade Stadium, it has a hill just beyond the outfield fence. The seating is mostly standard-issue aluminum benches. The stone building houses the Original Little League Museum, as well as the scorekeeper’s booth and a place for players to change clothes. The museum is usually open when Little League games are under way, but otherwise you have to make an appointment to see the collection of old uniforms, scorecards, photos, bats, and balls.

  A couple blocks away, on the other side of Bowman Field, is the place where Carl Stotz had the brainstorm that led to the creation of Little League in 1939.

  Outside the museum, just feet away from a symbolic lilac bush, a plaque honors the man who revolutionized youth sports in America. The plaque reads:

  A PROMISE KEPT

  LITTLE LEAGUE’S FOUNDER GAVE PART OF AMERICANA TO THE WORLD. THOSE WHO KNEW HIM SAW A MAN OF PROFOUND INTEGRITY AND CHARACTER, TRULY ONE OF THE GREATEST MEN OF ALL TIMES. THE IDEALS BY WHICH HE LIVED ARE THE ULTIMATE MEASURE OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY MAN. HE REMAINS MR. LITTLE LEAGUE.

  Those words are over-the-top generous to Little League’s founder. Honestly, “one of the greatest men of all times”? But when you know the history, the words have an edge to them.

  To many people’s way of thinking, this is not only where Little League was born. It’s also where the soul of Little League died.

  Every great organization—nations, corporations, religions, movements, and even sporting events—nurtures a powerful mythology of its founding.

  The founding myth gives people a reason for elevating their activities above others and commanding the allegiance of new generations. At the center of the myth stands a figure who embodies both humility and transcendence. He touches people emotionally, but often stands aloof. He considers his followers to be his children, who must obey and honor him without question.

  The founding act usually results from some moment of revelation, a sudden flash of divine inspiration that even the founder cannot fully explain. That moment of inspiration—that eureka moment—lends an air of inevitability and transcendence to the organization.

  Ultimately, the founding myth includes a tale of betrayal, the moment when the forces of greed and egotism try to steal the empire from the founder. This betrayal often creates a great civil war, which leaves everyone damaged. If they’re lucky, new generations come along to heal the wounds of that battle—and bring the organization to new levels of glory.

  The founder of Little League Baseball—now the largest amateur sports organization in the world—was a twenty-eight-year-old clerk at Pure Oil Company named Carl Stotz.

  Carl Stotz was a thin man with thin black hair, combed back in the severe style of the time. His face was long and his body was lean. His efforts to bring baseball to kids took him all over the world. In the beginning, he used his own money, even when he was unemployed, to spread the gospel of Little League. When I spoke to some of the men who played on the first Little League teams back in 1939, they alternated between the honorific “Mr. Stotz” and the friendly “Carl” when they talked about him.

  A one-room museum next to the Original Little League Field in Williamsport honors Carl Stotz, who founded the organization in 1939.

  Carl Stotz told the story of Little League’s founding the following way.

  One August day in 1938—a couple months after the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown enshrined its first five members—Stotz was playing catch with his nephews, Jimmy and Major Gehron, in the yard of his house on Isabella Street. The house was not far from Bowman Field, the home of the Williamsport Grays, the Eastern League affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. A ball got away. As Stotz ran after the ball, he brushed his leg on a lilac bush.

  When he sat down to nurse his scrapes, he had a revelation which “is hard
to explain unless you have experienced it yourself sometime in your life, where all at once something comes to you that they call a flashback…There it is in one scene.”

  In that one pivotal scene, Stotz asked his nephews a series of questions:

  How would you boys like to play on a baseball team? How would you like to play in uniforms, just like major-league players use? With real equipment— a fresh supply of balls and bats, with catcher’s gear. Umpires would call the games, so arguments about balls and strikes, catch or no catch, fair or foul, would not interrupt play. Coaches would teach players. Someone would keep score. At the end of the year, the best teams would play for the championship of the league. What do you think of that, boys?

  Jimmy and Major Gehron nodded enthusiastically and set out to tell their friends about a new baseball league. Within days, the boys gathered a group of friends and they practiced at a nearby field. But the real league wouldn’t begin to play until the spring of 1939.

  Stotz recruited boys to play in the new league. He went to schools and churches and asked boys the same question he asked his nephews: how would you like to play in a league just like the major leagues? As the spring of 1939 approached, Stotz and his followers cleared a vacant lot owned by the Williamsport Textile Company, graded the surface, marked out a baseball diamond, built a backstop behind home plate, and planted grass.