JJ and The Girls in Little League — Part Two

We left the Daunting Debutantes, aka the “deb’s,” in something of a dilemma. They had lost their first four of five games, and unfortunately were sitting at the bottom of the barrel. A reawakening had occurred by the Shakespearean declarations made by “Bubba” that articulated her observations in a personal, less than sanguine attitude regarding their losses. Something to the effect that she was tired of getting “her sweet ass kicked,” which caused an immediate reevaluation by her fellow team members. It was now a war. (You have to read part one to understand what brought on this emotional outburst.)

The girls were collectively clearly uptight, and Bubba’s pronouncement broke the ice. As I mentioned in part one, after that they didn’t lose another game, but not without some interesting events. They really got into the spirit of things and had developed some pregame and postgame cheers that they would force the spectators to chant. I taught them the only one that I knew and it went, “Wreck-em, wreck-em ree, kick-em in the knee. Wreck-em, wreck-em rass, kick-em in the other knee!” For some reason, Blue-eyes nixed my contribution. I don’t know why, based on the language that I was hearing on my occasional visits to the dugout. The sweet young things knew some rather interesting words. My blonde roommate’s solution to this language problem was to teach them some Bohemian phrases that she had often used to get my attention.

At one point, the concept of chewing tobacco was brought into play, and of course, was discouraged rather emphatically. Bubblegum was suggested as an alternative, but was turned down by the majority of them who had braces and further said that “gum was bad for your teeth.” Like chewing tobacco is okay?

As an alternative there appeared a 400 pound bag of sunflower seeds and it invoked this massive shower of saliva-laden shells being evacuated throughout the dugout. The debs developed a little game to see how far one could expectorate a whole sunflower seed. Every so often, somebody would come out of the dugout and put a popsicle stick next to seed with the greatest distance. At one point, I expected my daughter, who was part of this routine, to come home and asked me how to propel this projectile further. I already knew my answer was going to be, “Talk to your mother!” I really wasn’t fascinated with the idea of being the father of the best “spitter” on the team. I came to the conclusion that there was far too much “pro ballplayer” emulation.

“Half pint” had probably blackmailed her brother into helping her with her new responsibilities as the starting catcher. It was paying dividends. He had taught her how to block the plate without getting killed, how to field a bunt and doing snap throws every once in a while, which she managed to do with some degree of success. She became a very good bunter, extremely fast and was the lead-off batter. She eventually became an All-Star. She had one minor defect and that could be called a bad temper, probably because she was vertically impaired. If she didn’t like a call the kid ump made, she let him know in no uncertain terms, using some rather less than ladylike language, or accusing him of having amorous interests in the batter. The umps were usually from the debs’ high school peer group. On more than one occasion, Blue-eyes would receive a phone call from the chief of umpires regarding the abuse of his relatively blind umpiring crew. (I ran into “half-pint” some years later, and she was clerking for a law firm and was close to a law degree. She probably made a good lawyer.)

It was mid spring and warm weather had begun. Part of my job description as assistant to the assistant, was to bring an ice chest with soft drinks and water for the team during practice sessions. I would of course, throw in a six-pack or so of adult beverage for the coaches. I’m not much of a beer drinker; one beer usually makes me want to go take a nap. However, after a couple of practices, I noticed that the adult beverages were extremely popular. Blue-eyes didn’t drink much beer, even though she was from Wisconsin. Bev was capable of knocking down at least one, but that was usually it. She was a “branch water and bourbon” afficionado. At the same time, I detected a little more giggling in the dugout than usual. What I found out was our sweet young ladies were taking some of the soft drinks, emptying the contents and going into the little girls room filling the can full of Corona light and passing this around the dugout. From that point forward the “brew-skis” were in a smaller container which never left my sight. God- kids grow up in a hurry!

The season ended with the “Debs” winning the whole “shootin” match, and had eight players named to the all-stars. As winning coaches, Bev and Blue-eyes ended up as managers of this team for tournament play. This means that you play other teams in your district. If you win, you get to go play in a regional tournament and so on. All this tournament play is what’s called double elimination, and no one in our particular league had any idea of what to expect. Our anticipation was early elimination, as had been experienced in the boys’ tournament play. It was almost like starting over, trying to figure out the best place for this conglomerate of skill sets.

The practice sessions went pretty well, but not without incident. During a practice session the team lost Stacy, an outstanding shortstop and a good backup pitcher, to a broken ankle caused by a needless slide into second base. When she hit the bag I knew she was toast. Fortunately, her mother was there and took her to the hospital. The next practice, she showed up on crutches in her pink cast to cheer the team on.

The second incident was one of our better hitters fell off a horse and dislocated her shoulder, so she was through. The third unhappy event was a fist fight. Yes, a fist fight, between “half pint” and one of the players from another team who was about twice her size. No serious damage was done, but the dust was really flying for a short period of time. Bubba finally broke them up. You didn’t want to mess with Bubba! These two wouldn’t quit and had to be separated again by Bev. “Houston! We have a problem.”

Apparently, there had been bad blood between them caused by their mutual interest in some boy at their high school. Oh well, girls will be girls! Bev, who was also the League President, threw them both off the team. Of course, the parents got involved, threatening all sorts of action, making life interesting. Oh joy! I guess that’s why Little League coaches get the big bucks. I didn’t know the other participant in this little altercation, but felt badly for “half pint” because she had worked so hard. They brought up some other players, one of which was an extremely good pitcher and probably should’ve been an All-Star anyway. Not an auspicious beginning!

Tournament play began with the loss of the first game by one run. It was a close game; the “Debs” were hitting, but made too many errors at the wrong time. After that, they settled down and just kept winning, and finished the tournament with that one loss. Wow! District champions! Gee-whiz, pigs can fly. The encouraging thing was there was no raucous behavior on their part, no sneaking out for a quick Corona light, however the sunflower seed storm continued.

Next was the regional championship tournament, which meant playing against much larger demographic cities, unfortunately requiring having to travel all over the northern part of the state for the next two weekends. In some cases, this meant driving as much as 200 miles to get to a weekend series of games, but most of the parents were getting pretty excited. We would have a lot of volunteer caravan drivers. In a few instances, we had to stay overnight, and in retrospect, I’m sure there are a few motels that would prefer never to see any more participants in Girls Little League tournaments.

They pulled the same trick in their first regional game; they lost by a couple of runs. More errors and lousy pitching. The team they lost to was a powerhouse that had won the tournament for the last two years, and was an odds-on favorite to win again. Plus, it was their home field, and their fans were in the multitude, took it all very seriously and were well-armed. They had a bunch of monster girls that look like they were in their mid-20s. A couple of them appeared as though they needed a shave. Know no fear!

The Debs came roaring back, and won the rest of the games by some rather large margins. The final game for the regional championship was against, you guessed it, the Monsters of the Midway, who came out of their dugout foaming at the mouth. The Debs did not seem to be intimidated. They just kept chomping on sunflower seeds and dreaming of a cold Corona. The game was an anti-climax. By the sixth inning our little darlings were up by seven runs, with bases loaded and nobody out. Bubba was at the plate and got two quick called strikes, which were rather questionable, and then smacked the next pitch over the center-fielder’s head, clearing the bases.

As Yogi would say, by now “the fat lady was singing.” As something of a sportsmanship-like aftermath, the girls would line up after every game at third base and “high five” the opposing team. As this was happening, all of a sudden all hell broke loose. One of the monsters, “Sunday” punched Bubba while going down the congratulatory line. This, of course, caused a chain reaction with a couple of other “sweeties” getting into a nasty altercation, with both fists and words flying all over. The coaches and a few fans got it broken up, but it seemed to me that there was a large group of their spectators encouraging this unfortunate demonstration. I stayed firmly attached to the bleachers. After watching their fans, I came to the conclusion that this could get ugly in a hurry, and suggested that we forgo the trophy ceremony and get the hell out of Dodge.

I don’t know if there were ever any repercussions from this incident, but there should’ve been. The Debs eventually got their trophies, but never an apology. Oh well, as I said before, “girls will be girls,” even if they do need to shave. It really didn’t much matter, our little debutantes were now Regional Champs and on their way to the Western Region Championships, whose winner would go to the Little League World Series for senior girls. The tournament was held in a small suburb of Los Angeles, called Hawthorne, and would run for a three day period of double elimination. Our gals would be playing against teams from all over the wild West; including Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah and California, etc. The winner would go to the World Series in Portland, Oregon.

By now, the Deb’s had a multitude of fans, most of them intending to be cheering the team on to victory. Hawthorne is about a six-hour drive from our little community, so it was decided to rent a bus to take the team to the tournament. Further arrangements were made with one of the hotels nearby to house the team during the three-day stay. Blue-eyes went with the bus and I opted to drive with the balance of our clan. Good decision on my part, because based on later reports, the ride down there was pretty chaotic. That poor bus driver didn’t know what hit him. When we got down there, I was staying at the same hotel but a different floor. Another wise decision. The team was on the fifth or sixth floor facing the hotel entry. I don’t think there was any Corona involved, but apparently there was a plentiful supply of water balloons being dropped on unsuspecting hotel customers, which of course were summarily frowned upon by the hotel management. Other than that, nobody got arrested, and the girls were pretty well behaved. The host city did a great job by providing a banquet and a few parties. All in all, the entire trip went without incident; other than a big time hit on my wallet. At least there were no fistfights.

Now, are you ready for this? Hawthorne is where Blue-eyes went to high school and played softball for their team. Even more strange, is that two of the players on the Hawthorne team were the daughters of some of her old friends from her high school days. So, for her, it was something like a homecoming. She actually had time to get together with many of her old friends that she had not seen for years.

Let the games begin! They played extremely well, losing one game over the next three days. They were in the finals, playing against the team from Hawthorne. Both teams had lost a game, so this was for a birth to the World Series. It was an extremely close game all the way through, and our debs were leading in the final inning by one run. Bev had saved CeCe, our best pitcher and put her in for the last inning. She got two quick outs, but then walked the next batter and then allowed a hit putting runners at first and second. The next hitter grounded to short, who for some reason decided to throw to third base. The umpire called the runner safe, insisting that our third baseman had bobbled the ball. From where he was standing, he could never have seen it if it had been a beach ball. Nail-biting time! Not to worry. CeCe had things under control. The next hitter put her first pitch in between the center-fielder and the right-fielder, and two runs scored. Game over, and all hopes of glory were dashed. The Debs came in second, which is about the same as kissing your sister. Oh well, I never liked Portland that much anyway.

The league went on for a number of years after that. Both my other daughters got involved, and the girls’ league was still a fairly major family event. I don’t remember any of the teams ever getting past the district playoffs, so this team was a real anomaly. Blue-eyes retired from management, but became president of the league, which she continually regretted. Bev moved back to Iowa to grow corn or something like that.

After the two younger siblings got too old to play we kind of lost contact with what was going on, and unfortunately so did the rest of the community. Sad to say, the girls’ league dissolved, and that was that. Over the years, we would get visits from some of the players, and it was very interesting to see what became of them. A couple of them did go on to college and played for the women’s teams, but for the most part they just became old friends who enjoyed some interesting memories of a rather exciting time.

This is a true story! I still have the empty Corona bottles to prove it.

JJ and a thing called Girls Little League or You throw like a girl!

If you’ve read some of my previous meanderings, then you’ll remember that I had dedicated some of my time and talents (sic.) to nurturing young male baseball enthusiasts. In other words, I tried coach Little League. Further, you should remember that three of my four curtain climbers were female. This, of course, led to a little disparity of what’s called “quality time with kids,” because there wasn’t any organized baseball for the other gender, regardless of “title IX.”

Blue-eyes had played softball in both high school and college and was an excellent athlete. After a couple of years of watching our semi-coordinated son and the other klutz’s play the game of “baseball,” Little League style, she suggested, ” I think girls ought to be allowed to play in this league!” My response to that was “lots of luck on that idea.” This, of course, led to a “discussion” on gender equality, and she didn’t hold back on her thoughts on the hypothesis of the men in the league being “a bunch of chauvinist, backward ex-jocks, vicariously reliving their childhood” and a few other things in Bohemian, which I didn’t understand and probably couldn’t include in this little dissertation. Naturally, in her charming and delightful way, she got my attention.

Nothing came of this discussion for a week or so, until one day after playing tennis she remarked that her good friend Bev, whose son also played in the league, had played women’s softball in Iowa, both in high school and college. Bev had two daughters, both athletic as hell and was in complete concurrence with Blue-eyes regarding “female integrated” little league. I was drafted, regrettably, to discuss this with our league hierarchy, which I knew would be reminiscent of attempting to push wet spaghetti up a hill. Actually, it turned out better than I contemplated. Although the league charter was not prepared to allow girls to play in the boys’ hardball program, the National Little League had developed a girls’ softball league over the past few years and maybe I should investigate that opportunity. I knew this was not going to go over well, but at least it was an alternative.

I told her about the conversation with him and that I had mentioned things like city property, current attitudes about equality for females, etc. etc., and that I had also mentioned “title IX.” I explained to her that I knew I was in trouble when the president of the league thought title IX had something to do with real estate. I mentioned the girls’ softball thing and her comment was, “that’s great, but what if the girls wanted to play hardball?” I commented I didn’t know, but I thought the league might have a dilemma because “what would they do with all those extra jockstraps?” Blue-eyes’ comment was, “My mother told me you were weird, donkey brain.” (Her mother loved me!”)

Within a few weeks, Blue-eyes, Bev and tennis partner by the name of Jan (who by the way was 6 feet one or two), had all the paperwork necessary to file for a franchise. Game on! This was a girls’ senior softball Little League and was for the ages of 15 through 17. They did all the organization grunt work and by next spring, at sign-up, had enough young ladies to field five teams. They got a bunch of sponsors from the little town adjacent to our bedroom community and bought uniforms and some equipment and got ready for tryouts. The boys’ Little League officialdom was a little less than sanguine about the necessity to share the fields on an equal basis, but it was city property and had to be done, besides these guys were all married and subject to maintaining matrimonial bliss.

I was traveling the weekend of the tryouts, so had no idea of what the caliber of play might be anticipated by these female phenoms. Blue-eyes and Bev teamed up as co-managers of one team, Jan (otherwise known as “Shorty”) drafted her husband, who was about 6 foot seven, an ex-pro football player, and took another team. (He played tennis like a linebacker and you could get permanently physically damaged if he happened to nail you with one of his serves. I always tried to be his partner in doubles, out of fear more than anything else, but even then you could still get seriously hurt. He was at tad wild. But I digress!) The rest of the teams were managed by other “volunteer” husbands and their associated spouses.

I had played slow pitch softball in a church league many years before and it is a considerably different game strategically than hardball. It’s very difficult to whack one of these things out of the ballpark, so you’re relegated to playing what is conceived as “small ball,” with the bunt being one of the primary offensive weapons. Speed is a very important asset. There is no leading off until the pitcher throws the ball. The rest of the rules were pretty much the same. By the way, the concept that a softball is soft is an oxymoron. It’s just bigger, meaning a larger bruise!

Naturally, I was given the opportunity to become the assistant to the assistant coach, otherwise known as ass number two, for hitting. This was an excellent opportunity and the pay was quite good. I went to the first practice about as dubious as I could be about the forthcoming event, not knowing what to expect and quite frankly, anticipating the worst. I know some of these girls were good athletes, tennis and swimming and a few of them had even been on the track team at high school. The issue was, what did they know about baseball? I expected a repeat of my previous experiences of the kids throwing the ball everywhere except where it was intended go and a lot of running around the field chasing the errant throws. Man – – – was I in for a surprise.

There were about 15 of these young ladies, a couple of them were missing and they were mostly in the outfield in twosomes and threesomes warming up. I watched for a few minutes, looking for the telltale signs of gross incompetence, but found very little. There weren’t too many errant balls headed for never-never-land and watching most of them handle the ball I couldn’t say “you throw like a girl,” which of course I wouldn’t have done anyway for fear of being stomped to death by a bunch of aggressive females. They all had gloves, but unfortunately most were too small, the wrong type for softball and you had to assume that they belonged to a brother or someone who played hardball. The girls didn’t seem to know that, and if it bothered them, it didn’t show. Clearly, they have been playing catch or perhaps even baseball with some of the other gender. My first reaction was “hell — these gals are better than some of the teams I coached!”

A cute blonde, blue-eyed lady came over and said, “JJ, get a bat and some balls and let’s see if we can find an infield.” I said, “Yes dear!” I spent the next half-hour hitting ground balls to see if they could throw at, as well as to, first base. I took it easy, hitting relatively soft ground balls. I shortly came to the conclusion that this action was not one of the strong points of our talented debutantes. There were some obvious stars, but for the most part their basic technique was wanting. There were a couple of them that continued to close their eyes and pray about the time the ball got there, and the results were what they termed as “owies,” followed by some unladylike expletives, as they went limping to retrieve the ball. After a while Blue-eyes came over and commented, “JJ, hit the ball harder.” My retort was, “Hey, I don’t want to kill anybody!”

After everybody got a shot at trying to field grounders, Bev came over and picked six or seven likely candidates and started working with them. She had played shortstop in college and knew what she was doing. My oldest daughter was playing first base and was getting a little disgusted, and tired of chasing balls that were flying all over the place, so I asked my middle daughter, who was a little too young to play in the league, to back her up and throw the balls to home plate. Our youngest was in the outfield chasing down some of the wild-ass throws, and getting the ball back to the intended recipient. She had a real good arm, for a five-year-old. This worked out well because it kept her from playing in the dirt. After a while things started looking little bit better.

Finally, “Blondie” came over and told me I could go rest while they tried to find some pitching talent. I said, “Yes dear!” They needed to have at least four pitchers who could find home plate, once in a while. So they rounded up girls who said they could pitch and I sat there expecting to see this slow moving ball closing in on the plate. Big mistake!

The first gal, whose name was CeCe, (never did get to know her real name) did the full softball windup, releasing the ball from her hip with some real speed. It turned out her father had played a lot of softball and taught her how to pitch. She was really very fast, a little wild, but just enough to scare the hell out of an unsuspecting batter. Up came another one named Stacy, and I’ll be darned if she didn’t do almost as well. So, all of a sudden the team had two sharp pitchers. A number of the others could get the ball there, but the differential was immense. Clearly, this was not going to be a slow pitch league.

Blue-eyes had taken the rest of the team into the outfield and was hitting fly balls. The successful execution probability rate was around 50%, but that in itself was encouraging. There were numerous collisions until they got the idea of calling for the ball. Even then, there were some sprawling bodies here and there and I’m sure additional expletive commentary. One thing was impressive, none of them seem to show any fear. There were a couple of the young ladies that would’ve had trouble catching a cold, but with a little work would probably be okay. One of these gals was quite short, but extremely fast and would overrun the ball. Her brother had played for me when I was coaching, and was an extremely good catcher. Since the rules state you couldn’t steal, I suggested to Blue-eyes that this young lady be the catcher, even though she couldn’t catch. I figured I’d get a hold of her brother and have him work with her. Her nickname was “half pint” and she loved it. It really worked out, as you shall later discover, if you continue reading this rather boring dissertation.

The next couple of weeks were spent on practicing and working on the basics. Fun little things would occur — like one of the gals insisted that she play first base because the only glove she had was her brother’s first baseman’s glove. The problem with that idea was she had a tough time catching the ball, even with a basket. Blue-eyes eventually convinced her to be a backup for “half pint” at catcher. One of the other gals, a lefty, was a real good hitter, but she did it right-handed, never from the left side. I thought that was a little strange. She was having a terrible time catching and throwing. I watched her doing other stuff and she seemed to be right-hand dominant. I mentioned this to Blue-eyes, and it turned out that she was right-handed, but thought it would be cool to be left-handed. They got her a right-handed glove and she did great.

There was a late addition to the team who went to a parochial high school, had recently moved here from Texas, so nobody knew her. She was 16, 5 foot 9 or 10, probably weighed 165 pounds, and was without a doubt the best athlete on the team. She had shoulders like a swimmer and could catch, throw, hit a ton and run like a deer. This was the team’s ringer, the teenaged female “Babe Ruth.” The girls nicknamed her “Bubba.”

My role as assistant to the assistant was batting practice, and basically teaching the two forms of bunting — not one of my strong suits. It’s a different game when it comes to hitting. Small ball. Not many of these young hopefuls were going to hit the ball out of the park. So the intent was to work on hitting ground balls and trying to move the runner to the next base. This also involved trying to teach them how to slide without breaking any number of the bones in their petite little bodies. I wanted no part of this and relegated that responsibility to Bev. After watching an exhibition of their sliding acumen, I got out my cell phone and pre-dialed 911.

The team managed to get through the practice sessions without any major disasters, with one exception. The gals were in the outfield shagging balls, and all of a sudden a couple of them screamed and came roaring into the dugout. “There is a huge snake out there!” This, of course, panicked the rest of the girls and everybody headed to the protection of the dugout. Blue-eyes look at me and said, “Well, do something!” My response was an unequivocal, “You gotta be kidding! No way am I about to go out there looking for a snake.” My thoughts were this is probably an escaped python, and I’ll go out there and get swallowed up never to return. Or maybe it’s a rattlesnake; I’ll get bit and die foaming at the mouth like in the movies. I don’t like snakes.

One of the gals stepped forward and said, “I used to have a pet snake. I’ll go look!” My only thought about that was “can you teach a snake to rollover or fetch the paper?” Blue-eyes then told the assistant to the assistant, “You go with her, just in case.” I figured I better do it, but I wasn’t intending to go unarmed. I went to the car, pulled out my golf clubs and selected a three iron, just in case this reptile got overly aggressive. Blue-eyes said, “Why the three iron?” My response was, “You’re right! Maybe a five iron would be more appropriate.”

We went, carefully I might add, into the jungles of the outfield, with me not taking my eyes off the ground where I was about to step. I began to worry that the five iron was an adequate tool if indeed it was a giant python. The young lady found the snake, and informed me it was a gopher snake. Much to my horror, instead of shooing it away, she picked it up and triumphantly walked back to the dugout, with JJ trundling about 10 feet behind her, five iron at the ready, just in case this beast turned on her. The girls in the dugout went berserk. Our little snake charmer informed them that this snake is perfectly harmless and offered to let them hold it, which of course didn’t happen. She took it back to the outfield fence and released it. The only good thing that came from the snake episode was from that time forward, the girls in the outfield were much more alert. I’m still not sure that the three iron wouldn’t have been a better club selection!

The season started! Our daunting debutantes looked like real ballplayers in their spanking new uniforms. That was about the only positive thing that happened that particular day. They got stomped. CeCe, our best pitcher, walked about everything in sight, including the umpire and two spectators sitting in the stands. What few balls were hit by the opposition went through the sieve-like infield and created absolute havoc in the outfield. Nobody could throw the ball, nobody could hit the ball, catching it was, of course, out of the question and everything else was an absolute disaster. The only upside was Bubba hit the ball so hard that she disabled two of the opposition,s infielders. There was no joy in the dugout after the game.

When we got home, Blue- eyes did my normal, her abnormal, backflip into a vodka martini and said “I think we need some work!” My thoughts were, “No! What you really need are three wise men coming from the East.” But the better part of valor kept me from saying that out loud. So, back to the drawing board! More pressure was brought to bear when the assistant to the assistant batting coach, a.k.a. JJ, with questions like, “Why aren’t they hitting?” answered by the old baseball phrase, ”Duh!” The unfortunate facts were they were hitting during practice, but not during the game. I consulted with Dr. Freud, who suggested that they were uptight. He didn’t offer any solution other than a couple of “cold ones” before the game, which I suspected would be inappropriate (for the girls I mean), not for JJ.

The solution presented itself after their third or maybe fourth straight loss by a score equaling two touchdowns and a field goal. The girls were in the dugout, crying in their beer, when Bubba started thrashing around, kicking things, throwing stuff, and then looked at everybody and said in her sweet soft voice and eloquent Texas accent, “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m plum tired of “gettin” my sorry ass kicked!” That did it! The other gals just went hysterical with laughter and good ole Bubba just stood there, tears streaming down her face, not having a clue as to what was so funny. All of girls came out and gave her a big hug and a few mentioning that her sorry ass was right. That was the last game they lost.

The team went on to do some rather interesting things, but this narrative is already too long, so I’ll cover that in a second edition.

Moral of the story – There is no substitute for a good, liberal, parochial education when it comes to expressing oneself at the appropriate moment.

Indians on the Warpath – Revisited

The Indians had clinched the first half, three games in front of the second-place team. The Red Sox were at the bottom, having only won a single game. JJ had turned down multiple contract offers from Cleveland. I jest! The unauthorized use of the protective cup for the purpose of drinking Gatorade or any other substance was deemed inappropriate and frowned upon by our illustrious league Board of Directors. Once the word got out about the Red Sox little prank, the other teams decided that this was singularly the most appropriate use of this particular type of device, and unfortunately the concept spread to the minor league as well. Everybody was drinking something from their protective cups.

The fable of the Dodgers using the jockstrap as a slingshot, or worse, was revived and reenacted a number of times creating another dilemma for the President. The ”Wild Bunch” was notified that there will be no more dried peas allowed in any of the dugouts. This last decision irritated me because it was going to reduce the yield of fresh peas next spring. Clearly, the Board of Directors had no sense of humor! There was no mention of expectoration, but I think there were hopes that the Indians would come down with multiple cases of the “dry mouth syndrome.” And finally, my worst nightmare, Miss Congeniality was now a member of the Board. The Gods are frowning on me!

The Wild Bunch, the tribe, otherwise known as the Indians, were now known as those “rather rowdy kids” that just kept winning. We lost one 11-year-old to a broken arm and had to draft a 10-year-old because it was mandated. He was a good, hard-working kid, but his skill set was extremely limited, and he was relegated to becoming a two inning player. The problem was that his father had been a college and minor-league baseball player in his youth and his vicarious expectations for its son’s performance exceeded his kid’s level of interest, at this particular time. Early on, I got a lot of advice and I invited him to become an assistant coach. Naturally, he was too busy. Coincidentally, we both worked for the same company, but did not know each other. I did some checking and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t clear what he was too busy doing.

“Prima” was coming through like gangbusters and I had him batting in the fifth spot. In the first four games he hit five home runs, four of which went over the right-field fence. Granted, it was a short fence, but still pretty impressive stuff. After that, the other teams really wouldn’t pitch to him if there were runners on base. He was starting to get frustrated and I told him that if the ball was close, go ahead and take a shot at it, and I didn’t really care if he struck out swinging. He did, and he hit some balls that were beyond me how he could’ve reached them, let alone hit it, but he did. He and JJ were probably the best hitters in the league.

It turned out “Prima” and Scooter had become best friends and lived relatively close to each other. He was teaching Scooter how to ride his motorcycle and I don’t mean motor bike, either. It was a small one, but no question was a real motorcycle. I would suspect that Scooters mom, Miss Congeniality, was totally oblivious to this activity, but of course she was probably too busy developing new schemes to harass me. Don’t call me paranoid just because the whole world is after me.

The Indians had a few close games, but for the most part were winning by five and six runs. I was starting to play my two-inning players – more, if in fact we were up more than five runs. On a couple of occasions we started throwing the ball all over the place and came close to losing, but the team came through. The league had a rule I really hated, which was simply that if a team was up by more than 10 runs at the end of the fourth inning, then the game would be called. We had a couple of games like that. Maybe it was the humane thing to do, but I didn’t think that was fair to the other team. I had seen some awfully strange things happen when these kids got to playing the other game called “let’s boot the ball around, all over the field.” I was a firm believer in “It ain’t over, till it’s over.”

The Indians didn’t lose a game in the entire second half. The last game was against the Red Sox, who were still at the bottom of the pile and had lost all but two games. Miss Congeniality was nowhere in sight. She was probably at home tending to her cauldron. “Help me! Help me! I’m melting! Oh my, I’m melting!” I started all my second-tier players and let “Prima” pitch the first three innings, which he had been pestering me to do for most of the season. He walked seven guys, hit two and I went out to him, and got the ball, sending him out to center-field. He was laughing and his comment was “I guess I need to work on my pitching.” My comment was, “Don’t give up your day job!” He could hit, but he sure couldn’t pitch.

The Indians won it all, of course, and there was joy in Mudville that night. The next weekend was trophy presentations time, and the naming of the 15 league All-Stars, who would represent our franchise in the regional tournament. Nine Indians made the All-Stars and by tradition, the winning manager had to coach the team. Great! I was beginning to wonder what the inter-league rules were about “a cold one before the game, during the game and after the game.” I was less than sanguine about this dubious distinction of going to get humiliated by some of these other regional teams. Like I said in my other story, from what I had seen the previous year, it seemed to me these other teams were playing a different game. Scooter was the only Red Sox player to make the All-Stars. I didn’t see Miss Congeniality, his mom, at the presentations and had to assume that she had fallen into her cauldron. Maybe her husband pushed her!

We had one week to get this team prepared, and I got the help of two of the other managers in our league. We practiced for two hours for four days, and had pretty well solidified starters versus the marginal players. Scooter was a starter because he had really perfected the “chop,” and was without a doubt the fastest runner on the team. His fielding was erratic so we stuck him in right field. We had five competent pitchers and a fairly solid infield. We still had trouble with the double play. I wasn’t optimistic about our proficiencies, but felt we would put up a good showing.

One of these kids, who was a marginal player and soon to be relegated as a two-inning player, was a Russian émigré. One of the many rules that exist in Little League is a requirement for a valid copy of the player’s birth certificate. All the kids brought copies, with the exception of Vladimir. His family gave him a copy of his Russian passport. I thought this was fine and submitted it with all the other paperwork to the regional league officials. They rejected the passport, and sent a note saying I had to have copy of the birth certificate. I explained this to the kid and told him to get his parents to give me a copy of his birth certificate, and to me it didn’t matter if it was in Russian or not because as far as I was concerned, that was a league problem, not mine.

The next practice Vladimir’s father showed up. He’s about 5-foot-nine and looks like a small bear. He came up to me waving copies of the passport and clearly was a little agitated. I tried to explain to him the rules, but he wasn’t buying it. He basically told me that I had to accept this and I told him it was not my decision. At that point, he tore the papers up into little pieces and threw them in my face with some comments in Russian that I was sure had something to do with my mother being unmarried and somewhat solicitous. I went ballistic! Fortuitously, two of the other coaches were right there and got in between me and this Russian maniac.

He left – we never got a birth certificate and under the circumstances we could not allow Vladimir to play. I felt bad for the kid, but at the same time was somewhat incensed at this altercation. Fortunately, my co-coaches interceded before I attempted to deck this guy on the spot. He was probably a former Greco-Roman wrestling champion and would’ve broken my back in short order. I could see the headlines now, ”Little League coach assaults Russian Consulate member, creating an international incident! The Russian Foreign Office has expressed its concern and has demanded an explanation and an apology from our Secretary of State.” My assessment of the situation was, the Cold War is not quite over.

As I’ve said before, the kids are great, but sometimes the parents really leave a lot to be desired, which is the same as politely saying some really suck. Sorry about that! Oh well, there goes my PG-13 rating, violence and vulgar words causing my downfall. Would you believe that I later got letter from a local attorney, who I knew, citing the potential actions that this guy was contemplating.

The lawyer involved belonged to the same tennis club that I did, and we would occasionally play against each other. I looked at the schedule one day and saw that we were going to be competing in a doubles tournament. I took his letter and wrote the following comment “expletive deleted you. Nasty letter to follow.” I slipped it in an envelope and handed it to him after we had cleaned their clock. I had real trouble believing he didn’t tell his client to take a hike, but I rather imagine his fee was close to couple grand. Considering that, I came to the conclusion that I got the better of the Russian bear. I don’t think I want to go to Russia though, because I’m sure I’m on the KGB hit list.

So putting that incident out of my mind and concentrating on the upcoming potential debacle, we continued practicing. There were no dry peas, no spitting contests and a solid degree of intensity on the part of our players. Our first game was on a Friday and wonder of wonders, we prevailed by three runs. At that point, I began looking around for three wise men coming from the East, and wondering what was next. We played that Saturday, and once again won by three runs. I was elated, however was quite sure that Gabriel was right around the corner ready to blow his horn.

With these two wins, we now moved to a four team playoff the following weekend in the elimination playoffs. We lost the first two games and were history. The good news is that was farther than any other previous team from our franchise had ever succeeded to. The kids all got a little trophy and a medal indicating how far they had gone. They all began a bunch of war whoops and chants that rather perplexed the league officials. They began their traditional after-game war dance. We were asked to leave. A Wild Bunch to the bitter end.

This was my final game for the boys and Little League. I was leaving the company that I had been with for the past five years to go become a bigger fish in a smaller pond. And based on my new responsibilities, I knew full well that my Little League management days were over. The effervescent Indians went on to win the whole shebang the following year, and actually I assumed it was because of my tenacious training regime and expertise.

Unfortunately, I did not hear from the Cleveland Indians ownership again. Later I’ll write a story about what happened to some of these kids in their later lives. It’s rather fascinating! As kind of a closing note, sometime after my active role, I heard from a friend that Miss Congeniality had run off with the Greek sailor and was now packing sardines in the Azores. I jest!

So this ended my Little League coaching career, or so I thought. Blue-eyes and another ex-college softball jock, if that’s appropriate, decided that the girls in our little town were being shortchanged and decided to form a girls Little League Senior Softball franchise. They did, and I was drafted to be one of the coaches, but by rule was not allowed to sit in the dugout for fear of possible contamination of these innocent 13- to 16-year-old young ladies. Right! This was a total female show, controlled by them and played by them and I considered it completely chauvinistic. But that’s a different story to be addressed at a later date.

Moral of the story – In situations like “Prima,” sometimes the obvious “ain’t” so obvious! 

Indians on the Little League Warpath

We last left the Indians going for the ”gold” and getting dumped on their collective butts. A new season had now begun and JJ came back as manager, much to the chagrin and frustration of the league president and, I’m sure, and Miss Congeniality of 1911 or whatever year it was. If you don’t know about her, she’s discussed in a couple my other stories, principally dealing with the Dodgers and the fun and games in the minor leagues, which had nothing to do with either baseball or the kids. I’m not going to rehash the inner workings of the league, because I already explained that in the story called “Wild Indian Uprising.”

The team returned pretty much intact because we had only had a couple of 12-year-olds that were no longer eligible. Last season, the Indians had four players named to the All Stars and they got to go play in the inter-league tournament. True to form, they lost the first two games and were eliminated. I went to one of the tournament games and came away with the conviction that the opposition was playing a different game than we were. It was time to write to my congressperson (politically sensitive) about parity of the Little League teams in his/her congressional district. Maybe I could somehow induce Miss Congeniality take this project on. The assumption there was that she could write. That’s cruel and unbecoming of me, but I am going to leave it in here anyway.

We had nine returning players, all of which were approaching the 11 to 12 year old magic number, although most of them are still only 11. The rules were rather simple and basically said you can’t play in the league if you’re over 12. God – think about that for a minute, washed up at the age of 13! Our nemesis, the Red Sox, had been decimated. They only had four returning players, simply because last season they had loaded their team roster with 12-year-olds through some draft hoi-polloi. (This sneaky ringer business is covered in the other story I mentioned.) Okay! So big deal, they won the gold. The Indians were in a position that would allow the team to have at least nine players coming back over a two-season period – good, bad or indifferent.

So we had the draft, and once again JJ Junior came through with some scouting reports, and we picked up one more 11-year-old and a bunch of 10-year-olds who at least understood where first base was. My good buddy Scooter was still with the Red Sox, however he kept in contact with a number of our old Dodger teammates that were still around. To show you what kind guy Scooter was, he used to show up at our practices to be with his buddies more than my prima donna did. Scooter was a keeper!

The Red Sox had a new manager and I knew him – good guy, and really interested in the kids. He came up to me one day at practice and told me that Scooter wanted to be traded to the Indians. I doubt very seriously if Scooter’s mom knew about this, because she would have had a serious ventricular episode. I thought about the proposal for maybe 10 micro-seconds and told him I did not think the league rules would allow that. In reality, my thoughts were about spending the next two and a half months with Miss Congeniality pointing out my inbred aboriginal faults at every opportunity. Besides that, I think Blue-eyes would’ve gone ballistic. Being a true “Indian Mom,” she was waiting to ambush Miss. Congeniality and was probably ready take her scalp with a dull paring knife.

My rules about practice were still the same. “You want to play more than two innings, show up to practice.” Mr. Prima Donna was back and I was shocked at how much he had grown. He still had trouble making it to practice, but at least he understood that I wasn’t going to put him on the starting roster, even though he was probably the best overall athlete on the team. He started bringing his own bats and I told him it was okay in practice, but he probably couldn’t use them in a game. The bats had to be sanctioned by the Great Little League Gods in Williamsport or something to that effect. His dad called me that night, a little red-assed, and said he thought that was a silly rule. I told him I agreed! His final comment was something about corruption in the Little League National management. Man, you gotta love parents! I should’ve told him that his kid really didn’t need a bat because he has an awful lot of trouble just swinging at a ball, but I didn’t.

I taught some of the better hitters how to pull an outside pitch and pop it into right field which is where most of the two inning players would end up and were usually not paying a lot of attention to what was going on. This worked out a lot better than I anticipated and the rest of the team began to try to emulate this batting style. The kids thought this was great stuff, they still had the “chop” and now could hit the ball to the opposite field. We only had one left-hander and he was a good hitter, that fact had gotten around, so the other teams would swap positions, the right fielder to left and left would go to right. My little lefty was really unhappy about this; he took it somewhat personal, thought there ought to be a rule and in the final analysis tried switch hitting, which was a total disaster. He was not able to master hitting anything outside, because a majority of the pitches were in on him, being thrown by a right handed pitcher.

The little Indians still had their totally incompetent athletic moments, but they weren’t as plentiful as the other teams, and we were leading the first-half by three or four games. We were clearly the best team in the league at that particular time, and were well on our way to winning the first half. The gang was having a lot of fun and the frustrations of the previous year were behind us. Mr. Prima Donna actually began to show up for practices and I paid a lot of attention to getting him into a mode of swinging at the ball. Blue-eyes actually came up with the solution. She told me after one game that he was closing his eye at the plate. What?!I couldn’t see this because his back was to me, so during one game I walked out of the dugout and stood by the backstop and sure as hell, he was closing his eyes. I suspected that he was afraid of the getting hit. I didn’t say anything to him about it, but the next practice I concentrated on teaching him how to get out of the batter’s box. Bingo! The kid started swinging, started to get hits and loved every minute of it. He came to all the practices after that. During the rest of the games, he got plunked once or twice and would just look over at me, smile and run down to first base. I felt guilty that I had not picked up on this problem.

The tribe attempted to renew their less than acceptable signals to the first base coach. I was able to curtail that activity by providing some socially appropriate signals that did not include “crotch grabbing,” the “Italian salute,” or “half-mooning,” and was able to avoid any further conversations with the league president. They had noticed on television that the “pros” were constantly spitting. The concept of role models and emulation presented itself in the form of a constant shower of spit. I was concerned that the dugout, “wigwam,” would soon turn into a slippery sea of saliva. I lowered the boom and told them no more “expectoration” in the dugout. You don’t want to know what they thought that meant!

Much to my dismay, one of the creative moms made a sign that said, “No expectoration (Spitting) in the Wigwam.” It had a little cartoon of a kid in a baseball uniform, with a feather in his cap, spitting on his shoes. Clever! I found out a little later that they were walking up to the plate, spitting in front of the plate and turning to the catcher and saying “I just expectorated!” This unfortunately proves the point that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

That didn’t completely eliminate their desire to emulate the pros, so when they weren’t on the field they were standing next to the cyclone fence having a contest about who could spit farthest. They called it the “expectoration exhibition” and actually kept score. I have no idea what the prize for first place was. One of my geniuses brought a bag full of dried peas and the occupant of the batter’s box soon became the primary target, being plummeted by semi-soggy peas. You’d be surprised how far a dry pea can go when launched by an expert 11-year-old. I didn’t do anything about this activity for the simple reason that I figured next spring, before the season started, I could come over and harvest 42 bushels of peas.

The league came back with the mandated jockstrap and cup rule. I had a little visit from the president who had heard about the Dodgers’ escapades in the minors regarding these devices, and suggested that any recurrence of this would be unacceptable and punishable by death. I told him he was going have some enforcement issues, but I would admonish the “Wild Bunch” not to re-create the sling shot episodes. True to my prediction, the league did have a problem, but with the Red Sox. I wasn’t at the game, but apparently some of the boys were using the cups to drink their Gatorade or whatever. I thought this was pretty hysterical and came to the conclusion that it was probably instigated by Scooter. Ya gotta love that kid!

At the end of the first half we had three games to go and were ahead by four. I decided to start all the underachievers and let them play at least four innings and they did fine. We only lost one of those games. We were pretty hot stuff! I had four kids that were batting well over .400 and our fielding was pretty solid. We even executed a number of double plays. I was happy, the kids were happy, the parents were happy and Miss Congeniality was really pissed, which made me even happier. I got a call from the Cleveland Indians’ owner, wanting to know if I was willing to move to Cleveland. I told him no, that I was “contractually bound for the balance of the season, but let’s talk after it’s over.” God! What an ego!

The second half will be covered in another story – later!

Moral of the story – If you open your eyes, you can sometimes see and do more wondrous things.

JJ and The Wild Indian Uprising

This story is not about Native Americans, so if that’s what you expect you might as well not read it. What it is about is an erstwhile Little League baseball team named the Indians, and their trials and tribulations. If you read one of the previous Little League stories, you’ll know the league was blessed by my reappearance in a managerial role, much to the chagrin of the league President. Drinking a “cold one” after a game was not considered by him as something of a role model. What he didn’t realize was that I was only drinking it as a courtesy to the “offeree” ” He forced me to take it! I really don’t much like beer. And besides that, I wasn’t anywhere near the dugout, nor do I look anything like Walter Matthau. More like Yul Brynner!

Our season was divided into two halves, and to be champions you had to either win both halves or survive the onslaught of one playoff game, winner take all. There are only five teams in the majors, which is the 10 to 12 year old grouping. The Indians finished the first half at the bottom of the pile. We only had a couple of blowout games, but were close – one or two runs in most of our losses. But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The daunting Red Sox had won the first half.

The kids’ attitude was still quite positive, and they were having fun whooping and hollering in the dugout like a bunch of wild Indians, which in fact they were. I wasn’t called Coach. I was Chief. Our team was the tribe, but at the strong suggestion of Blue-eyes, I drew the line on the squaw definitions. When we got together for practices or games, the normal greetings were the raising of the right hand and the guttural “How.” The dugout was the “wigwam.” Drinks like Gatorade were defined as “firewater.” The team was having fun, even if it wasn’t winning, and my attitude was “that was what it’s all about.” Don’t get this wrong! When they were in the game they were very serious and didn’t like to lose.

Since the rules would not allow bunting, I taught the troops or “clan,” as they preferred to be called, how to chop down on the ball, which had the same effect as a bunt. Tough play for an infielder, but very effective and totally legal. It would draw their infield in and then the troops could swing away. We had a signal for this. It was the “tomahawk chop.” Real subtle, right? Nobody’s gonna guess what that means! The chop began to pay off. We didn’t overdo it and used it mainly to move up runners, but the side benefits were probable throwing errors to first base. With a runner on third, it was like a squeeze play. Once the other team started throwing the ball around, we could go back to our strategy of “antelope” baseball.

Most of the other teams had adults acting as base coaches, but I decided to let the kids do it, especially my two-inning players. It worked out fine, because most of the time the kids running bases didn’t pay any attention to the base coach anyway. The tribe decided that they had have signs like they had seen on the TV games, which of course they dubbed ”Indian signs.” I mean after all, no self-respecting Indian would go anywhere without their signs.

So they would stand at the entrance to the “wigwam” and go through all these gyrations. There were a couple of problems with this. First, you couldn’t steal a base, so I was never sure what they were suggesting to the guy coaching first base. The other was that most of the signs they created were rather obscene. I had no idea what they meant, didn’t care and frankly, really didn’t want to know. Unfortunately, the signs could be seen by the opposition’s spectators and of course, someone reported it. I got yet another phone call from the league President telling me to cease and desist.

The Indians were prevailing. We were well into the second half and had only lost one game, and that was to the Red “Sods.” Our pitching had improved greatly and there were far fewer walks. We had lost two 12-year-olds, and I had to draft from the minors. It turned out the additions we got were very good pitchers and frankly, better all-round players than what I had lost. We only had two 12-year-olds left on the team, and one of them was a two-inning player, which was totally disproportionate to our competition, especially the Red Sox, who had eight 12-year-olds. The chop was an effective tool and was being imitated by some of the other teams, but their execution was not as good as ours. Part of the reason for this was that we focused on the lead runner, which for some reason the other teams neglected to do.

One interesting event that occurred is what I like to call the “double-double” play! Now you know that’s impossible in baseball, but it happened. We were leading in one game by about four or five runs when our starting pitching imploded and we could not get anybody out. The bases were loaded and the batter popped up right in front of the catcher. He caught the ball, threw to first base and the first baseman stepped on the bag because the runner had taken off and was now standing on second with another runner trying to get back to second and was tagged before he could get back. The runner at third was halfway between home and third base and had to tag up and he was tagged out. By this time we had kids running from one base to another, coaches out waving their arms and absolute chaos. At that point I thought the next thing that can happen is they’ll tag out the guy standing in the on deck circle. That’ll make it five outs!

The umpire was a young kid, and with all of this happening so fast, could not be expected to have seen, let alone interpret what the hell had just happened. Both teams were on the field and he was caught right in the middle. By this time it had dawned on me that we had just done the impossible, and made four outs in one inning. Naturally, it didn’t stand. We were given credit for a double play, and a runner was allowed to stay at third base. I pointed out that that meant one of their “runners had just disappeared off the face of the earth.” To no avail! Syllogistic logic has no place in baseball. We got the final out, and that was that. I did not argue about it because the kid umpire was clearly out of his depth. One of my gang wanted to know if we got credit for that fourth out in the next inning. Seemed like a good idea to me.

Another incident occurred, but fortunately did not involve in the Indians. Thank God! I just didn’t need another phone call from the President. In this instance, it was a case of “loaded bats” in a game that the Red Sox had lost. After the game, the Red Sox manager was picking up the gear, which was always the case, being the first item on our job description, and he picked up a bat which belonged to the opposition. As he was walking to the dugout, he saw what appeared to be black tape around the head of the bat, but was in fact a very thin lead weight used principally on golf clubs. He refused to surrender the bat to the other manager and went looking for league official.

The Red Sox manager insisted that the game be decreed a forfeit. He called me and wanted me to support his position, and I told him “no,” and that I personally doubt if the weighted bat had anything to do with their loss. My thoughts were that this was much ado about nothing. The way these kids swing, a little bit of weight wasn’t going to do a damn thing to improve their hitting. If anything, it was probably a disadvantage. The team that had beaten them had replaced the Indians at the bottom of the barrel. Next thing that happened – some of the parents got involved and actually got a lawyer to write a letter to the President of our league, which was a good thing because it would probably keep him busy, and keep him off my sad little butt.

As it turned out, the manager of the other team didn’t know anything about the lead weight, and this major felony had been perpetrated by one of the players. If the Red Sox’s parents had their way, the kid would’ve been sent to San Quentin. For the most part, Little League kids are great, but some of the parents can be a royal pain in the “tush.” I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Ms. Congeniality had something to do with this endeavor. If you don’t know who she is, then you’re not reading my other baseball stories, which indicates you have superior intelligence and more important things to do. But I digress!

The season was winding down and we were in a dead heat with the Red Sox. We had one more game to play, and if we won it, we would force a playoff for the second half – and if we won that, then we would have to play another “winner take all” playoff game. The Indians did not play at all that well in this last game. I think the war chants got their blood up and it was just way too much adrenaline. We were in the last of the seventh inning, two outs, bases loaded, with one of my “prima donnas” at bat. As he went out to hit, I heard one of his teammates tell him that this pitcher was going to put it over the plate. He went out there, and sure enough got two quick called strikes and then stood there as the third called strike hit the catcher right in middle of the plate. He was very irate and said some things to the umpire, and on his way back to the dugout told me that those were three (expletive deleted) bad calls. I didn’t say anything to him because I know he felt bad, but my thought was, “If you’re going to be a prima donna, you’d better perform. Otherwise, turn in your tutu or jockstrap – whichever is most fitting.”

There was a pizza party after this loss, and the parents had gotten together and presented me with a little engraved pewter cup that was meant to act as a disguise for the “cold one” after future games. I thought that was very nice, but what they didn’t realize was this cup had a glass bottom and when I tried to use it, it leaked like a sieve. I still have it, but use it principally to hold my crayons.

Moral of the story – The old baseball saying of “wait’ll next year” is just so much horse pucky.

JJ in the Majors – Little League, that is!

After a two-year hiatus, my professional responsibilities had changed once again, and I was given the opportunity to manage in the “biggies.” In our Little League community this was called “the Majors,” and consisted of players between the ages of 10 and 12. When you reach 11 years old you were out of the minors, regardless of skills, and so the Dauntless Dodgers were disbanded after succeeding to multiple championships, thanks to the tutelage of yours truly. Don’t I wish?

The coach that followed me knew what he was doing, and “Dem Bums” had a rather fantastic record, mostly because of the few players like “Scooter,” who, when on base didn’t know when to stop. I was happy to hear that his Mom, “Miss Congeniality of 1901,” was continuing her quest and was harassing the new Dodgers coach. I had begun to think I was not going to be in her will.

The new team was given the name “Indians,” and I was pretty unhappy about that for a couple of reasons. One – the Indians had to be one of the worst teams in pro baseball, and two – I was worried that the parents would develop the “chop” and “war chant” adopted by the Atlanta Braves. I had a plan to have the kids put on war paint before every game, but Blue-eyes talked me out of this idea as being somewhat insensitive. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I did teach the kids a few steps of a war dance and we would yell “Geronimo” anytime someone got a hit. The gang decided that everybody’s nick name was “ke-mo sah-bee.” I heard later that they were doing the same thing in school, and that it didn’t go over real big with the administration. Nobody has a sense of humor anymore! By the way, “ke-mo-sah-bee” means good friend or good scout, not the more popular interpretation of the old joke “**it for brains.”

The rules were pretty much the same as the minors; however the skill sets of the kids were greatly improved. You could no longer just run rampant on the bases, because some of the curtain climbers were quite capable of fielding a ball and delivering it to the proper place, in a reasonable location and at the proper time. For me, that was a great revelation and I would clearly have to change my winning strategy, which could best be defined as “antelope baseball.” These kids could actually get the ball out of the infield and in some instances the 12-year-olds could hit that thing a ton.

Come draft time, I really didn’t know much about most of the players and the only tryouts that were held were for new kids just coming into the league. The Indians only had four returning players. Tom was one of them. I had to rely on JJ Junior and Tom, whose acumen in these matters exceeded mine. I got JJ Junior because he was my son and I think he regretted it when jokingly one day I said, “Thank God, we’ve got an experienced catcher.” He worked me up a list of names for the draft, and one of the top players was Scooter. He told me I really needed to draft him, and my comment was “Yeah, but the problem is – you get Scooter, you get his Mom.”

Junior confessed that I had a good point. I thought about it and the solution I came up with was to draft Scooter, and make his Mom our assistant manager, figuring if she had some complaint I could just look at her and say “Talk to the assistant manager.” Also, that way I could fire her. It didn’t happen because Scooter went in the first round to the Red Sox. I was able to draft a couple of the old Dodger doofuses.

So, we started the practice routine with the same rule – make it to practice if you want to play more than two innings. True to form, I had drafted a couple of prima donnas that figured they didn’t need to practice, and come the first game, which we lost, they did not start and were relegated to two innings. They still didn’t show up for practice and they didn’t start the second game, which we won. They again only played two innings and got the message. The Indians still had their fair share of the less than competent, two-inning players. Unfortunately, none of them had Doc’s unique one-liners. The neat thing was these kids didn’t complain and were team players, and when they were playing they did indeed concentrate.

On our first game with the Red Sox, all of the gang showed up with feathers stuck in the back of their hats. Our faithful gallery of parents and friends thought this was hilarious. Where they got all of the feathers, I will never know and probably don’t want to. I suspect there were some poor unsuspecting chickens running around somewhat bare-assed. No question – these kids were resourceful.

Scooter’s Mom was there and came to our dugout somewhat indignant. Her comment was to the effect that we were being politically incorrect. She said our name was bad enough, but all of the war whoops and general Indian antics was really an insult. I looked at her and said “It’s really okay, because one of our player’s name is Inder Singh.” She looked at me as if I were two cans short of a six-pack and went back to her bleachers, shaking her head. Score one for JJ! I was thinking that maybe she should move to Cleveland and start a crusade. I’m certain she wrote her congressman that night. I guess I should say congress-person.

We lost that game to the Red Sox. Scooter got walked on four pitches, and scored the winning run on a legitimate hit in the last of the seventh. He was still doing the squat routine at the plate, no strike zone, which irritated me no end. I guess that’s what you could call being hoisted on your own petard. Scooter came over after the game to say hello. His mother, Ms. Congeniality, came quickly to our dugout, scowling with the obvious assumption that I was contaminating his mind, probably teaching him swear words in Navaho. She gave me a look that could only be interpreted as triumphant, and that this loss was my penalty for being politically incorrect. I never met Mr. Congeniality, but I suspect that she nagged him to death and that he was buried someplace in their back yard.

When I got home, I did a back-flip into martini, shaken not stirred, and Blue-eyes commented that she had seen the encounter. She said she was going to make it a point to sit next to her the next time we played the Red Sox and cheer for the Indians while humming the Braves’ war chant, accompanied by the Tomahawk Chop. Clearly, Blue-eyes’s Bohemian-Indian blood was up, because she headed directly for the “fire water.”

On another game days, one of the kids showed up with a can of eye black. The next thing I knew, not only was it under their eyes but it was on their noses and a couple of the more inventive ones drew a mustache and sideburns. One of the league officials was there, and of course, they were required to remove this distasteful display of non-adherence to the sacred rules of Little League. I didn’t know this person and asked that he show me where in the rulebook it said they couldn’t wear eye black. Granted, they over-did it a little bit, but I think this fell in the same category as jockstraps and cups.

Naturally, I got blamed for having a bad attitude and received a phone call from the league president, who also had no sense of humor. I’m sure the feather episode didn’t help, because I’m certain they got a phone call from some irate chicken. I think I offered to share the eye black with any team that wanted to use it, and if necessary, by the chickens – dead or alive.

For the most part, the Indians were good group of kids, with the exception of one of the prima donnas who did nothing but complain about his fellow teammates and their lack of skills not being equal to his own. He was getting called out on third strikes, and of course, this was always an umpire’s bad call. I told him one of the strange idiosyncrasies of this game is that if you want to hit the ball, you must swing at. This kid was a real pain, but I know where he got it from. His dad, or possibly his custodian, was obviously vicariously reliving his youth, and had stopped me after another game which we had lost and made a bunch of suggestions.

One of his more brilliant observations was, “We should really do the double play more, because we were allowing too many runners on base.” My answer was, “Hell, we’re lucky to get the ball to first base, let alone thrown it all over the field trying to do a double play.” He was somewhat insistent, so my solution was to invite him to come and help me during practices and he could concentrate on the “double play.” That ended that, he didn’t have any more constructive ideas about how we should try to play baseball. I say “try,” because at that point that’s the best that could be said about the Indians’ efforts. Our “war whoops” were getting more authentic, however.

We actually did get a double play in a subsequent game and I looked around for him, but he wasn’t there. He was probably busy writing the memoirs of Abner Doubleday. Some of the parents were thoughtful enough to offer me a “cold one” after the games, and of course I got busted and got another phone call from the league president. His position was that we should be considering the kids and I think I commented “The kids should bring their own beer!” Whatever happened to “beer; hotdogs, peanuts and Crackerjacks” being part of the grand old game?

Our record was dismal and unfortunately matched the performance of our professional namesake. The kids were taking it pretty well, and the general comments they made after yet another loss was “We are in a rebuilding mode.” We came in at the bottom in the first half of the season, and I lost two of our better players and had to draft up a couple more ten-year-olds from the minors. Thanks to JJ Jr’s scouting report, they turned out to be better players than the two we lost.

The “pappoose’s” comments were that we would do better in the second half. I think they were thinking along the line of “Little Big Horn,” and that I was “Custer.” The team was positive, but I was less than optimistic. After our last game at the halfway point, which we had won rather handily, one of the dads came up afterward and said “Well, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.” My answer was “Yeah, I just hope it isn’t an onrushing train.” Old Doc would’ve been proud me.

Moral of the story –  If you’re going to have a “cool one” after a Little League game, make sure it’s in a plain brown wrapper, and tell the kids to bring their own damn beer.

The Dauntless Dodgers – The Final Curtain

We left the Dodgers in something of a state of flux in my previous story. They ended the first half of their season two games behind the Giants, tied for third place out of five teams, which was something of a miracle and somewhat predetermined. Our loss record was greater than our wins. As I mentioned in my previous scenario about “Dem Bums,” we were becoming more competitive with each game, and actually began to resemble something akin to a baseball team. I had developed a batting lineup that entailed putting those kids likely to make contact between those players likely to get walked. It helped, but we still made too many mistakes.

The kids could be down by 10 runs in the late innings and would start a chant, “It ain’t over till it’s over,” straight out of Yogi Berra (or was that Yogi Bear). I thought about mentioning, “It ain’t over till that fat lady sings,” but decided that would be politically incorrect. Besides, I think that has more to do with Opera than baseball! Although, come to think of it, some of the Moms were rather Wagnerian and resembled the Valkyries. If you have no idea as to what I’m talking about, you’ll have to look it up on the web, because it’s too much to try to explain here. I digress!

When “Doc” would go to the batter’s box, he began to squat down so low that there was no real strike zone. The ball was either in the dirt or over his head, so he had a high probability of getting on base. When he got on base, the fun would really begin. If somebody hit the ball he would run until he was either out or would score. Please don’t get the impression that I coached “Doc” into this batting, base-running technique. I wouldn’t stoop to such a low and unsavory, unsportsmanlike practice. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.) I asked him why he started doing that, and his response was he “was reducing the strike zone by an order of magnitude.”

Now – that scared the hell out me! He said that he had watched a TV program about a manager in the majors who had actually hired a midget, and would put him in when he needed somebody on base. This is true! The guy’s name was Bill Veeck, and he did it in the early 50s. Eventually the league banned the use of “little people” in the major leagues. “Doc” was a real thinker! He would still get some hacks in, but that was a hopeless cause.

Our fielding acumen however, left a lot to be desired. To offset this inconsistency, we really did not have an outfield because they were brought to within 20 feet of the infield grass. I modified that only when I got information from the scouting reports that so-and-so could hit. We still needed to work with the outfielders, because anything hit in the air to them was usually an unmitigated disaster. But not all of the time. One of our limited-talent outfielders actually caught a fly ball. He was so happy, he ran all the way in to the pitcher’s mound and handed him the ball. He got a standing ovation.

You have to remember that these were young kids, and to them a hardball was a dangerous thing, and in fact, could cause bodily harm. Getting hit by a batted ball or a pitch is not pleasant, especially if it’s in the mouth or face. A majority of the kids were really afraid of the pitcher and would bail out of the batter’s box, even if the ball wasn’t close. I really couldn’t blame them because the majority of pitchers, including our own, had little or no control. They did get to go to first base if they took one for the team, however, I doubt that they thought it was worth the pain.

So, next on the agenda was to teach them how to get out of the way, and in such a fashion that they did not increase the probability that they were going to get nailed by the pitch. For whatever reason, most of them would turn into the ball, rather than turning away from the ball. In some instances, they would just freeze. This was bad, because many of the kids began showing a degree of fear, specifically those kids that were playing organized hardball for the first time. It was pretty easy to detect, because they were bailing out early, or were literally reluctant to bat. As Martha Stewart would say, “Not a good thing,” but I don’t think she played much baseball, even while she did her time in the low-risk, boutique clink.

So I asked JJ Junior, who is pretty good pitcher, to throw the ball at me so I could demonstrate how to get out of the way. After he plunked me three times, smiling after each of my painful grunts, I really began thinking that this was a bad idea. JJ Junior was getting even because I made him a catcher. I was able to coach each would-be “major league” prospect on how to bailout or duck, or just plain fall on the ground to avoid being nailed. I put each batter at the plate with the catchers vest on, and went to the pitching mound and told them I was going throw at them. I did – but not hard, and they got out of the way. Sweet smell of success!

When “Doc” climbed into the catchers vest, he literally disappeared, waddled to the plate, and I suddenly realized that there was not much of his body visible to throw at. All I could see was this little black mound, a bat, and a helmet that was five sizes too large. He actually dove out of the way a couple times, and had a big grin on his face. I think the kid was a masochist. The other rule I had was no swearing in the dugout. These kids knew some really choice words. It was a good thing none of the Moms were around to watch this mean man throwing baseballs at their little darlings.

There was this kid that his teammates call “Scooter,” because he could run like a deer. He was even faster on two legs. That’s a joke! I don’t know why people say “run like deer,” because when they do I envision this person on all fours hopping and weaving all over the place. Anyway, the problem with Scooter was getting him to stop on those little white things called bags. One time, he scored all the way from first base on a grounder hit back to the pitcher. But frankly, that’s how we got most of our runs. There were others of these speed demons that did the same thing, until we made it clear what little white bags were for.

“Scooter” had a rabbit’s foot attached to the back of his hat, and one day I asked him what it was for. He answered, “Good luck!” Feeling somewhat whimsical, I looked at him and said something to the effect that I wasn’t sure that it was working, because look what happened to the rabbit, and he had four of them. He just looked back at me and said, “Well, I guess there’s a three-legged rabbit out there somewhere.” He and “Doc” were good friends and now I understood why. “Doc” was a realist and “Scooter” was an optimist. “Scooter” did become a good ballplayer.

As the second half of the season rolled on, we were actually winning more games than we were losing. The deviant and nontraditional batting order was actually working quite well. Our infield started to tighten up and our pitching surprisingly was walking fewer batters. We had beaten the Giants once, and had one more game to play against them. This was crucial, because the Giants once again were leading in the second half with only five games to go. The way the league worked is if you won both halves, you were the champs. So, to have a shot at being champs, the pressure was on us to beat the Giants again.

The league had another rule that I didn’t know about, as I hadn’t bothered to read the rulebook. Our diminutive league was considered the minors, junior to the players in the age bracket of 10 to 12, which were considered the majors, and was something of an oxymoron. My little Dodgers were good enough at this point to beat some of the teams in the majors. This rule – simply put – said that if a team in the majors lost players (leaving fewer than 12 players on their roster), they could draft a 10 year old from one of the teams in the minors. Guess what! The day before the Giants game, I got a call and was told that I had lost one of my best players. I was really bummed, but that’s showbiz.

The team didn’t really understand how that could happen, and thought it was unfair. I had to remind them, for the umpteenth time, of my rule about swearing in the dugout. I was concerned that this event would cause a letdown. Just the reverse happened. We played the Giants and beat them hands down. All we had to do now was win our four remaining games, assuming that the Giants would win their remaining games, and we would be champs of the second half by virtue of the fact that we had beaten the Giants twice. We won three of the final four, but so did the Giants.

The last crucial game was to be played on a Saturday, following the Giants final game. All of the team showed up to root for the Giants’ opposition, but to no avail. The Giants won easily. Now it was my “Bums” turn for final glory and the victory parade that would follow. The adrenaline level was out of sight and their confidence was vibrant. Although we were missing one of our better hitters and a real solid infielder, we held together quite well, and we approached the seventh inning leading by two runs.

We were the visiting team, so all we had to do was get three outs in the seventh. I had saved one of my better pitchers for the last three innings. We got two quick outs, but then gave up a walk and a base hit. The next kid coming to the plate was identified by my scouts is not being a real good hitter. We got two strikes on him in a hurry. The next pitch he hit was a bomb, way out to center field, and two runs scored – tying the game as he rounded third to come in with an inside-the-park home run. There was no trophy for second place.

“Ah! There is no joy in Mudville tonight,” or as they say “Game, Set and Match.” Sorry, wrong sport. Some guy that was clearly a Giants parent kept yelling, “Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant.” He had to be from the Bronx. The kids took it pretty well, certainly better than some of the parents and unequivocally better than their coach. “Doc” and “Scooter” were standing in the front of the dugout, tears streaming down their eyes and yelling “Wait’ll next year.” You gotta love those two. If I had seen the movie “Bad News Bears,” I would’ve opened up the beer and passed it out. But I hadn’t seen the movie.

The Minors, like Majors, had the managers select the All-Star team at the end of the season, and they would go on to play other teams in other franchises. A total of 15 players were chosen, and the Dodgers, “Dem Bums,” had five All-Star players. The Giants had two.

That was my only year with the Dodgers. My job responsibilities had changed, and I was traveling a great deal more and really could not take the management of the “Daunting Dodgers.” I was able to get to a few of their games the next year, but it wasn’t the same. JJ Junior and Tom stayed with the team. “Doc” and “Scooter” had been prophetic. The Dodgers won it all, but “Scooter” had broken his arm and “Doc” had moved. JJ Junior developed some lifelong friendships during his tenure with the Dodgers. I stayed in touch with many of the players. They would come to the house to go swimming or whatever. I eventually managed a team in the Majors, and some of old Dodgers fell under my fantastic baseball tutelage once again. Right!!  But that’s another story.

Moral of the story –  If you see a three legged rabbit, then you’ll know “Scooter” had it right.

The Return of the Dauntless Dodgers

At the end of my other story, Enter Little League, we left this pint-size team, having successfully snatched victory from jaws of defeat. I didn’t offer much of a description of how this was accomplished, other than a timely hit during the last inning. To give you a flavor of the baseball acumen of both these teams, I will just note that the final score was something like 25 to 24. At best, I think there were maybe nine balls actually hit, and maybe only two of those got into the outfield, with some direct assistance from the infielders.

It was your classic pitchers’ duel, but with a reverse concept of “How many can we walk?” A majority of the runs were created by walks with the bases loaded. On one occasion, one kid was forced in by yet another walk, and to show his baseball prowess, he slid into home. Out of curiosity more than anything else I asked him, “Why did you do that?” He answered, ”I don’t know! I just wanted to try it.” Our would-be orthodontist, Westley, who I had nick-named “Doc,” was standing there and commented, “He probably had an irresistible urge.”

There were many strikeouts, but very few were called by the umpire. One of the kids actually had hit a ball that bounced twice before it got to home plate. “Doc” swung so hard at a pitch, he missed it, but the ball hit the bat’s back swing and he ended up on second base. Now that takes real talent! His mother came over later, and asked me if I had taught him that trick. I told her, “No! I think Westley has got God-given talents.”

“Doc” was one of my two innings players, who played in the outfield. I say played, but I mean he usually sat down and plucked grass or filled in gopher mounds. I don’t think he hit the ball again the rest of the year. “Doc” was a good kid, the smallest kid on the team, tried real hard, came to all the practices, and would come up with some of the funniest one-liners that I ever heard. He was only with the Dodgers that one year, as his family moved. I often wondered if he ever did become an orthodontist. I knew one thing for sure; he was not going to be a professional baseball player!

For those of you that have not had the Little League experience, I will explain a few of the rules that exist to impede the natural tendencies of the kids to be a little assertive, and get into the spirit of the good clean fun of baseball. As an example, there was a rule stating you can’t wear spikes. This, of course, eliminated the need on my part to teach them how to sharpen their spikes. There was another rule that said “no stealing,” which I think was incorporated to give the impression that this sport is meant to be a role model against the concept of theft and general corruption. I must make note to you that there was no mention of the use of steroids!

To make matters worse, if you’re on any base, you had to stay there until the pitcher released the ball. No leading off. If the catcher failed to catch the ball, you still had to stay there, meaning you can’t run down to second or third or anywhere. You had to stay there. Another rule was the manager or coach could not go onto the field. During one of the games, our infield was in its usual sieve-like configuration. My second baseman attempted to field a ground ball, missed it and fell on his face, got up, sat down on second base, then threw his glove at our pitcher. I was really encouraged by that, because the glove actually came close to his target.

I could see he was upset, so I went out to talk to him. The umpire, a 16-year-old kid, came over and said that I couldn’t do that and I had to get off the field unless the kid was hurt. I looked at the kid umpire and said, “I think he gave himself a hernia.” I don’t think the umpire knew what that meant, because he just turned around and went back to home plate.

One of the other interesting rules was something of a mandate. All players must wear a jock strap (aka athletic supporter) and a cup. I was somewhat intrigued by this level of protection at this particular point in our young men’s development, and conceded the only possible necessity for this might be for the catcher. I passed out the device at a team practice. It got more than a little complicated when I tried to explain to the team what the purpose was, and how to wear it. They seem to accept my explanation. I knew that both the rule and I were doomed to failure when at the next game, they were flipping their jockstraps like slingshots – over the fence into the crowd of the parents. After that little episode, we were known as the “Flying Jocks of the Dodgers.”

Westley’s Mom came to the dugout and demanded an explanation. At that point, I wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know what this little elastic strap “thingie” was, or why the boys were being so unruly! Tom and JJ Junior thought this concept was so funny that they wore them on the outside of their uniform trousers. The “big guy,” El Presidente was there, and he went into absolute hysterics at this scenario. I couldn’t figure out how they were going to enforce this rule. I could hear it now, “Okay gentlemen, crotch inspection time.” Later, he told me that the Dodgers had to have a little more self-restraint on the field. After he said that, he started laughing, turned around and left.

After the first couple of games, which consisted of the kids not doing much more than running around the bases, the Dodgers management went into a strategy conference, which was me talking to myself. Clearly, the name of this game was “run until you have to stop,” and hopefully that’s at home plate. It was evident at this stage that there was not going to be a lot of hitting, and if there was that happy accident, the kids needed to understand that it was unlikely that the ball would end up in the right place at the right time.

So, we really worked on running the bases and watching the other players throw the ball here, there and everywhere. It was probable that if at any time someone actually hit the ball, the likelihood of someone catching it was about as remote as finding the Fountain of Youth. I had eliminated infield warm-ups because it was too painful to watch.

We still had at least one practice a week, and sometimes two. It clearly became important to attempt to instill the basics, because if we could do that we could be competitive. Doing nothing but getting bases on balls was pretty boring, and I could tell that the kids felt that way as well. I had one rule. You had to show up for practice if you wanted to play more than two innings. I asked only that they call me if they were going to miss practice. I had a couple kids that thought they were too good to have to practice, and when they didn’t show up, I wouldn’t start them the next game.

On one occasion a father came over, who appeared a little red-assed, asked me why I wasn’t starting his little Johnny, because clearly his ”little Johnny was one of the best players on the team.” I just looked at him and told him that little Johnny doesn’t like to come to practice, and these other kids worked for a couple hours to improve their skills. So if little Johnny wants to play more, then he should show up for practice. With that, Dad turned and went back to the bleachers. Little Johnny started showing up for practice.

We concentrated on hitting and fielding, and naturally I took the best players and put them in the infield. We didn’t use the T-ball concept because hitting a stationary target versus a moving one is two different things. Four of the kids could actually pitch well enough to get the ball close to the plate, some of the time, so we didn’t work on any of that. I didn’t bother to teach them any pitches, like a curve (which should not be used in Little League anyway because it can screw up a kid’s arm in a hurry).

By about the fourth or fifth game we actually started getting hits, and much to everyone’s surprise, we were able to throw runners out – once in a while! The concept of a double-play was well beyond the reach of these kids. One of the interesting things that happened, without any surreptitious activity on my part, was some of the players would go to other teams’ games and would come back with scouting reports. When we played the other team, the scouts would come up and remind me that “that’s so-and-so, and he can hit.”

Another rule was that pitcher could only pitch so many innings per week and could not start two games in the same week. There was no way to enforce this rule, other than the managers all making sure that it was adhered to. These teams would sometimes play three times a week, so you could burn through your “pitching staff” in a hurry. Pitching staff is defined as any kid that can get the ball over the plate – every so often! I had explained this rule to the team, and much to my surprise, that became part of the scouting reports. “Hey coach, so-and-so pitched last Tuesday!”

If you’ve read my other story about Little League, then you’ll remember that during the draft I thought one of the managers kept muttering “Just win, baby. Just win!” He was also the guy that drafted the two “ringers.” They were the hated Giants, and were leading the rest of the teams by at least two games before we reached the halfway point of the season. We were about two or three games behind them, but they were fairly good, and not likely to lose the first half.

We were about to play the Giants, and “so-and-so” walked out to the mound to start the game. Good old Westley, “Doc” said, “Hey coach! That kid pitched Tuesday against the Reds, and according to Rule 14, paragraph 4, sub-paragraph 3, he’s not eligible.” So I went over to the Giants’ dugout and got the attention of “Just win, Baby.” I said something to the effect that “I don’t think your pitcher is eligible because he pitched on Tuesday,” and mentioned the rule. He got a little huffy and said “Well, nobody follows that rule.” I just looked at him and said, “I do!” I didn’t think to ask him if he had his jock strap on.

The kid stayed in as pitcher for about five innings. We ended up beating them by four runs. After the game, I went over and told this guy that I thought he should talk to the league president about the rules relating to pitching. It turned out that the manager who had lost to them that previous game was in the stands watching the game, and told our league officials about the pitching rule violation. They fined him $50,000. He got off by filing an appeal and settled for a six-pack of Bud.

As the season rolled along, I came to the conclusion that the kids were absolutely fantastic. The problem was some of the parents and some of the managers, who seem to have forgotten that these were just kids. Winning is important, but not as important as the concept of a team and sportsmanship. In talking with other managers, it was apparent our League was really low-key compared to others, and they knew of events in other leagues that were absolutely preposterous – with parents and managers getting totally out of control.

Moral of the story – Sometimes an athletic supporter is more than a fan.

Enter the Little League Years or “Who’s on First?”

Since Blue-eyes and I were erstwhile aging athletes, it was only natural that we get the offspring involved in different types of sports. This activity extended itself from the organized local school programs to things such as Little League and tennis. Having resurrected the swimming pool at the New Abode, everybody was a swimmer, even though the water was sometimes a bit chilly. Blue-eyes’ idea of the acceptable water temperature for swimming was around 85°, which our pool rarely met.

We were fortunate in that we were just a few blocks, if you can call our residential area blocks, from a relatively low-key Country Club that featured a bunch of tennis courts, an Olympic size swimming pool, and a rather large equestrian facility. Now, don’t get me wrong! This was not a fancy place and was really very oriented toward family activity. The best part, didn’t cost an arm and a leg. So, somehow, regardless of good old JJ’s attitude about country clubs, we became members. I think it was either Groucho Marx or perhaps WC Fields who said “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

The other neat aspect of our location was we were a very short distance from the three local Little League fields. So naturally, as the curtain climbers began to become interested in a certain level of competitive sports, we got them going on the concept of baseball. I say “concept” because my first experience with Little League was far from what my understanding and past experience of what the game of baseball was all about. I had played organized baseball until I was about 35, and thought I knew a little bit about it, but this did not prepare me for what I was about to face. But that’s another story.

The town we live in has maybe 2500 single-family residences and 10,000 horses, and could be euphemistically defined as a bedroom community, with no retail businesses of any kind. I should qualify that to say that a few years after we moved in, the Sheriff’s Department discovered a “house of ill repute.” I don’t know if that qualifies as retail or not, but I guess you could surmise that there was a certain emphasis on the term “bedroom.” I digress!

This particular Little League franchise was pretty low-key and had been around for a number of years. Because of the limited talent base, they had never really had any inter-league championships. They usually got their butts kicked and eliminated in the first round of regional tournament play. We were surrounded by large communities with multiple franchises, and one of them had nearly gone to the Little League World Series.

With such a small number of families, the league still managed to attract enough kids to form five teams per league. There were three specific leagues, starting with the Minors who were somewhere between 7 and 10 years old. I don’t think there was a lot of attention paid to the lower end of that spectrum because some of those kids were really young. So JJ Junior decided “it” wanted play organized baseball. He was a good athlete, once he made his mind up whether he was to be left-handed or right-handed. And from the time that he was very small, we used to play a lot of “wiffleball” in the backyard along with the other kids in the neighborhood.

So, we went about the process of signing up, paying the fees and during this process, when asked if I would help, made the mistake of saying “Sure, whatever I can do.” The next thing I know this “big guy,” a 6-foot-four character, is at my doorstep with a bag of equipment. I commented “What’s that for?” and he said “I need a manager for one of the teams.” I told him I really didn’t have the time, etc. etc. He said, “Well okay, it’s just interim, until I can find a permanent manager.” He told me there was a meeting at his house the following evening and gave me his address and directions. We chatted for a few minutes and it turned out that he had three sons playing in the league and was also President. Nice guy and too big to argue with. As he walked away, I got this strange feeling that I had just been had, and he was never going to find a manager.

At the meeting, we “new managers” got a Little League rulebook and some quick instructions on the basic philosophy that every kid plays at least two innings. That was a must! Failure to do this meant a forfeiture of whatever game you played, and you would no longer be suitable as a manager. Headlines in the next day’s sports page of the daily newspaper, “JJ gets fired as Little League manager.” Aha! A loophole from which I could weasel out. I guess this was the early stage of “No child left behind,” with little comprehension on my part of the interesting and delightful effects that this would have during the forthcoming season. “Gee Mom, how come I only get to play two innings?”  “Well, that’s because you’re a total klutz, Westley.” We were also informed that there would be “tryouts” for the kids the following Saturday, and that we needed to be there for the selection process. “Wow!” I thought. “This almost sounds like a draft.” I was beginning to wonder if they had “signing bonuses.”

The tryouts event was basically an evaluation and ranking of all those kids that showed up. It’s intent was to discover who had a modicum of exposure to the little things like catching, throwing and hitting. Some were seasoned players returning for more outlandish exposure by mostly incompetent coaches. There were about 75 of these pint-sized Babe Ruths, and only about 40% of them had even the slightest clue about the basics, let alone how the game was played.

After watching some of these kids for a half-hour, my candid conclusion was that most of them would visit the hospital before the season was over. A couple of them had a real good shot at accomplishing that before the season even began. As an example, during tryouts at least three kids got hit in the mouth while trying to catch the ball and ended up looking for Mom. One of the kids swung so hard at the ball, he lost the bat and nailed one of the Dads that was doing the pitching. I didn’t blame “slugger,” because this particular guy was a terrible pitcher. Couldn’t get the ball close to the plate. The kid stayed. The Dad left! I later drafted “slugger” simply because I thought he had style, and worst-case was that since most of the kids at the tryout saw this incident, he would scare the hell out of our opposition’s pitchers.

The ranking system was pretty basic; excellent, good, fair and needs work in the various basic skills. After watching these kids I came to the conclusion that they should have one more category, and that should be called “hopeless.” After the tryouts, the managers got together and had what was called a draft. Each team was allocated so many players from the top two categories to provide some degree of parity. The rest were divvied out on something of an equal lack of skill-set basis. What I didn’t know was that a couple of the other returning manager’s drafted players who had not been at the tryouts, and it turned out these kids were “ringers.” So, clearly the games began before the games began. One of the other managers kept muttering, “Just win, Baby. Just win!” I thought maybe he was in wrong sport. I ended up drafting the “big guy’s” youngest son, assuming that with two older brothers he would’ve developed some of the basic essentials. Smart move! His kid turned out to be a real good player.

Now spring training begins! Each team was given a specific day to use the fields for practice, and this of course had to start after school. The weekends were open and each team was given a two-hour time slot. The team names were not taken from animals like the Bad News Bears or the Woeful Wolverines, but were basically major-league names. My little team was the Dodgers. And as it turned out, aptly named, because you really never knew what was going to happen! One of the neat things about this league was the kids all got uniforms, not just shirts, but actual uniforms with the team name. Most of the uniforms were about three or four sizes too big, but that was okay.

Some of the dads on our team volunteered to help me with the practice days, which could be best described as absolute chaos. Practice started with the basics of breaking them up into pairs and having them play catch, which really evolved into most of the kids running after a ball in the outfield because they couldn’t catch it, let alone throw it close enough to their partner so that he could catch it. Everybody wanted to play first base, or be the pitcher or play shortstop. Nobody wanted to be catcher and I couldn’t find an outfielder to save my soul. One kid didn’t want to play anywhere; he just wanted to wear the uniform and bat. He also informed me that he wanted to be an orthodontist. I almost made him team captain.

Batting practice consisted of mainly showing the kids how to stand, how to swing and most importantly – how to get out of the way of the ball when it was headed straight for them. They all had to wear batting helmets, which were about four sizes too big and flopping over their eyes. It didn’t really matter because not many of them hit the ball anyway. I was doing the pitching, underhand, and watching them swing at just about anything, even if I rolled the ball to the home plate. I tried to explain the strike zone and the concept of watching the ball all the way to the plate. I got this message crossed however – one kid just stood there. I stopped and asked him why he let those good pitches go by. He just looked at me and said “I didn’t think I was supposed to swing.” The next pitch – he hit it a ton, took off and rounded the bases, trotting into home. All the kids cheered!

We had about four more practices before our first game started. I found a catcher, JJ Junior, who I’m sure was more than just a little unhappy with the Dodgers management. We had a couple of kids that could at least get the ball close to the plate, but I was convinced that if anybody on the opposing team hit the ball anywhere, it was likely to be a home-run in that our infield had a tough time coping with the concept of fielding a ground ball. Even if they did, it was highly unlikely that they were going to throw it anywhere near the first baseman. I figured we would get beat by 24 to 2, based on the successes of our practices.

We played our first game and I discovered that the other team was as bad as we were. The best description of this game was that if anybody did in fact make contact with the ball, they just kept running until they got to home plate, because nobody could throw the ball successfully to any base. After the first couple of innings, I moved all my outfielders in about 20 feet off the infield grass, assuming if any of the other players hit a fly ball, it was going to be a home-run anyway. I put the would-be orthodontist out in right field, where he promptly sat down and picked grass. “Slugger” actually hit the ball three times, managing to hang onto the bat. The first time though, he was so shocked, he forgot to run to first base and stood there so long – with all of us yelling “run, run!” He eventually took off to third base, assuming if he gets that bag, he would be able to come home. He was eventually tagged out by their center-fielder, five minutes later.

We would end up winning, but not because we were more skillful than our opponents, but because the “big guy’s kid,” whose name was Tom, hit the ball into the outfield with JJ Junior on first because of a walk. The kid in the outfield was so surprised, he stood there and held the ball while those two rounded the bases. I was satisfied with that because I now realized that the other teams had the same problems. At least I knew that the Dodgers would not go 0 and 25. This was just the beginning of a number of years of fond memories, some not-so-fond memories, the development of lifelong friends, three peptic ulcers, and two broken windshields.

Moral of the story – It’s not so much in winning as it is how you played the game, especially if you can’t hit, can’t catch and forget to run to first base.