What a great idea for a thread.
I played several years of minor league (the year before Little League), Little League, Pony, Colt and Babe Ruth league and had some incredible times as I grew and learned to embrace the nuances of the game I had already grown to love. My dad coached many of the teams I was on but for the four years of Little League I had a coach that was good at judging talent in terms of where players should be playing and getting the most out of their ability. Being the big kid my dad stuck me behind the plate and that is where I started my early career but since I was also the tallest kid on the team my new coach decided I needed to be at first base. I loved the new position and found it was great to leave the field after a hard fought game without the myriad of bruises and occasional broken fingers one gets why wearing the tools of ignorance. I had broken three fingers behind the plate in separate games and to this day the digits on my right hand can to the Spock from Star Trek hand signal better than Leonard Nimoy could have done.
It was this same coach who put all the other pieces in the correct place and our team just seemed to run like a well-oiled machine. Our middle infield had two awesome glove men who barely missed a grounder hit anywhere near them. In addition to being an awesome fielder, I admired our shortstop for his ability to form and wear his hat just like a major leaguer would wear it. No bends on the brim and dirty, sweat stained hat bands for him as his hat was always perfect.
Our star pitcher was a kid who had those boyishly good looks that all the girls fell for and he had the attitude that one would expect from someone who had a posse of girls following him everywhere. His attitude was child like when he didn’t get the calls he felt he should and would even cost us a game a few years later in a tournament we were on track to win. But it was really fun to be playing in front of a bunch of girls who were there to not only see Alan pitch but flirt with the rest of us as well.
Our left and center fielders would run like deer and they had to as our week spot was right field and was usually manned by the one kid on the team that was more interested in looking at the butterflies that hung around the flowers beyond the outfield fence than chasing baseballs.
This team was at the top of the standings all season but we were running neck and neck with one other team in the league that seemed to be also in the midst of their season of destiny and the championship was all going to come down to one last and final game. While I can no longer remember details of that game and if I went 0 for 4 or had four hits that day but what I do remember is the final out. I remember seeing the batter tap a grounder to our short stop with the awesome hat, who fielded the ball cleanly and threw it my way in an effort to get the batter for the final out. That final play has run through my brain in slow motion for better than forty years now and I can still see the ball leaving the hand of the shortstop followed by a puff of dirt he had scooped up right behind the now dingy baseball. I can still see and sometimes I swear I can feel the ball smack right into the pocket of my red, off brand baseball glove which my dad had purchased a year earlier and was being held together with shoe laces and a piece of clothesline. I can hear the smack of leather on leather and remember the realization that I had just caught the ball, the game was over and we were now the champions. Just like so many big leaguers who I had watched with the World Series, I am my teammates all jumped straight up with our fists in the air and made our way to the growing dog pile on the mound, alternately laughing and crying as we basked in the moment.
We didn’t get a huge flashy ring for our efforts but we did get an ice cream social held in our honor and each of us was awarded an incredibly large trophy to remember the season by. I cannot speak for any of my teammates from that team but that single season and that last game were some of the greatest moments in sports I have ever experienced and the memory of that day and most notably, the final out, sits queued up on the video player of my mind, ready to be played at a moments notice.
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