In celebration that baseball is back...post your favorite Little League pic/stories

[egri]

I don't have any pictures, but the last year I played in Little League (2007), my team went undefeated in the regular season (our pitcher threw a no-hitter on Opening Day). We steamrolled the team that had won the championship the year before, beat a pitcher who later went on to play DI baseball...and then were bounced in the first round of the playoffs. We lost the first two games, won the next two, and were eliminated on tiebreakers.

[kmac32]

No little league but how about Cubs Fantasy camp?

[OldSchoolBaseball]

Originally Posted by kmac32

No little league but how about Cubs Fantasy camp?

Definitely counts + bonus points!

[vthobby]

I had just returned from Afghanistan with the US Army.

It was August 2013.

My son's team was 2 wins from Williamsport (no Vermont team has EVER been to LL WS). We played a RI team that we had beaten a few days prior. Our best pitcher got tired and we gave up a 3 run blast and we then had to drive home! Ughhhhhhh..... some of the best memories I've ever had and such an amazing week! This pic was taken by a NESN photographer of my son "in action". Reminded me of my little league days but honestly was way more exciting!

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[tedzan]

Before moving to Pennsylvania in 2002, we lived in Toms River, NJ for 20 years.
In 1998, the excitement in this town was unbelievable.

Toms River won the L-L WS ! ....Toms River won the L-L WS ! !









TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[kkkkandp]

Palisades Park - 1963. Me with my Ted Kluszewski "Big Klu" Model first baseman's mitt.

It was a good year for baseball. Our previous sponsor, Brahms Chevrolet, dropped out, but was replaced by Introna's Market, a small grocery store in town. The two brothers who owned/ran the place loved their baseball. They handed out steaks as rewards - winning pitcher, hitting a home run, game winning RBI, etc. We ate well at our house this week!

The whole league was pretty strong. The All-Stars lost in the State District Finals to runner-up West New York.

[OldSchoolBaseball]

Been a long time

[Casey2296]

Great photos and stories, thanks for sharing.

I played a couple years of little league but the violence of football appealed to me more (yes I was an angry child) so that's the way I went. Brent Jones of the 49ers and I played together for a few years. He went on to the Pros, I found motorcycles, fast cars, and even faster women more appealing.

I do have many memories of my Son coming up through Little League though, here's one;

I coached a few years which was a lot of fun but found a lot of the parents were pretentious, conniving, unpleasant people thinking little Johnny was the next Babe Ruth or Dads who tried to live their failed baseball dreams through their kid. All pretty disappointing.

At the end of Little Leage when my Son was 14 I hatched a plan to put together a Travel Team, I grabbed two Dads who were great guys, one was an incredible pitching coach whose Son is currently in the A's system, they are both friends to this day.

I told them both of my plan, we would draft parents instead of kids. If you were a shitty parent chances are you had a shitty kid and vice versa. I gave no thought to the kids skill level and I only had three rules.

1. Do your best on the field at all times.
2. To be on our Team you had to volunteer so many hours of community service.
3. Also, every kid would get to play no matter the score or baseball situation.
4. I made them all sign a contract.

We built our Team, named the Oaks in honor of the Oakland PCL team. My brother donated the money to get them the classiest looking home and away uni's and we were on our way. Essentially a real life bad news bears experiment.

We volunteered at homeless shelters, learned what it was like to be homeless, volunteered at Senior Centers, anything that needed some able bodied young men I would volunteer them for. We taught them how to recognize and control their emotions both on and off the field. Taught them how to be professional and have class. And practiced baseball, lots and lots of baseball.

Our first tournament we went up against a Team made up of the parents/kids that I spoke about at the open. They were good, real good. We just told our kids relax, have a good time, remember what we taught you, you guys are already winners no matter the score at the end because you have character. Everybody played as per our promise, the other team chalked up an early lead but our kids kept their cool, scratched out a few runs and went up by one in the 4th. You could feel the other Team melt down from across the field, parents, coaches, and kids alike. Blood in the Water boys just keep playing our game. I forget how many runs we won by, what I do remember about that day is the smiles on every face of the kids and their parents alike.

I've already gone on too long but as a reward for becoming good humans we took them on a 2 week trip that started at a Fenway Park night game and ended at a 10 day tournament in Cooperstown NY field of dreams.

But that's another story...