It takes a village to field a Little League team
Last year and for five before that, my wife and I had dropped off our boys in the assembly yard behind Tom's Pizza in Auburndale, walked a bit down Commonwealth Avenue, and cheered the Newton West Little League's annual opening-day parade, hollering loudest when Will (now 12 and a Cub) and Eli (now 10 and a Pirate) walked by.
On April 26, though, I joined the march past those three-deep huzzahs and parental paparazzi as an assistant coach for the Cubs. I hadn't anticipated the gratitude I felt for the gift of the crowd's cumulative enthusiasm. I have complex feelings about parades that equate patriotism with support of this or that war or candidate or issue. But everybody loves this parade, which must reveal to the kids the strong public support for youth baseball.
In perfect weather, the parade seemed to celebrate springtime, too. It was aimed right at the league's 350 players, including Will, who shelves his dry humor and signature holey T-shirts for a crisp team uniform and follows coaches' orders trustingly, in his role as pitcher, second baseman, and No. 2 batter in the lineup.
Before the march, we'd sorted ourselves by team, youngest first, then alphabetically. The Cubs manager, Bob Joyce, had quipped as rival manager Joe DeNucci led his Cardinals past us onto the street, "C-A comes before C-U in the alphabet, Joe - but not in the playoffs!"
Blocked drivers waved. We were part of something that merited stalled traffic (well, westbound traffic, anyhow) and the guardianship of the Newton police. We marched between Lyons Field's stone pillars, doffing our Cubs caps while trotting toward our assigned square in the patchwork arc of gathering teams. Les Whitham, Will's former AA-level coach, a genial food service director and now the league's vice president and secretary, intoned over the public address system our team name and supporting local business: "The Cubs, sponsored by Genove Oil!" The crowd cheered for 31 teams and business sponsors in turn. Thus began a chain of community inclusion.
The Cubs' second-in-command, Newton Fire Lieutenant Kevin Fitzgerald, opened the ceremony not in firefighter's gear but full tartans: kilt, sporran, and Scottish Highland bagpipes. In lieu of his customary Glengarry hat, he wore his Cubs' cap. He vested the coming baseball season triply with theological, national, and ethnic endorsement, skirling "God Bless America." There followed a salute to the flag, a ballpark-quality rendition of the national anthem, expressions of gratitude by Alderman Jay Harney, and thanks from league president Jim Klumpp to scores of coaches, concession-stand chefs and clerks, umping schedulers and umps, health officials, equipment managers and groundskeepers, whose many volunteered hours do, indeed, "make the season possible."
Finally Jim had some of the speakers throw out ceremonial first balls to catchers from last year's championship teams. Those first pitches seemed to transmit all that accumulating grace from on high, from our nation, our city officials and businesses, from volunteers, city departments, from the organization. Those four balls the catchers caught were to become the game balls in the season's opening competitions.
An hour later, on the same field, the Cubs were playing the Phillies. Will scooped up an easy grounder at second. A parent, even a parent-coach in the dugout, can't help but notice his own son's efforts, but must give no special praise. Will singled his first time up and eventually scored. Coach Joyce's son Alex, who throws and hits hard, came up next and accumulated two strikes. His father said, "You've seen him pitch now! Come on!" but Alex saw nothing hittable, and walked.
Games at the majors level of Little League are crisp and for real. Things stayed pretty even into the fourth inning. Will slashed a sharp grounder deep toward third, beat out the throw on a fielder's choice, and then advanced on a wild pitch. That's when Alex Joyce uncoiled a perfect swing against that magical game ball. His homer would have cleared the fence of an adjacent field, too. The crowd roared.
Coach Fitzgerald (who'd changed in his van, back into civvies) exclaimed, "Bob, that was the longest homer I've ever seen hit in Little League!" Joyce, after a moment perhaps lost in awkwardness, acknowledged, "It was a pretty good shot." Will ran in from third with the sort of thrilled face I last recall seeing when he was a toddler and I used to whirl him around and around. He'd been part of baseball history.
The moxie vested in the game by the opening ceremony was working.
Mark Kramer is chronicling his season as a coach with the Newton West Little League Cubs. Kramer, who founded Harvard's Neiman Narrative Program, can be reached at kramernarrative@ gmail.com.
