Nothing Small About Little League

The closest I came to competing in amateur sports was after a phone call from the New Jersey little league, reminding my younger brothers that their rain-out game had been rescheduled.

“How old are you, son?” asked the coach on the phone.

“I’m too old to play,” I laughed, “I’m 14.”

“Nonsense, we have leagues that go up to 16,” he replied. “Come down with your brothers and we’ll show you around.”

This was the late 1970s, the era of The Bad News Bears. I correctly guessed that my lack of experience at that age – and general ineptitude in Physical Ed – would brand me as a benchwarmer. I did watch a few of their games from the stands, but it was years before I became a baseball fan. Not yet educated to the sport, I would wander the athletic complex, inevitably leading to one of my brothers wrangling me and snapping, “We’re all in the car!”

Two of my brothers played for a few seasons, and their participation carried over when we moved to New York. I traveled with our mother to either drop them off or pick them up at the field on Long Island and was amazed to discover its existence (I had aged out at 16 by that point). Apparently an age requirement rule had been waived so they could play on the same team, as they were one year apart, and my parents didn’t have unlimited free time to…