Little League Legends

I never had a future as a baseball player. I had convinced myself of that as a child, and when I did play any kind of organized ball, I didn’t put in the necessary work to be the very best I could be as a short kid with poor eyesight. If I had, I believe now I could have been a bench player at the varsity level in high school at the very least. Still, not every attempt at playing was a disappointment.

My best experience by far was the Little League team I played for when I was in seventh grade. I was the third baseman (in homage to Phillies legend Mike Schmidt) and the oldest player on my team, which actually made it easier for me to get along with everyone. I wasn’t the best player, but I was certainly in the middle of the pack. That group was full of quirky characters, not the least of whom was our coach, Larry, a short, hot-headed man. Despite his tendency to yell, he was mainly very nice and encouraging. Plus, I never suffered his wrath, which he reserved for his son, Kyle, our team’s catcher, whenever he began crying after striking out.

The only other kid Coach Larry yelled at was Lucky, our enigmatic right fielder. The rest of us on the team avoided him because he didn’t seem to have a whole lot going on upstairs (I later found that was not the case at all). He didn’t pay attention during practice or even during games, as he was more interested in the state of the grass he was standing on. I can still hear Coach Larry yelling at him from the dugout, “Lucky! Stop pickin’ the flowers!” The rest of us tried our best to stifle our laughter during those moments. I think Lucky’s reputation even spread around the league. There was a strict rule against sliding headfirst, but in Lucky’s most triumphant moment of the season, he basically belly-flopped into home, kicking up a cloud of dust that completely enveloped him. Once the fog lifted, the umpire called him safe. Any other player in that situation would’ve been called out for breaking the rules, but it was Lucky.

I actually reconnected with Lucky 15 years later, and he told me that he acted aloof on purpose because his mother had signed him up for baseball against his extreme objections. Adding that context just makes those memories funnier.

Our first baseman, Jeff, was the largest 11-year-old kid I’d ever seen. I also remember him because of his grandmother, who attended every game and yelled in shaky, mousy voice, “Little hit, Jeff, little hit,” every time he came up to bat. Not only was the cheer annoying, but it was ironic because slugger Jeff was the only player on our team to hit the ball over the fence during the season.

We weren’t the best team in our league, but we won more games than we lost, and our absolute best game was toward the end of the season. We fell behind early, 13-3, but we made a furious comeback. I contributed to the surge with a two-run double, but Kyle punctuated it with a pair of inside-the-park grand slams in back-to-back at-bats. I think we were further spurred on after Coach Larry got thrown out by the home plate umpire after arguing vehemently that I checked my swing on a strike-three call. We went into the bottom of the last inning trailing by just one run, 19-18. We were still down a run with the bases loaded and two outs when I stepped to the plate. A sudden pain in my wrist made me skittish about swinging, but luckily, the opposing pitcher was wild, and I drew a walk to tie the game. We then won the game in the craziest way, as the batter behind me, Troy, was struck in the foot for a walk-off hit-by-pitch! I’ll never forget watching that ball curve downward and hit Troy’s left cleat with an anti-climactic thud. He shrugged his shoulders and trotted to first, and then we went crazy after the winning run crossed the plate.

That game and that season remain highlights of my childhood, and my parents and I still mention several classic memories from that team, which, of course, always end in laughter.

note: Simply because I revealed the outcome of every one of my at-bats in that crazy game in my journal back in 1995, I’ll share here that I went 2-for-3 at the plate with a single, a double, two walks, three RBI and a run scored. I didn’t write about any defensive plays in that game, but I can tell you that three days before, I caught a pop up, and then I caught a line drive before doubling off the runner at second all in the same inning. It was the only double play I participated in all season. J

July 10, 1993: Phillies vs. San Francisco Giants

My father lit the spark of my interest in baseball, but the 1993 Phillies fueled the flames.

We all like to pretend that we are not fair weather fans. We support our team no matter what, but the truth remains that when “our guys” are winning, we cheer louder, we pay more attention and we are much more willing to spend some of our hard-earned money to attend their games.

What made the ’93 Phillies such a great team to watch was that no one saw them coming. The squad didn’t include a single superstar; just a bunch of scruffy, mullet-wearing goofballs. Hell, their highest paid player was their closer, Mitch Williams, who was the wildest and bushiest of them all.

My dad and I watched in awe from the very beginning, as the Phillies swept their opening series and jumped out to a 9-3 start. They carried that .750 winning percentage into mid-May, and I remember thinking that this team was really something special following a win on Mother’s Day when Mariano Duncan slugged a game-winning grand slam against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Speaking of my dear old mother, not even she nor my sister could avoid the Philly fever gripping the region, so they joined my dad and I for our first game of the year against the San Francisco Giants.

I paid close attention to this four-game series because to this point in the season, the Giants were the best team in baseball. They also had the best player, moody superstar Barry Bonds, who would go on to swipe his third Most Valuable Player award in four years. In our eyes, this was the Phillies’ biggest test of the season and gave us a look at how they might stack up against a postseason opponent.

We went to the third game of the series, and the ugliness of the first two games didn’t fill us with confidence. San Francisco dropped a few touchdowns on the Phils, outscoring them 28-10 (the only bright spot being rookie Kevin Stocker’s first major league home run the day after getting called up to the bigs).

If the boys in red pinstripes were going to right the ship, they would have to battle both the Giants and the elements. The two lopsided losses had mercifully taken place at night, but this Saturday game took place in the afternoon on the hottest day of the year.

I will never forget how my mom brought a cooler full of ice into Veterans Stadium. She insisted we rub our arms and face with ice cubes throughout the game to stay cool. Thinking back, I’m sure sunscreen would have provided better protection for our skin, but when you’re 10 years old, mother always knows best.

The beginning of the game featured an exciting back-and-forth. The Giants scored a run in the first and two in the second, but the Phillies matched them each time. Philly left fielder Milt Thompson provided the early fireworks with a rare two-run shot. The celebration in the crowd was brief, however, when it was discovered that the ball hit a young girl in the head. She had to leave the stadium with her parents, but from what I remember, she wasn’t seriously injured and had a story to tell for the rest of her life, I’m sure.

The Phillies brought back the smiles with a run in the bottom of the sixth, taking their first lead of the entire series. The lead would stick thanks to an incredible moment that also remains a humorous one between my parents and I.

Wes Chamberlain had taught me two years earlier that even the little guy could be a hero. They didn’t come much smaller than Mickey Morandini.

The lanky, second baseman would emerge as one of Philly’s better hitters in the mid-1990s, but to this point, his only claim to fame was an unassisted triple play in 1992 (amazingly, one of his three victims was Bonds, who was in his last year as a Pittsburgh Pirate).

The left-handed hitting Morandini stepped to the plate with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth. The way he always choked up on the bat, he needed the fattest of pitches to drive the ball, but he must have gotten one. All of a sudden, I saw the small, white dot fly over the right-field fence just inside the foul pole for a game-changing grand slam.

Everyone in Veterans Stadium lost their minds, except for my poor father. A few minutes before Morandini’s blast, he had succumbed to the call of nature. When he returned to us, befuddled by the sudden change in score, we gleefully told him what happened, adding salt to his wound with a, “We can’t believe you missed that!”

When my mom and I bring this up with knowing smiles on our faces, my dad always beats us to punch. “Yeah, I know. I was in the bathroom.”

There was every reason to believe we were good luck charms for the Phillies that day. It was the only game in the four-game set that they won, and the only one in which the Giants didn’t score in double digits.

Bonds particularly faltered in our presence. He went 0-for-3, got thrown out at home plate and dropped a foul ball. We had a great view of that miscue from our seats along the left-field line. The seats weren’t anywhere near the field, but my dad and I pretended Bonds could hear our taunts.

Looking back, the best thing about this win was that it came from the unlikeliest of sources. Between the two of them, Thompson and Morandini amassed a grand total of seven homers during the 1993 season. By comparison, Pete “Inky” Incaviglia (a fellow platoon outfielder with Thompson) deposited eight noggin nailers into the stands in the month of August alone.

Despite all the magic we witnessed that day, it came as no surprise to me. Though there was plenty of season left, I had bought into this team. However it happened, they were going to win.

Even if it meant forcing Dad out of the room whenever the Phils loaded the bases.