BEFORE LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL

Before Little League baseball existed in Fresno, California it was called Junior American baseball.  Age limits were fuzzy in those days.  Most of the teams that we were facing were older and bigger than we were. I started playing when I was eleven and one of the first pitchers that I remember facing was Allen Croppsie who shortly afterwards was pitching for the Fresno High School varsity team. I was a better than average athlete but I was too young to be playing and too young to realize that the real reason for my being on the team was that my best friend’s father wanted his son to play baseball professionally and wanted him to get started as early as possible, hence the reason for playing out of our age range. Our team was his training camp and I was needed to fill out the roster.  My playing career lasted 2 or 3 years before the glory of being on the team wore off and before I realized that I disliked baseball. It was war time so there was a shortage of everything, including baseballs.  A smaller ball was created for younger players, like us, with small hands and our team had only one of them so we used it only during official games.  It was not uncommon to see baseballs with none of the original raw hide showing because they were completely covered with black tape. 

I remember only one team that actually wore uniforms. 

They were called the Junior Producers, named after a local dairy that sponsored them. The rest of us wore T shirts, baseball caps and sneakers.  In those days some athletic equipment didn’t belong to individuals. There was a family bicycle, a family baseball glove and a family tennis racquet.   My family glove had five leather fingers but otherwise was totally flat.  I actually caught a fly ball with it once but eventually saved up money for a golden brown colored glove that was endorsed by Babe Ruth. I softened it with oil and then pounded a ball into the palm of the glove to create a pocket for catching fly balls.  It was beautiful but years later when I brought it to one of Robert’s L L games his team mates jokingly dubbed it a Charlie  

Brown glove. Nowadays Little Leaguers use gloves that are twice the size and the ball is not caught in the palm but in the webbing of the glove. .

Those who had money and were more  serious about baseball wore footwear with cleats on them to give them more traction and to intimidate the second baseman when slidding into second base.  I thought they looked uncomfortable but since there was only one pair to go around I never had a chance to find out. 

I don’t remember the names of any of the other teams, including our own, but the usual practice was to name the team after the school where most of the players attended.

I usually played right field.  Years later I learned that that was the position that Babe Ruth and Roberto Clemente played but for totally different reasons.  Ruth and Clemente were great hitters and needed strong arms to field a ball in right field and throw it all the way to 3rd base to keep runners from advancing to a scoring position.  Little leaguers rarely hit the ball to right field so the fielder seldom had to field a ball and If he could relay it all the way to the nearest infielder - that was all that was expected of him.  Otherwise, the life of a Little League outfielder was 8 3/4th innings of boredom and 5 seconds of terror when a fly ball fell into his territory.  In between time everyone on the playing field was expected to indulge in team chatter to improve team morale, but mostly to fire up the pitcher and belittle the batter.  The only thing I remember about chatter was that it was total nonsense.  A typical catcall was, “Atta boy, pitcher, he’s got a hole in his bat!”  That was about all I could think of so I repeated it over and over again and pretended that anyone past the infield could hear me .  If I  had yelled something believable like, “Don’t worry, pitcher, he’s only a .200 hitter,” it wouldn’t have sounded right, especially in a high testosterone sport like baseball. 

I do remember some of the personalities on our team as well as on the opposing teams. Kenny Higgins was our shortstop, Tommy, our first baseman and Jack Welton our second baseman but eventually our pitcher.  The opposing personalities included:  Les Richter, Jake Abbott and Jack Shepherd.  Les Richter and I shared the same environment over several years as in baseball games, scout troop rivalry, scout camps, courts of honor, snowball fights and rival high schools, always on opposite sides and with absolutely no personal contact between us during those years.  He was fearless, smart, aggressive and physically intimidating.  He was my complete opposite, especially the fearless part.  When I was in the batter’s box there were three decisions I had to make in that fraction of a second between the time the ball left the pitcher's hand and when it crossed the plate.  Those decisions, in order of importance, were:  Is the ball going to hit me?  Is it in or out of the strike zone?  And should I swing at it?  The last decision was probably the most important but the first decision used up so much time that I either didn’t swing at all or I swung late and, if I was lucky enough to hit the ball it went in an unexpected direction. I got a few cheap hits that way - because opposing players were expecting me to hit to hit to the left field rather than the right. The difference between facing a right handed or a left handed pitcher for me was like the difference between night and day.  Most pitchers have a slight side arm delivery so when a left hander delivers the ball, for example, the ball starts out on the far side of home plate and, therefore, seems less threatening.  At the end of a right handers wind up the ball seems to line up perfectly with the batter’s body and then follows a normal trajectory and breaks harmlessly across the home plate.  But I didn’t have the courage to wait that long to find that out so I backed away from almost every pitch. Jake Abbott was a left handed pitcher and also had an over the head delivery so there was no illusion whatsoever that the ball was headed in my direction.  For that reason I loved batting against him. He was also the darling of Jr American baseball in those days. He was big for his age and must have had a baseball pedigree because as soon as he stepped onto the pitchers mound he was anointed all star recognition.  My team mates realized that I liked batting against him and accorded me more courage and baseball savvy than I deserved.   i never told them why I felt so confident when he was pitching.  

Jake ended up at our high school Alma Mater coaching baseball after a few years of minor league baseball.  Les Richter was so intimidating that when he was at bat, I backed up as far as the outfield fence would allow me, before I realized that he rarely hit the ball.  He was a one-sport athlete but he was so good at that one sport that he eventually became an all-pro linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams.  Jack Shepherd was smart, a good  hitter and a good catcher - the only one that I know of who made it to the majors, as a catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. I lost track of Ken Higgins and Tommy. Jack Welton signed with the Chicago Cubs but disliked the life of a professional athlete so much that he gave it up, raised a family, got an advanced degree in history or political science, and taught in the church yet a educational system.  

As a young teenage I realized that I disliked baseball but as a participant I enjoyed athletics only when no one kept score. I remember enjoying a game of table tennis with Brent Oxpspring years ago when his father appeared and insisted that we keep score.  I’m not sure what bothered me more, the manipulation or the competition but my game fell apart and I lost badly.  Competitive athletics are here to stay and that is okay with me.  However, in an educational setting there are so many advantages to cooperative learning that can found in such teaching strategies, as the “Jig Saw Puzzle” method that I typically introduced it to my students..  They loved it but when I would ask them if they had ever been exposed to cooperative learning techniques, their puzzled looks indicated that the answer was probably no.