New England Reflections: Little League 1980

Each year as the weather becomes more springlike I am taken back to the small town where I grew up, a memorable end to a school year with an extremely competitive Little League season. Back then, baseball was the highlight of our spring. There was no internet. There were no cell phones and there were no AirPods. There wasn’t even such thing as a Space Invader yet, unless you were talking about the ones that had arrived on the big screen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

All players marched in our annual Little League parade, and for the first time in what would become the norm, I opened the season at second base for the Lions Club team coached by 21-year-old Terry Kingman. Terry’s younger brother, Eamon, was a fixture at shortstop. Eamon and I were close friends, so we worked well together on and off the field like Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, the duo that held down the middle of the infield for the Detroit Tigers at the time.

Terry, Eamon, and I would all travel down to games together in Terry’s 1978 Ford F-150 and park down behind the old yellow town building that abutted what was officially called the New Diamond in our town. The New Diamond complex had a series of baseball fields that would otherwise require some walking to get to, and we were usually carrying a heavy bag of team equipment. By using this shortcut, we could easily hop over a little wooden fence separating the parking lot and the New Diamond complex and enter the park right behind the backstop of the field where our games were played. Terry’s truck had a Pioneer stereo cassette deck that blasted Bad Company’s Desolation Angels, songs from the Eagles’ Long Run album like In the City and Those Shoes, and hits of the day on the radio like While You See a Chance by Stevie Winwood.

As opposed to past years playing baseball, this was the season that helped me to become a serious ballplayer. I learned what sanitary socks were, began practicing with and playing against players who were both older and better, and learned how to wear my stirrup socks up high like the major leaguers of the day. This was at the tail end of the 1970s, after all. Baseball socks were important.

The atmosphere and the competition at the New Diamond in our little town was unmistakable. The night air smelled like popcorn. The little brick-red snack bar just off the first base line between right field and first base was always crowded with a long line of kids. On any given night, talented young players like Teddy George and Steve Dias, Mark Mason and David Brew, Mike Dalto and Michael Feroli, David Edwards and George Austin took the field against each other. Teams named Forni Oil, Country Convenience, East Bridgewater Savings Bank and Kiwanis Club all battled for wins every week, but the two biggest rivals back then were Superior Pool and Lions Club. Both teams were stacked with talent. Superior Pool had Tommy Williams, Timmy Griffin, Peter Dutcher, and Bruce Deneen who had established himself as one of the better catchers in the league by that time. Lions Club fielded Sal Barbetto behind the plate, Cary Whitmore, youngsters like John Capachione and Sean Salisbury, with Eamon Kingman or hard-throwing Shawn Connolly at shortstop. When they weren’t manning shortstop, Connolly and Kingman were trading places on the mound. In a decisive game that still draws attention from its participants more than four decades later, both teams managed to survive into the late innings courtesy of highlights like the somewhat miraculous grab in right field by Tim Tully of Superior Pool. The two teams remained tied into the late innings until a completely improbable home run was lofted by Michael Brennick off of an Eamon Kingman changeup in a pivotal Kingman relief appearance deep into the game. The late Mike Brennick was clearly fooled on the pitch as most hitters were by Kingman’s changeup, but he managed to somehow get his bat on the ball, lifting it high and deep to the opposite field, with the ball eventually drifting over the right field chain-link fence potentially aided by the cool evening breeze. To their credit, Superior Pool defeated Lions Club on this night, but the purple and gold Lions Club team eventually went on to earn the coveted first place trophy that year.

As a coach, Terry Kingman preached fundamentals while being extremely nurturing and patient. He made sure that every kid on the team knew how to sacrifice bunt and we practiced endlessly, catching the ball with the bat. We learned the importance of hitting the cutoff man, of staying down on ground balls, being smart on the base paths, and learning how and when to slow down the game. Eamon always found the perfect time to step out of the batter’s box to tighten the shoelaces of his Puma cleats, sometimes repeatedly in an effort to assert mental control over the pitcher. Terry taught us Billy Martin aspects of the game, that first base was only sixty feet away at this level as opposed to the ninety feet on a regulation field and that we could expect to beat out any ball hit on the ground if we ran hard. We knew how to take pitches and steal bases. We were taught to understand hitter’s counts and how to keep the opposing team mentally on edge. Our lineup was put together with a purposely strategic mission. Eamon led off, and being essentially a .500 hitter, he was usually on first base when I came up to bat second. My job was almost always to sacrifice bunt, whether that meant Eamon was on first or he had already swiped second. As Terry had instructed us, a bunt would normally result in a base hit with the short base paths. By the time Shawn Connolly stepped up to the plate, Eamon would have already arrived at third base and I would be standing on first. Connolly was a typical 3-spot hitter wielding a good bat, good speed, and good power. If he didn’t reach base and drive in a run, Sal Barbetto, our catcher, usually would. The law of averages meant that we would typically score at least one run by the end of the first inning of every game. As a result, we were tough to beat.

Even with our tough lineup, however, the Lions Club team was really built around pitching and defense. Terry Kingman understood and taught pitching mechanics. He coached his young pitchers working carefully with them on arm angle, stride, grips, release point, and deception. He taught pickoff moves and where to stand on the rubber. He taught his pitchers how to change speeds employing a strategically used changeup, a rare pitch at this level yet perfectly safe to throw. Terry taught us tenacity, attitude, control, and how to win. We were just 12 years old.

Times were simpler back then. As kids we did not have phones with us. Time at school was largely spent learning to be independent of parents rather than remaining in constant contact with them through text messages and notification of daily school occurrences, and although we behaved like kids, we were never really preoccupied with anything that made us too inattentive to listen and learn. Had I been too distracted to pay attention, I fear that I would have missed, and that kids today are potentially missing, the valuable observational lessons that I was able to internalize just by being with someone who was a coach, a friend, and a mentor.

Thanks Terry. I listened to every word.

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