Remembering Little League
Note: I posted the following article a few years back, after I'd read a Greg Hansen column in the Arizona Daily Star. The column focused on the Tucson Little League in the mid to late 1950s. Back then players like Eddie Leon, Rich Alday, Pat Darcy, and later on down the road, Ed Vosberg, just to name a few, took the field in Tucson, playing their favorite game: baseball.
It brought back such memories.
It all started for me in 1955.
A 10-year-old boy donned a baseball uniform and nervously walked to his position on the field. Stenciled across his jersey were the words: Pima Sheriffs, the sponsor of one of the many teams that summer which participated in the mid-town Randolph Park Little League.
And so it began on that hot summer day in Tucson, the start of the Price family's obsession with baseball. Of course that boy was yours truly, all glove and no hit Danny Price. That's right. I could catch everything, but putting wood on the ball as a 10 year old just wasn't my thing. I couldn't hit my way out of a paper bag. I remember batting eighth, walking a lot, stealing bases, and sliding, of course.
I loved to slide. Feet first, head first, hook slide, you name it. But hit, no way. That would come a few years later. Now fast forward from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, and you would find my two sons, Michael and Daniel, sending walls of dirt to the outfield as they ran and slid their way around the bases on a Little League team, on a beautiful, balmy summer day on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado.
They hit better than the old man. And they could field and throw with the best of them. Then came the year 2010 and my oldest grandson, Daniel, pitched and hit his way to stardom on his Colorado Little League team in a small, quiet town called Parachute, just 25 miles east of Grand Junction.
I few years later, at the age of 18, Daniel had to give up the game for a while after being hit in the head during a high school game. He finished the season as the team manager. He returned to the playing field the following year.
It was a scary moment for the Price family.
We now move on to June, 2014.
It is another hot, summer day in Tucson. Another day for Little League teams to hit the playing field. And yet, another member of the Price clan suits up and takes the field. This time it is grandson Jadon Price -- pitcher, shortstop and center fielder for the Thornydale Little League Orioles.
Grandpa is now on the sidelines, 69 years young, and his son, my goodness, will hit the age of 50 in late November, and is the assistant coach of the playoff-bound Orioles. Jadon is batting .426 and is a sure bet to make the All Stars, which will extend his sixth season in organized baseball into July.
It is a sure bet that in the year 2025 a few more ball players from the Price clan will hit the field once again. It's a sure bet that they'll all hit better than their Grandpa Dan.
