As of this writing, the Southwest Portland Little League (formerly known as the Mount Sylvania Little League) has suspended the Spring 2020 little league baseball season until further notice.
Here’s the latest post from SWPLL’s Facebook page: The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is rapidly changing the way that we, as global citizens, think, act, gather, learn, and live our daily lives. And, yes, that also means how we play Little League. Due to these challenges, we are suspending all SWPLL activities until no later than 5/11.
Hearing this news and walking past the empty baseball diamonds at Gabriel Park and Alpenrose Field took me back to a time when the beginning of baseball season meant so much to my young family. The year was 1997, and we couldn’t have known at those first practices just how wonderful a season awaited us.
Our team was set.
We had a manager and three assistants, a schedule, and spiffy blue and white uniforms. We had our team moms, and a sponsorship from Landmark Ford. The excitement was palpable in every home of every player on the roster.
But the spring weather was not cooperating. The rains kept coming, at times torrential, leaving the diamonds saturated and unplayable.
Anxious to play ball, the team took practice sessions at whatever school gym was available, fielding ground balls, covering baserunning basics, and catching flies carefully popped up by Manager Rick. Then, with the first game of the season set for afterschool on Tuesday of the following week, a clear-sky window opened up. For three days the sun shined all day. Then, a Sunday downpour, and an emailed postponement. Bummer!
The boys were climbing the walls, pounding their mitts, and indefatigably rehearsing their power swings in the batting cages at Bullwinkle’s Family Fun Center in Wilsonville.
Finally, a good stretch of baseball weather, and the Landmark team started winning games. All the pent-up energy from waiting and solid coaching from Rick and his assistants began to pay off.
The winning continued, sometimes by a run or two, sometimes by embarrassing routs, but every time a win, followed by a victory celebration at Round Table Pizza on Barbur Blvd. Manager Rick’s biggest concern was that his team might be getting too cocky.
A couple of excellent games under the big lights at Alpenrose Field. Wins. Sparsely-attended slug-outs on windy, overcast Friday nights. Chalk it up.
The playoffs arrived with the “Landmarkers” undefeated. First round, then a second, against teams with the best records—and we were in the championship game.
The season’s final game took place at Markham Elementary on a Saturday in June that was forecast to reach 95 degrees. I can’t remember which team faced us on that dusty, simmering morning.
My son had just experienced a growth spurt, and was a rather ungainly 5’11 at age eleven. He had done his part on defense in center field, scooping up grounders that got past the shortstop, and delivering outs to his basemen teammates. But he’d not been exactly scintillating at the plate.
That day he did get a hit, a chopper that bounced hard and got past the opposing third baseman—an RBI that put Landmark into a lead they would never relinquish.
In the eighth inning, with the opposition still very much alive, a long, high, fly ball was hit into center by the other team’s ace. Two players were on base. Any parent can understand those freighted moments of anxiety when a potentially game-changing development is bearing down on their child.
Especially if that parent has seen the movie Parenthood.
He’d chosen the mitt from among the scores of mitts available on the racks of the old G.I. Joes in Tualatin. He caught the ball.
It was over, the glorious undefeated season. The Round Table Pizza team room had never seen a happier group of ballplayers. And parents.
We still don’t know, but my gut instinct tells me that there will not be a little league season in southwest Portland this year. By this time in 1997, 30-something games had already been played across the league. Orchestrating a season this late will take some real brainstorming.
Twenty-three years ago, our teams were frustrated when bad weather kept them from donning their uniforms and taking the field. Imagine how today’s young baseballers—aspiring in their dreams to hit like Hank Aaron, field like Mickey Mantle, pitch like Pedro Martinez, and be as dependably good as the great Cal Ripken–must feel.
Keep your chins up, boys (and girls, don’t forget, girls play little league ball too.)
There’s always next year.
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