Our Best Game
Our daughter was born in 1987 and our son in 1991. They grew up in the late 90’s and through the first decade of the 21st century. Corner Brook, the small city of 20,000 in Newfoundland where we raised our family, is noted for it’s outstanding scenery, year-round outdoor activities and a variety of sports where every kid in town is encouraged and welcomed to participate. In addition to all the well-known team sports played throughout North America, those that focus on individual achievements are also plentiful. Fencing, archery, swimming, weight lifting, distance running, downhill and cross country skiing, mountain and road biking, and a variety of specialty and rare sporting activities can be found in Corner Brook.
One year we hosted a “Raid the North Extreme” international sporting event with teams from all over the world participating. As you can imagine, with a title like that, it’s a serious contest. It involves days of working your way through the bush, mountain climbing, repelling down cliffs, kayaking and running. In fact it was so extreme the French team said they’d never come back to Newfoundland to race again after getting lost in the tuckamore (dense, spiny, spiky, impenetrable mountain brush) for two days. New Zealand won the contest.
And our friends, Gord Casey and his son, Andrew, made sure the “Raid the North Extreme” superstars were safe when they headed out in kayaks on Grand Lake, the Caseys following them in canoes to make sure they didn’t capsize and drown.
We hosted the 1999 Canada Winter Games, a national event that occurs every four years in a different province, much like the Olympics, and includes young male and female athletes in Able-bodied, Para Olympic and Special Olympic categories.
Thirty years ago Corner Brook volunteers were pioneers in the sport of Triathlon. Starting with local athletes participating in annual events it grew to include ITU World Cup races that culminated in the World Championship Duathlon in 2005. Triathletes from around the world enjoyed racing in Corner Brook at the “toughest course on earth”, as described by Canadian Olympic gold medal triathlete Simon Whitfield.
In the winter months, like most places in Canada, ice hockey would always have the greatest number of participants, male and female, from tiny tots to seniors representing a number of leagues and levels of play. In summer, it was baseball and virtually every kid in town got involved. No one was turned away, no one was denied a chance to play, and Corner Brook had and still has several local Little League teams who play one another, as well as compete against other teams from across the island of Newfoundland and the rest of Atlantic Canada.
Oh, Baseball……
Maybe it’s the same for all levels of play, but the game for Little Leaguers today is different than when I played back in the 1950’s. They now play six innings, not nine. We played nine. The mercy rule for scoring runs is also now in place---if you are ahead by ten runs after four innings, the game is over. When I played, unless the coach of the winning team was benevolent and called it quits, they could rack up 100 runs in those nine innings and humiliate their opponents. They always called strikes and balls in those days and we used the same bats that the major-leaguers used, only shorter. If you won a game the coaches would take you to get an ice cream. If you lost you went home empty-handed---empty-treated---no ice cream.
But perhaps the thing that was hardest to deal with in those days was that if you tried out for the local team and didn’t make it, that was it---you didn’t get to play baseball that summer. In my village, with only one team---the Silver Lake Yankees---accommodating maybe 15 or 16 players, that left a lot of kids out.
The Yankees were an exceptional team in our town and throughout Northeast Ohio. They always had great players, great hitters and fielders and their pitchers were amazing. As the “chosen ones”, they knew they were good, too, and they let everyone else know. A lot of them were assholes for that reason.
I tried out for the Yankees a couple of years running but couldn’t make the team. My best position as a player was as catcher and they had the best catcher in Summit County, and he was just a year older than me. He could hit, too. This was the sad case for a lot of kids in my village—you might be good, or you might just want to play baseball, but if you didn’t make the Yankees, it was clear you weren’t good enough and so you couldn’t play at all.
And then a saviour for 16 more kids turned up.
Anthony Miletti owned a construction company. He contacted a couple of fathers in the Village to say he wanted to sponsor a Little League baseball team. Mr. Miletti had two daughters and no sons; unfortunately in those days girls weren’t allowed to play Little League baseball. His team, Miletti Construction, would be comprised of guys who couldn’t make the Yankees so they’d always be considered “second string”. And Mr. Miletti never attended a game. To this day I still don’t know why he wanted to sponsor a baseball team. But he did.
I was the catcher. My close friend, Roger MacClellan, was the pitcher. He was talented enough to make the Yankees but he would have been their third ranked pitcher so that meant sitting on the bench a lot. As our star pitcher, he started every game and pitched most of them all the way through nine innings. The Yankees gave him a lot of flack for wanting to play on our sub-standard team. They were assholes, players and parents alike.
At first base was Jeff Heintz, a lefty who had inherited his dad’s first baseman’s mitt, made in the 1930’s. What a mitt; it was like the scoop on a lacrosse stick. David Hunter was on second. Jeff and David went on to become two of Ohio’s finest attorneys.
At shortstop was Billy Crabbe, a fast and agile player---a shortstop for sure, and he could pitch if he was needed. Third base was Mark McCormick, left field Bill Gumbert. Gumbert could hit the ball. Center field was John Iyoob, also a fair hitter, and in right field was Jim Thomas. Last I heard Jim was a psychiatrist in Cincinnati. Six additional guys rounded out the team.
I don’t know what became of most of those guys as the years went by, but that summer we were The Milettis, from Silver Lake Village, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, an unremarkable but nevertheless official Little League baseball team like so many others throughout America. We had white and blue cotton/wool blend uniforms, wool caps that came in real hat sizes with leather sweatbands inside---just like the guys in the majors, and leather baseball spikes with steel cleats, not plastic bumps.
We probably played 18 or so games that first summer, losing half or more. The worst beating we took was at the hands of a team from North Akron. They had a tall lanky black pitcher who threw submarine pitches left-handed and struck out almost every one of us for virtually the whole game. I don’t actually believe he was our age. They also racked up over 40 runs. We scored a couple of times. It was awful.
We played a team of farm kids from the Cuyahoga River Valley where we managed to score lots of runs. They weren’t very “together” as a team, though. Roger hit a grand slam during the game that should have been an out but their center fielder was sitting in the grass with his back to “home”, his mitt lying beside him, playing with a frog, and he missed the ball completely---never saw it coming.
We got beat by a tough team from Cuyahoga Falls whose pitcher was the son of King Hoskins, baptist minister and TV evangelist. His kid did some serious cursing during the game and kept spitting on the ground at the pitcher’s mound until there was a small puddle you could see from our dugout. At one point the home plate umpire stopped the game, told him to quit swearing and spitting or he’d kick him out of the game, and ordered some dirt thrown on the puddle. Then it was “Play Ball”.
We had fun that summer. We were just “okay”---nothing great---but we loved baseball and we liked to sing “Take me out to the ball game” at the seventh inning stretch. You can’t do that when you only play six innings---you have to play nine.
I don’t remember much else about the games we played and can’t remember any of the names of the teams we played against except for one, and that involved the best game we ever played. It was against the Silver Lake Yankees.
All summer they’d been goading us. They’d come to our home games and rattle us when we were batting. They’d ridicule Roger for joining the Milettis instead of the Yankees. They’d laugh if one of us dropped a fly ball, and hoot and holler if a pitch got by me at home plate. Ugh.
But an arrangement was made during the summer for them to play us at the end of the season. They had planned on handing us a 40 or 50 run defeat---a humiliation in front of friends and families in our village.
On game day we Milettis were tense. It was late August in Ohio and so it was hot and humid. Even so the stands were full of spectators. Both teams warmed up. A coin toss determined the Yankees would be “up” first.
The game started as we expected, with a base hit immediately by a Yankee. But Roger struck out the next two guys and I nailed the guy on first trying to steal second with a deadly accurate throw I was surprised to have made from home plate to Hunter. The Yankees were surprised, too.
Next we were “up”. As usual in our line-up I was the lead-off batter. I often got on base, not because I was a power hitter (I wasn’t) but because I could place the ball where I wanted in the infield pretty well and run fast, and also because I could do what most Little Leaguers didn’t do in those days, or now---I could “bunt”. And so I did, sending the ball trickling along half way to third base just inside fair territory. And I was safe on first. That surprised them, too.
We got another guy on base and, at the end of the inning, we were sitting with one out, me on third, Billy Crabbe on second and Roger, our clean-up batter, stepping up to the plate. Bang, he hit a bomb deep into left field that was caught for a sacrifice fly, but nevertheless, gave me time to tag third and run home to score. One to nothing---Miletti Construction. Nobody could have predicted it.
We played our hearts out that day. We had never played better as individuals or as a team, and we never played as well again. Jeff Heintz scored a run, Mark McCormick scored, Iyoob, Gumbert and I scored. Five runs. We picked off star Yankees with stunning plays that extended beyond our skill set. When the game was over we had lost 7 to 5, but not 47 to 5.
The Yankees went straight home that day. The Milettis went out for ice cream.
© Kent Jones 2016
Our daughter was born in 1987 and our son in 1991. They grew up in the late 90’s and through the first decade of the 21st century. Corner Brook, the small city of 20,000 in Newfoundland where we raised our family, is noted for it’s outstanding scenery, year-round outdoor activities and a variety of sports where every kid in town is encouraged and welcomed to participate. In addition to all the well-known team sports played throughout North America, those that focus on individual achievements are also plentiful. Fencing, archery, swimming, weight lifting, distance running, downhill and cross country skiing, mountain and road biking, and a variety of specialty and rare sporting activities can be found in Corner Brook.
One year we hosted a “Raid the North Extreme” international sporting event with teams from all over the world participating. As you can imagine, with a title like that, it’s a serious contest. It involves days of working your way through the bush, mountain climbing, repelling down cliffs, kayaking and running. In fact it was so extreme the French team said they’d never come back to Newfoundland to race again after getting lost in the tuckamore (dense, spiny, spiky, impenetrable mountain brush) for two days. New Zealand won the contest.
And our friends, Gord Casey and his son, Andrew, made sure the “Raid the North Extreme” superstars were safe when they headed out in kayaks on Grand Lake, the Caseys following them in canoes to make sure they didn’t capsize and drown.
We hosted the 1999 Canada Winter Games, a national event that occurs every four years in a different province, much like the Olympics, and includes young male and female athletes in Able-bodied, Para Olympic and Special Olympic categories.
Thirty years ago Corner Brook volunteers were pioneers in the sport of Triathlon. Starting with local athletes participating in annual events it grew to include ITU World Cup races that culminated in the World Championship Duathlon in 2005. Triathletes from around the world enjoyed racing in Corner Brook at the “toughest course on earth”, as described by Canadian Olympic gold medal triathlete Simon Whitfield.
In the winter months, like most places in Canada, ice hockey would always have the greatest number of participants, male and female, from tiny tots to seniors representing a number of leagues and levels of play. In summer, it was baseball and virtually every kid in town got involved. No one was turned away, no one was denied a chance to play, and Corner Brook had and still has several local Little League teams who play one another, as well as compete against other teams from across the island of Newfoundland and the rest of Atlantic Canada.
Oh, Baseball……
Maybe it’s the same for all levels of play, but the game for Little Leaguers today is different than when I played back in the 1950’s. They now play six innings, not nine. We played nine. The mercy rule for scoring runs is also now in place---if you are ahead by ten runs after four innings, the game is over. When I played, unless the coach of the winning team was benevolent and called it quits, they could rack up 100 runs in those nine innings and humiliate their opponents. They always called strikes and balls in those days and we used the same bats that the major-leaguers used, only shorter. If you won a game the coaches would take you to get an ice cream. If you lost you went home empty-handed---empty-treated---no ice cream.
But perhaps the thing that was hardest to deal with in those days was that if you tried out for the local team and didn’t make it, that was it---you didn’t get to play baseball that summer. In my village, with only one team---the Silver Lake Yankees---accommodating maybe 15 or 16 players, that left a lot of kids out.
The Yankees were an exceptional team in our town and throughout Northeast Ohio. They always had great players, great hitters and fielders and their pitchers were amazing. As the “chosen ones”, they knew they were good, too, and they let everyone else know. A lot of them were assholes for that reason.
I tried out for the Yankees a couple of years running but couldn’t make the team. My best position as a player was as catcher and they had the best catcher in Summit County, and he was just a year older than me. He could hit, too. This was the sad case for a lot of kids in my village—you might be good, or you might just want to play baseball, but if you didn’t make the Yankees, it was clear you weren’t good enough and so you couldn’t play at all.
And then a saviour for 16 more kids turned up.
Anthony Miletti owned a construction company. He contacted a couple of fathers in the Village to say he wanted to sponsor a Little League baseball team. Mr. Miletti had two daughters and no sons; unfortunately in those days girls weren’t allowed to play Little League baseball. His team, Miletti Construction, would be comprised of guys who couldn’t make the Yankees so they’d always be considered “second string”. And Mr. Miletti never attended a game. To this day I still don’t know why he wanted to sponsor a baseball team. But he did.
I was the catcher. My close friend, Roger MacClellan, was the pitcher. He was talented enough to make the Yankees but he would have been their third ranked pitcher so that meant sitting on the bench a lot. As our star pitcher, he started every game and pitched most of them all the way through nine innings. The Yankees gave him a lot of flack for wanting to play on our sub-standard team. They were assholes, players and parents alike.
At first base was Jeff Heintz, a lefty who had inherited his dad’s first baseman’s mitt, made in the 1930’s. What a mitt; it was like the scoop on a lacrosse stick. David Hunter was on second. Jeff and David went on to become two of Ohio’s finest attorneys.
At shortstop was Billy Crabbe, a fast and agile player---a shortstop for sure, and he could pitch if he was needed. Third base was Mark McCormick, left field Bill Gumbert. Gumbert could hit the ball. Center field was John Iyoob, also a fair hitter, and in right field was Jim Thomas. Last I heard Jim was a psychiatrist in Cincinnati. Six additional guys rounded out the team.
I don’t know what became of most of those guys as the years went by, but that summer we were The Milettis, from Silver Lake Village, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, an unremarkable but nevertheless official Little League baseball team like so many others throughout America. We had white and blue cotton/wool blend uniforms, wool caps that came in real hat sizes with leather sweatbands inside---just like the guys in the majors, and leather baseball spikes with steel cleats, not plastic bumps.
We probably played 18 or so games that first summer, losing half or more. The worst beating we took was at the hands of a team from North Akron. They had a tall lanky black pitcher who threw submarine pitches left-handed and struck out almost every one of us for virtually the whole game. I don’t actually believe he was our age. They also racked up over 40 runs. We scored a couple of times. It was awful.
We played a team of farm kids from the Cuyahoga River Valley where we managed to score lots of runs. They weren’t very “together” as a team, though. Roger hit a grand slam during the game that should have been an out but their center fielder was sitting in the grass with his back to “home”, his mitt lying beside him, playing with a frog, and he missed the ball completely---never saw it coming.
We got beat by a tough team from Cuyahoga Falls whose pitcher was the son of King Hoskins, baptist minister and TV evangelist. His kid did some serious cursing during the game and kept spitting on the ground at the pitcher’s mound until there was a small puddle you could see from our dugout. At one point the home plate umpire stopped the game, told him to quit swearing and spitting or he’d kick him out of the game, and ordered some dirt thrown on the puddle. Then it was “Play Ball”.
We had fun that summer. We were just “okay”---nothing great---but we loved baseball and we liked to sing “Take me out to the ball game” at the seventh inning stretch. You can’t do that when you only play six innings---you have to play nine.
I don’t remember much else about the games we played and can’t remember any of the names of the teams we played against except for one, and that involved the best game we ever played. It was against the Silver Lake Yankees.
All summer they’d been goading us. They’d come to our home games and rattle us when we were batting. They’d ridicule Roger for joining the Milettis instead of the Yankees. They’d laugh if one of us dropped a fly ball, and hoot and holler if a pitch got by me at home plate. Ugh.
But an arrangement was made during the summer for them to play us at the end of the season. They had planned on handing us a 40 or 50 run defeat---a humiliation in front of friends and families in our village.
On game day we Milettis were tense. It was late August in Ohio and so it was hot and humid. Even so the stands were full of spectators. Both teams warmed up. A coin toss determined the Yankees would be “up” first.
The game started as we expected, with a base hit immediately by a Yankee. But Roger struck out the next two guys and I nailed the guy on first trying to steal second with a deadly accurate throw I was surprised to have made from home plate to Hunter. The Yankees were surprised, too.
Next we were “up”. As usual in our line-up I was the lead-off batter. I often got on base, not because I was a power hitter (I wasn’t) but because I could place the ball where I wanted in the infield pretty well and run fast, and also because I could do what most Little Leaguers didn’t do in those days, or now---I could “bunt”. And so I did, sending the ball trickling along half way to third base just inside fair territory. And I was safe on first. That surprised them, too.
We got another guy on base and, at the end of the inning, we were sitting with one out, me on third, Billy Crabbe on second and Roger, our clean-up batter, stepping up to the plate. Bang, he hit a bomb deep into left field that was caught for a sacrifice fly, but nevertheless, gave me time to tag third and run home to score. One to nothing---Miletti Construction. Nobody could have predicted it.
We played our hearts out that day. We had never played better as individuals or as a team, and we never played as well again. Jeff Heintz scored a run, Mark McCormick scored, Iyoob, Gumbert and I scored. Five runs. We picked off star Yankees with stunning plays that extended beyond our skill set. When the game was over we had lost 7 to 5, but not 47 to 5.
The Yankees went straight home that day. The Milettis went out for ice cream.
© Kent Jones 2016