Chapter 2: Little League International: Growing Up in Little League

I suppose that like a lot of other children born at the end of the baby boom in the early 1960s, we spent most of our waking hours—especially in the spring, summer, and fall—outdoors. I know that my parents expected me to be outside playing and not under foot indoors, at least until suppertime, throughout most of my childhood, from age 4 or so until early adolescence. I never minded it, that is just how it was. I filled my days with other neighborhood kids and siblings bike riding and playing sports such as basketball, football, and baseball, and active games of all sorts on vacant lots and in the street (kick the can, hide and seek, etc.). Such were the spoils of growing up in an era when my small, Midwestern town’s neighborhood was never thought of as anything but “safe,” and the directive by parents to “be home by dark” was meant literally, even in the summer months when the evening seemed to last interminably. It might be nearly 9 pm before I ran into the house just under the summer bedtime curfew. Pure heaven.