Different Perspectives on The Summer Game

(The names in this article have been changed to prevent embarrassment.)

Baseball has never been so vivid as it was in Little League. The tension of watching a tight World Series doesn't come close to catching for Krolick's Department Store with the wild kid who thinks he knows how to throw a curve on the mound. The exhilaration of hitting an infield single and scoring on a three base throwing error far exceeds that of hitting a clean homer in a beery softball game.

Little League in Tenafly, N.J. reflects the contradiction and poignant absurdities of middle-class suburban life as well as any other ritual, including mass high school mating rites in the back hall near they gum and family dinner table discussions on the pros and cons of marijuana.

Parents get together to give their kids a healthy upbringing, but they turn the little nippers over to a clique of competition-crazed arm chair sluggers who often run the kids ragged. The strong survive emerging from the dusty fray with championship trophies and .800 batting averages. The rest end up fighting back tears in right field.

Games provoke intense demonstrations of devotion and sympathy, particularly after missed grounders and the 26-3 losses. Victory means ice cream cones on the rich kid's dad and a long afternoon of exaggerating the heroism of one or another 4-ft. Mickey Mantle.

The most memorable confrontation of the 1972 Tenafly Intermediate League season--and perhaps of the decade took place about this time of month between one of the auto dealership teams (purple caps) and a squad representing a real estate firm in gold. Krotick's already assured of a playoff berth was playing at the other end of Sunnyside Park.

Gold, which started the younger brother of a certain Krolick's catcher at second base trailed by one going into the bottom of the seventh and final inning. The winners would move on to post-season play; the losers would pack for summer camp. The second baseman fouled off at least 10 pitches, then walked on a fastball over the umpire's head.

Stealing two bases while the next two batters struck out, the second baseman stood at third as big Donald Thompson approached the plate. The victim of a typical fourth grade pituituary gland malfunction. Thompson already toward above his toammares and must have weighed more than the the gold infield and their for ten speeds put together.

He was never much of a student and won few friends for his play ground manners. But a left book like Thompson's got respect especially since he had a big brother in a leather jacket to back it up.

Guarding the hot corner for purple was a bony runt of a Wharton School student-to-be named Doug Silverstein. Some field no-hit plenty-talk Silverstein embodied all that was good and bad about Little League: unending enthusiasm tarnished by a willingness to steal the opposing team's equipment bag at the coach's behest. He is getting "A's" at business school.

As was often the case, an overly protective and pushy father was behind the youngster's fanaticism. Papa Silverstein wanted a big hunk of a son, and that's wanted a big hunk of a son, and that's what he saw in the size-three cleats inhabited by skinny Doug.

Thompson extended the count to 3-2. the gold runner inched toward a tied score. the stretch the pitch...CRACK! Thompson connected on one of his famous line drives sending the runner home and the center fielder scurrying after the ball.

As the bulky youngster rounded second the outfielder straightened up and heaved the ball into the jungle gym beyond third base. There would clearly be no play but Thompson interpreted his coach's agitation to mean that drastic action was necessary. He lowered his shoulder and headed directly for Silverstein, who was jumping up and down, his back to the action screaming for the throw from a non-existent back-up man.

The impact launched Silverstein into the second row of the portable grandstand. Thompson turned the corner to ward victory. He never made it.

Before the collision even took place. Papa Silverstein was out of his seat and barrelling down the bleachers. He wasn't going to sit by quietly while his son had his insides rearranged by a hurtling mass of overactive hormones.

Silverstien Senior, no lightweight himself, reached the third base foul line at about the same time Donald Thompson hit the bag and just as his older brother in the leather jacket noticed what was going on from the other grandstand. The concerned parent grabbed the hefty youngster ignoring his own prostrate offspring; and began shaking the kid furiously by the shoulders, shouting something about dirty tactics and violence.

The benches and the grandstands cleared, but before anyone else could reach the seen of the assault Thompson the elder streaked across the field and hit Silverstein with a flying cross-body block. While those two struggle in the dirt other fights broke out here and there and fans and players from the Krolick's game hustled from the other end of the park to add to the confusion.

Later after these events were retold innumerable times, there were rumors that someone had pulled a knife on someone else and that a third person's mother had been punched in the chops by an over eager tyke she had tried to restrain. The police had eventually arrived and cleared the field carting away Silverstein and Thompson who gave each other quite a bruising before they were torn apart.

The league officials were understandably outraged by what had happened. Several open meetings were called to discuss parent interference and the future of Little League in a violent society.

No playoffs were held that year, and Krolick's was denied the opportunity to take home a well-deserved championship crown.

There was even some talk of restructuring the league, making the teams more informal to reduce competition. Do away with uniforms and playoffs and end-of-season honors ceremonies, some demanded.

People argued that this one embarrassing incident reflected a larger pattern of outside interference which was ruining the game for the players.

Luckily, none of this talk distracted the players themselves. By the time the Sunnyside Park grass turned green the next March, the recess period conversation at Stillman Elementary School turned, as usual, to baseball. An not just to the game itself, but to the exciting prospect of new uniforms and a tight pennant race. No first fight no matter how ugly was going to kill Little League in Tenafly. The older folks could worry now and yell and scream later; no one pounding the base paths at Sunnyside had time to worry about such distractions.

Silverstein and Thompston were back in action though the diminutive third baseman reportedly played left field when gold faced purple that season. Krolick's won the Intermediate League title for the second year in a rew, accomplishing, the feat without a certain catcher, who had moved up to the Major League. Where he batted somewhere around 300 and even threw out a few runners trying to steal second base.