Little League changes, but memories stay constant
Post Oak in tournament that’s evolved since a Houston team first won in 1950
Bill Martin’s first trip to Williamsport, Pa., was by train along with his 1950 Houston Little League teammates, who returned home three games later as champions of the fourth annual Little League World Series — Houston’s first preteen hardball sensations.
These days, Martin and his wife, Freda, travel to small-town Pennsylvania by car, content to enjoy the sights along the way and to watch from the stands as a new generation of athletes makes memories that they, too, can cherish for a halfcentury and beyond.
“These boys,” Martin said this week as he and his wife drove through the Virginia countryside, “are fixing to get into something they’re going to remember for the rest of their lives.”
“These boys” are the Post Oak Little League allstars, who open the tournament on Thursday against a team from Rhode Island. Post Oak will attempt to join the 1995 Spring and 2000 Bellaire teams as the best in the U.S. and the 1950 Houston and 1966 Westbury teams as Houston-area Little League champions.
They have arrived at a destination considerably different yet much the same as the one that Martin and his teammates enjoyed in 1950.
Martin and his teammates recall being greeted on a scale befitting Major League Baseball World Series participants at the original Little League field, this year’s tournament could draw as many as 450,000 fans to the two modern-day stadiums located in nearby South Williamsport.
Martin’s 1950 heroics were described on radio by Ted Husing, the pioneering Hall of Fame sportscaster. This year’s tournament will unfold on ESPN and ABC, which has 250 workers on the ground and 24 cameras between the two stadiums.
The 1950 champions competed in only the second year of Little League in Houston, which began in 1949 with eight teams and expanded to 16 in 1950. Greater Houston today has 16 Little League organizations, and Little League Baseball Inc.’s 2016 tax form listed $33 million in gross receipts for the year and net assets of $82 million toward its stated goal of “establish(ing) the value of teamwork, sportsmanship and fair play.”
Matt Sandulli, ESPN’s senior coordinator producer for Little League, borrows a phrase from former ESPN colleague and current Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona in describing the South Williamsport scene.
“Terry said it was where the county fair meets baseball,” Sandulli said. “And that is the atmosphere we try to capture for those watching at home.”
ESPN’s presence in South Williamsport reflects the growth of Little League. ABC began televising the championship game in the early 1960s — Westbury’s 1966 championship win was the first to be telecast in color — and ESPN has expanded its coverage in recent years to include regional championships and the entire 32game, 11-day baseball World Series.
This year, having incorporated its new ESPN+ streaming service, ESPN plans to show 231 Little League baseball and softball games in different age group divisions. ESPN in 2015 signed an eight-year contract extension that doubled its rights fees to Little League to about $7.5 million a year or $60 million for the length of the contract.
Little League uses a portion of its media and sponsorship money to fund 125 background checks for each local league and pays expenses for all 16 teams, including travel costs, while at the World Series.
Rally around kids
Sandulli said ESPN uses much of the same technology for Little League games that it uses for MLB games, one notable exception being the absence of the “K-zone” pitch framer. “We are talking, after all, about volunteer umpires,” he said.
Telecast crews also are schooled on keeping things in
perspective.
“These are 12-year-old young men playing baseball, and it is not our place to be as critical as we would be otherwise,” he said. “I tell our analysts to remember that they’re coaching while they’re on camera. Come across as a coach. These are kids playing baseball. It’s family entertainment.”
ESPN anchor Karl Ravech, who had two sons who played Little League ball, said 11- and 12-yearolds “can be goofy, and they can exceed expectations. They can be outstanding, and they can be human. You keep things in perspective.”
They are, however, also a valuable television property, sometimes in a way that exceeds even their major league brethren.
“Our (Little League) demographics range from grandmother to granddaughter and grandson,” Ravech said. “People rally around these personalities and kids in a way you don’t get talking about Major League Baseball. It’s
as if people who are turned off by the major leagues turn on Little League and say, ‘This is why I love baseball.’
“There’s always stress, but if something goes wrong, the kids wear it on their sleeves for 30 seconds, and then it’s all bubble gum and swimming pools and pizza.”
But it’s also competition. Martin, 80, came to Williamsport as a 12-year-old right-hander with a full complement of pitches — a cut fastball, a three-quarters curve ball and a slider — and a disposition to challenge anyone who stepped into the batter’s box.
On Aug. 24, 1950, he pitched the third no-hitter in Little League World Series history, a 3-0 six-inning win over a team from Westerly, R.I.
“You try and think back about what I was thinking that day,” Martin said. “I wasn’t thinking about anything other than striking out every one of those kids who came up there.
“We didn’t worry about pitchWhile ing on the outside corner. It was a ‘me against you’ kind of thing.”
Martin went on to pitch at Davis High School and also played baseball at the University of Houston before beginning a career in structural engineering.
Another teammate, outfielder “Sandy” Sanderson, went on to play at Lamar High School and at TCU before leaving Fort Worth a year before graduation to enter medical school at the University of Texas. As Dr. Terry Sanderson, he practiced as a general surgeon and surgical oncologist for nearly a half-century before retiring in April.
Back to Pennsylvania
One of Sanderson’s fondest memories as a 12-year-old outfielder was signing autographs for a group that consisted mostly, he said, of 12-year-old girls.
“It was major league ball in that small town,” he said.
The Houston team was managed by Jeff Cross, a former minor league shortstop with the Houston Buffs who played parts of four big league seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs.
Other than a reunion in 2000, the championship team of 1950 hasn’t stayed in touch for the most part. A few, however, have made individual trips back to Williamsport. Bill and Freda Martin began making annual excursions in 2013, but Freda doesn’t limit her interest to the playoffs.
Last year, she said, she watched 127 Little League games plus Astros contests.
“She’s into it more than I am,” Bill Martin said.
And now, they’re back in Pennsylvania to watch another Houston team try to win games and build memories.
“People treated us so well. It was like being in the World Series,” Martin said. “And they do the same thing now for these kids.”