HARLEM KINGS
15 years ago, 14 kids with flat brims and loads of swagger electrified the Little League World Series, and they didn’t even win ... until now
LIBAY BARKLEY strikes a match to light a Newport cigarette as day burns into night on Havemeyer Ave. in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx. He takes a drag, and drinks in the scene around him. There are shards of glass on the sidewalk; his black Dodge Grand Caravan’s windshield is cracked. It is parked on the street, the front tire locked by a yellow police boot. Barkley is babysitting his girlfriend’s five children, pushing the youngest, Dynasty, in a stroller to a park with slides and swings on Lafayette Ave. He traces his path from leading Harlem to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. 15 years ago to being selected in the 50th round of the Major League Baseball draft to Wiley College in Texas and back to this block. At 27, he is between jobs, holding hands with the kids as they cross the street. He eyes men playing softball on the field near dusk. The MLB logo is inked into his left wrist. “I used to break in my new bats out here,” he says. Children scream; men shout. Barkley is bearded and full-bodied at 6-foot-4. He recalls being a first baseman, righty pitcher and “baby celebrity” during the Little League run when he was all of 12. There were air-conditioned buses and dorm bathrooms shared with members of the Guam team. Home runs, stolen bases and crow hops lifted the Harlem all stars from Marcus Garvey Park to the international stage. There was Gunner and Domo, Sosa and P.J., JRock and Jeter. Twin brothers — Jorge and Javier Lopez — played alongside a cousin, Jeremy. There were 14 boys on the roster, seven African Americans and seven Latinos. They wore fitted hats with flat brims and played with a flamboyant bounce. Fernando Frias pointed to center field with his metal bat before blasting a ball off the wall there; Andy Diaz danced down the third-base line to score. They advanced out of the city, then the state and regional, and into purgatory as their addresses and ages were investigated. It was a year after a Bronx team was found to have fielded a Dominican import who was two years too old named Danny Almonte. Almonte’s team forfeited, but Harlem was cleared. The uptown products finished third in the U.S. and sixth overall. They met Willie Mays in Washington, D.C., had a pizza party with President Bill Clinton at his office on 125th St. and took the field with the Yankees at the Stadium on River Ave.
“You really felt like you had
diplomatic immunity wherever the baseball was going on,” Barkley says. “Nobody could say anything to you. I thought we were going to be put in Black History Month for that. No one had heard of Harlem Little League.”
Several are far afield now, scattered across the country after reaching a variety of heights in and out of the game. Of the 14 players, 11 went to college and 9 graduated with a degree. Jeremy Lopez, the pitcher and shortstop, lives in Baton Rouge, La., working as a sales representative with Sherwin Williams after playing at Southern University. Julian McWilliams, the coach’s son and a second baseman, is a sportswriter in South Carolina following a career that included a stint with the Las Vegas Train Robbers in the Pecos League. Spencer White, known as “Bo,” played four years at cornerback for Ithaca College and serves as an auditor for BDO USA in Stamford, Conn. P.J. Kidd, one of the 11-year-olds then, works with insurance claims outside Philadelphia. Frias, also a 50th-round pick in the MLB draft, works for State Farm in the city. Players keep hats, shirts and trophies as mementoes from the memorable summer, a month-long mettle test that concluded with a homer over Frias’ head in right field.
“They didn’t really have to coach us,” Barkley says. “They just had to give us the lineup and tell us where to go.”
Barkley issues orders today. He rallies the children he is watching into a group before twilight. They need to be back so he can figure a way to piece together money necessary to have the boot removed from the mini-van so that his girlfriend can get to work in Mamaroneck the next day. He is on speakerphone with Jeremy Lopez as he pushes the baby stroller down the block. They have known each other since they were three years old. Lopez remembers playing in a schoolyard on 123rd St. with Barkley and his grandfather, Theodore Chick. They learned how to field and bat from the elder. Four years ago, Barkley says Chick committed suicide by hanging himself in his Castle Hill apartment. Barkley discovered his body and dialed 911. Chick had built him a batting cage, and attended every game that Barkley played in as a youth and in high school. Barkley picked up the smoking habit after the death.
“I’ve got to keep myself flexible to keep money in my pocket,” he says. “I think we were more or less great at our age, but everything is a struggle. I had to get older to learn that. I wish sometimes I could go back and change some of the situations. I just want to help somebody the way others helped me when I was young.”
Summer clearance signs line the front windows of boutiques on Spring St. in SoHo. Chanel, Burberry, Etro and Solstice compete for customers; cards are swiped. Sales offer as much as 60 percent off tag prices. There is a black velvet rope next to the stairs at the Adidas Originals shop and a chain-link fence by exposed brick. Dominique Brown-Jiles, a former outfielder for the Harlem team, is a sales associate on the floor. He kneels down to bring a size-seven, three-striped sneaker for a female customer’s left foot. He is dressed in a tie-dye shirt and gray sweats. He dons a black Diamondbacks fitted hat. The brim is flat. He smiles. It is forever en vogue.
“Still got it,” Brown-Jiles says as the customer heads to pay. “It’s still going.”
Jeremy Lopez is credited as the trendsetter of the troupe. Lopez spent his summers across from Rucker Park on 155th St. then and matched his sneaker colors to his hats and jerseys. He wore his mesh team hat — size 6 7/8 — wide enough to fit four fingers in between the hair and lining. Players embraced baggy pants rolled up to their knees with stirrups showing, but the flat brim was Harlem chic for a team that typically wore snap-back hats. The caps went well with Andy Diaz waving “bye, bye” to the batted ball on towering home runs. He rounded the bases, shouting “Wooooooooo,” a la wrestler Ric Flair, when he sped by second, and he finished each home run trot with a duck walk to home from third base. Heads turned; eyes rolled.
“It was all to show where we was from, what we had to go through to get there,” Brown-Jiles says. “It was a whole bunch of Spanish and African-American kids killing the competition.”
No Harlem player carried more confidence than Frias when facing a fastball. Down 4-0 against Bethlehem, Pa. at the Mid-Atlantic Regionals in Bristol, Conn., Barkley stroked a two-run homer to center field in the top of the fourth to make up for a poor pitching outing. Later in the same frame, Frias strode to the plate, and pointed to center in the same manner as Babe Ruth’s called shot. Frias backed up the brashness, smashing a homer over the head of Bethlehem’s center fielder. It bounced off the fence, scoring two runners and tying the game. Critics charged them with showboating and disrespectful displays. Players countered that it wasn’t shenanigans. To them, it was inner-city charisma. They performed with basketball personalities on a baseball diamond, emotional in an otherwise emotionless game.
Harmony is a beat that remains in their heads. The Clipse, a rap group from Virginia Beach, provided the soundtrack for the summer. “Grindin’” was the song that players recited about going “from ghetto to ghetto, to backyard to yard.” It featured Pharrell Williams: And I just wanna let y’all know The world is about to feel Something That they’ve never felt before Pulses quickened as the stakes were
raised. Many were away from home for the first time, particularly for an extended period. The team traveled for a month straight, from Albany to Bristol to Williamsport, overwhelming opponents with power and flair. Cocksure for the cameras, some proved to be homesick in private.
“I cried after Bristol, Conn. because they told us we weren’t going to be able to go home,” Brown-Jiles says. “They told us we were going straight to Williamsport. I was like. ‘Oh my goodness.’ I cried like a baby.”
He is 27, the father of Makayla, a five-year-old tee-ball player in the Harlem Little League. He lived in a 20-story building at the corner of 134th Street and Eighth Ave. and manned the outfield for manager Morris McWilliams, who lived nearby. Brown-Jiles holds up his defensive effort on a fly ball in the sectional championship game as his finest effort for the team. The ball was hit over his head to right, but he tracked it down, reached up, recorded the out, spun and threw the ball back into second base to cutoff man Julian McWilliams in time to double off a baserunner.
“If it had gotten over my head it would have been over,” Brown-Jiles says.
Black snap-back hats go for $26 at the Adidas store in SoHo this summer. He notes that current styles uptown skew tighter and smaller now. He notices cleaner streets and nicer buildings in the neighborhoods. People smile more often, and he considers it all to be more “pleasant.” He holds an associate’s degree in criminal justice and corrections from Monroe College in the Bronx, and takes the A train back home to Harlem from West Fourth Street each night after work. He recently did a laundry load that included the blue T-shirts the team wore beneath red button-down jerseys, and still has his glove. He thinks about handing down some of his past equipment to his daughter, especially his bats. He is a coach on her Harlem team.
“Might let her use some outdated technology,” he says.
There is a diamond at the southwest corner of Marcus Garvey Park on 120th St. that is protected by padlocks. Chain-link fences stand 16 feet high in right and 12 feet the rest of the way. Wooden benches are in the dugouts. A bullpen mound and plate are laid out down the right-field line. Three bases and home are on the dirt, but there are no lines. A rake rests next to a shed with a rusty wheelbarrow and chalk marker for the basepaths. Bleachers offer seating by the home dugout. A scoreboard tracks ball and strikes. It is labeled William Shea Friendship Ballfield, named for the lawyer and benefactor. One banner is fastened to the backstop. It greets all pitchers: MID-ATLANTIC CHAMPIONS HARLEM LITTLE LEAGUE NEW YORK, NEW YORK No date is attached. None is necessary. The 2002 team knows it is unique in its reminiscing. They remain the only Harlem team to have reached the Little League World Series. Julian McWilliams grew up one mile north of the ballpark, and recalls the path to get there, including a prior field that he played on when he was at a younger level. It was located at the corner of 121st St. and Eighth Ave.
“They called it ‘Field of Dreams’ but it was really the ‘Field of Nightmares’,” he says. “Drug vials and broken glass were on it.”
Harlem Little League was in its 14th campaign when the all stars made their run. In the regular season, they played for the M.D.A. Mashers, Lacy’s Legacy, Fairway’s Finest, Old Navy Stars and The Associates, as in the supermarkets. Frias was known to have hit a ball to left field that cleared the fence and settled by the stone steps to the street. Aware of all the potential, Morris McWilliams handpicked his constellation. He had just started a new job that March, and mapped out a path to Williamsport that he shared with his team after they won the section. He requested additional time off from work, and his boss granted it. McWilliams outlined how many innings would be necessary for each pitcher to put forth. He did not know the all-out dives or intentional walks that would line the path, nor did he know that his son would be on third base in the seventh inning of the Mid-Atlantic Regional championship game against Bethlehem, Pa. A low curveball skipped behind the catcher with two outs and the bases loaded, and Julian dashed home. He scored to win, 5-4. Fans chanted, “Let’s go, Har-lem! Let’s go Har-lem!” and shook cowbells.
Williamsport awaited. In the interim, an investigation was conducted by Little League officials. A newspaper report alleged that three of the players, including Barkley, lived outside Harlem Little League’s geographic boundaries. McWilliams refers to it as “a nightmare,” but he guarded the kids from hearing about it. Some Harlemites noticed that other teams were getting their pictures taken, but they weren’t. They grew curious. Headlines likened the questions to those about Almonte’s age with Rolando Paulino’s team the previous August. Almonte’s manager and father were found to be at fault regarding the usage of the Dominican import who blazed fastballs for strikes in recordsetting fashion. McWilliams maintained that his team was legit. Little League officials chided the Harlem organizers for faulty paperwork, but cleared the boys in time. Players remained unconcerned. Their concern was mainly finding new ways to sneak out after a 10 p.m. curfew.
“We’d try to get lost,” Jeremy Lopez says.
Frias made known one reason to stay awake. The first player to fall asleep often wound up with toothpaste on his face. That carried over from Bristol, where the entire team’s cleats went missing after another night game. They were re-fitted and afforded replacements, and found their footing in the batter’s boxes in Pennsylvania. They feasted on fastballs. In the opening game, Jeremy Lopez, weighing in at 105 pounds, went three for four in his at bats, two of the three hits going for homers, including one grand slam. In all, he collected five RBI in a 9-3 win with Mayor Bloomberg in the stands. Javier Lopez struck out 10 and added a homer.
“If the twins hit it at you, you wanted to duck,” P.J. Kidd says. “If they threw the ball, it hurt your hand. Manchilds. They were 12 but had the definition of a teen, supertalented.”
Harlem tantalized a crowd of 12,300 at Lamade Stadium in its second game. The opponent was Aptos, Calif., the west’s representative. Javier Lopez pitched once more and Barkley roped a solo homer when Harlem trailed 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth. Diaz added a two-run shot. Jeremy Lopez followed that with a two-run dinger of his own the next inning. Harlem clinched a berth in the national semifinal.
Mathematically assured of moving on, McWilliams rolled out a lineup with his 11-year-olds for the last game of pool play. It was a loss. Harlem’s hitters struck out 14 times and failed to cross the plate for a run. Kentucky’s team won, but Harlem still advanced to play Worcester, Mass. in the national semifinal. Barkley started the game on the mound, struck out three in two innings of work and complained of a sore arm. He was replaced by Jeremy Lopez, and the city kids drew first blood with two runs off three infield hits in the top of the third. Worcester, representing New England, leveled the score in the bottom of the inning off a walk, a single and an error. Inning after inning, the game remained tied until Ryan Griffin, batting fifth, knocked a three-run homer over Frias’ head in right-center field. Frias watched it go, and threw his hat at the wall in disappointment. Worcester won, 5-2, with the walkoff homer. McWilliams anticipated that it was going to be a “tissue day.” Harlem was humble. It was the first homer that Griffin had ever hit in a game.
“I still think Fernando should have had that ball,” Barkley says.
There are bouts of second-guessing, but most moved on long ago. Nostalgia is being billed on signage outside the Marcus Garvey Park recreation center that stands next to the field. It calls for a night of jazz and swing at the Richard Rodgers amphitheater. The Harlem Renaissance Orchestra is to play, and there are more plans to come. McWilliams notes that a clubhouse is in the works. Construction commenced before Hurricane Sandy blew through New York. Progress has been delayed, but blueprints call for memorabilia from the 2002 team to be hung up on walls, catcher’s equipment and all. McWilliams, now 23 years into his tenure with the league, reflects on the early days of seeing Frias and Barkley excelling as seven year olds. Barkley eyes only one thing when he walks or drives by the field.
“There will never be a reason to take that banner down,” he says.
Lucy Lopez, mother of Jeremy, lives in a fifth-floor apartment of a brick building on Faile St. in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. It is up the block from Bruckner Blvd., and stands across from the P.S. 75 schoolyard. Razor wire lines the top of a fence that leads to her front door. Inside, framed photos of family members fill one wall. Jeremy’s career is outlined on the other. He kneels with a bat in his hands for a posed shot and winds up to pitch in another. The pinnacle of his career is featured in a wide black frame above the flatscreen television. Jeremy, hat on head, stands next to Derek Jeter, in pinstripes, at shortstop in Yankee Stadium.
“He used to play for two or three teams at a time,” says Kathy Lopez, his older sister. “He’d come home, sleep, change, shower, go to the next team.”
There is a group photograph of the Harlem all-stars. They are all stoic, staring at the camera with red caps on and blue brims flat. Mid-Atlantic is stitched across their chests. Barkley is in the middle. His face is the most familiar to the Lopez family of Apt. 5K. Barkley lived down the hall in 5G; the boys used to yell for each other through the windows, “Little boy! Little boy! Want to come out and play?”
They are linked together in Little League lore. Lucy Lopez and her daughter talk about boarding coach buses in Harlem to see the team play in Bristol and Williamsport. Family members crowded into the apartment and sat on the couches to watch when home. News 12 assigned a satellite television truck to park outside the building. Bodega owners posted newspaper photos of the boys in the windows. Kathy remembers locals in the streets whispering, “That’s Jeter’s sister!” Jeremy was dubbed “Jeter” in the neighborhood because he played shortstop. He wound up playing at Connors State College in Warner, Okla. before transferring to Southern University. There is a metal rod in his right leg from a non-baseball injury.
“That was a heartbreak,” Kathy says. “He thought he was going to make it. We all thought he was going to make it.”
Barkley returned to the Bronx a year ago. He needs a few more credits for his college degree, and is looking for steady employment after holding a few jobs, including as a driver. Lucy Lopez worries about bullets flying on summer nights.
“They’re not playing anymore, but they’re doing well,” Lucy says. “If you stay in this neighborhood, whoa, the worst.”
Jeremy returns home about twice a year from Louisiana. The last time that he came up, he left with an album of team newspaper clippings that Kathy, now a social worker, had assembled in 2002. Trophies are kept in the hallway. A copy of the Jeter photo, affixed to another wall by tape and torn in the upper right corner, welcomes all who enter. Below it, her son’s red hat with the flat blue brim rests on a gilded trophy next to a Puerto Rican flag.
“My daughter is always telling me this is like a museum,” Lucy says. “So many pictures. I like the memories.”
Morris McWilliams still keeps his brownstone by St. Nicholas Park on Edgecombe Ave. He is 65 now. His wife, Adrienne, planned a surprise birthday party for him last November. He was led to believe that a few church friends would come by, but, one by one, players from the 2002 team also trekked up the steps. His son, Julian, was there, as were Barkley, Jorge Lopez, Frias, White and Kidd. Brown-Jiles’ parents came. It was a reunion of the raucous group. McWilliams and his son recall late nights gathered on the stoop following tournament losses in previous summers. Mention the brackets and memories are brought back for the father-son battery.
“All we wanted to do was win a district title,” Julian McWilliams says. “That was probably the happiest moment. All else was icing on the cake.”
One win led to another. They claimed 14 of 16 games en route to Williamsport. Their efforts still echo. Morris McWilliams always shouted a player’s name when balls were hit to his position. He grabbed onto the dugout fence, shaking it and shouting, “Jiminy Christmas!” when on-field plays stirred him. He held in most of his emotions until the bus ride back to New York following the semifinal defeat. The team had stayed two additional days in Williamsport, participating in a home run derby and playing a friendly game against a Venezuelan team. McWilliams knew that a police escort awaited the team once it crossed the George Washington Bridge. They were to be led down Broadway to Harlem with flashing lights. McWilliams commenced a speech about how much it all meant to him.
“I couldn’t finish,” he says. “It all came out.”
Tears dried; Morris returned to coach again the next season. He dropped down to tee-ball for simpler times, happy to step back. His son returned to Williamsport in 2014 when Mo’ne Davis, a female pitcher, developed into an international star. Julian had finished his college career at Temple in Philadelphia, and he volunteered with the Taney Dragons from South Philly. Like Harlem, Taney fell in the U.S. semifinal. Julian championed more inner city kids seeking out a baseball life, even after he went through rotator cuff surgery and saw his career end. “Those were my kids,” he says. There are photographs of peers that stay with him in South Carolina. He writes about local sports teams these days, offering advice to players who might need it regarding recruiting. Through Chick’s death and life’s twists, the players remain in touch by text and social media. They tune into the Little League World Series on ESPN. Highlight reels of their hits run on endless loops in their heads.
“They’re all my brothers,” Julian says. “We’re a family.”
Brown-Jiles sees Morris McWilliams by the field when he coaches. Volunteers show up early on weekends to rake and ready the playing surface for the kids. The elder McWilliams keeps the standards, wears his Mid-Atlantic champions T-shirt and regales newcomers to the league about that summer run.
“I tell the others they need to get their behinds back out here, too,” Brown-Jiles says.