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Chapter Four: The Park

One of the things that outsiders do not understand about youth baseball is that there are several different types of youth baseball leagues.

The most famous, of course, is called Little League. There’s a Cal Ripken League. We’ve always played in The Dizzy Dean league, named after the man who invented charcoal.

Each of these leagues have there different rules and regs. For example, in Little League, there is no leading off the base or stealing. The runners must keep a foot on the bag at all times. Respectively, I think that is really Gay.

The park you take your kid to will belong to one those leagues and will follow the leagues guides as your kids grows. And it will be run by an “association”.

“The Association” is the group of parents whose kids play at the park you are at. You will be ask to vote on members of the board. It is very important that you vote for these members. You may get lucky like we did one time and have the head of the concession stands kid on our team. We got the choice date to do work the concession stand: early morning on the first day!

The members of the board determine which league your park will play at and which rules they will follow. At the first park we were at, kids start in T-Ball. There is where you place the ball at the top of a T and see if your kid can hit it. At the park we went to a year later, they did coach pitch at 5 years old and then if the kid couldn’t hit after five tries, then the T comes out.

Some parks keep score for T-ball, some don’t. Some make you play with the same group of kids through a particular league. In Mustangs, you will play with the same group of kids and then change in Pony. Or the other way around. I never have been able to remember if it is Pony before Mustangs or Mustangs before Pony. All I know neither is as Gay as Little League.

Here in Cobb County, Georgia, the county has built the baseball parks and basically does one thing: mow the grass once in June. The county gives the actual day to day aspects of running a park to the Association.

In other words, if you don’t like your little Tater’s coach, you don’t go to a county commission meeting to complain about Coach Billy Bob. No, you go to the board and complain about Coach Billy Bob, who just happens to sit on the board.


It costs money to run a baseball park and that is where you as parents come in. Fund raising.

I know things cost money, but it seems when you are a parent you are given a zillion things to have your kid “sell” in order to raise money. Even in public schools, your tax dollars are not enough. No, they need your Sallie Foster wrapping paper money too. That means all you parents have to bring something to work to sell to your co-workers.*

Some parks give the parents a box of candy and tell them to sell it. Which to me, isn’t that bad of an idea. It is real easy to sell food at work. You could bring a loaf of bread and sell it slice by slice at the places I’ve worked.

Other items, like wrapping paper and discount cards are a little more difficult. My son’s highschool football team sold discount cards to restaurants one year. You know, Buy one whopper, get the other whopper free.....you give it to the kid behind the counter and he has to stop and run back and ask his manager about it. Well, this particular year had a discount from “Hooters” on it. I sold out of the cards.

Fortunately though, our park didn’t do that type of fund raising. It did it all through the concession stand and sponsorship of the team. The idea was to get a business, like Goodyear or Oui,Stickem and Howe, Attorneys at Law to pony up $200 bucks to sponsor a team and in return get advertising in the form of the company’s name on the back of the jersey. Everyone knows an eight year old boy has approxmiatley three hundred t-shirts but will wear only two and hopefully that one will be his baseball shirt when he was on the team your business sponsored.

Over the years, I began to refer to the teams by the sponsor’s names, like the Vaughn Homes Astros and the Keller Interiors Braves. (It is just a coincidence that these two sponsors can build a custom home and create an, um interior for people that mention the business in the humor book.)

My favorite sponsor was a team we never got to play for: Smith’s Foods D/B/A Blimpies.
That was actually on the back of the baseball jersey. On most of the kids, it went straight from shoulder to a sharp curve going down the back.

Of course, the biggest fund raiser of all at a park is the concession stand.

As most people now know, proper hydration is a important part of a child’s life. We are not quite sure what would happen if, by chance, a child sweats without having the proper follow through of grape Gatorade leaving the always popular, grape mustache on a kid’s face. The child would probably feel….thirsty.**

The concession stand not only sells drinks, it also sells gum, popcorn, soft drinks, coffee, candy, French fries, hamburgers (if you are lucky due to health laws), hot dogs, chicken fingers, salads, lottery tickets, pornographic magazines featuring Hot Moms Of The Park, et.al. Anything to help the park raise money. But never, ever, get behind a kid when they are ordering at the concession stand unless you happen to have four hours to kill.

If you give a six year old a dollar and tell them to get what they want they will walk up to the concession stand and slap the dollar on the counter and ask, “What can I get for a dollar”? (“Well, you can get a popcorn, a candy bar or you can get this photo of Mrs Hotski or a lottery ticket.”)


*At the insurance company I worked at, a personel weasel said in a staff meeting that it was against “Federal Law” (this person’s actual words, not mean humor-man funny words) to sell something at work. I got into a heated exchange of words, mentioning, for starters, that car salesman must be breaking the law more than we thought.


**This has nothing to do with Gatorade, but the funniest, yet oddest response I ever heard to a kid asking for a Powerade was this, and this is, I swear, verbatim. Kid: “Daddy, can I get a Powerade?” Daddy: “I’ll power your ade.” I think this meant no.