Palermo vs. Biggs All Stars

I wrote this story about the year I made it to All Stars. 

 

It was the thick smoky summer of 2009. The young Palermo and Biggs All Star girls practiced catch before what was to be an important game. It didn’t matter that California was having a problem with fires during the summer dry spell, and that the air was full of smoke: the teenaged girls were adamant about playing through the game. The die-hard sports parents and relatives lined the bleachers, equipped with score pads and folding chairs. You could feel the determination of the Little League teams when they filed out of the dugouts to stand along the baselines, hands over hearts to hear the national anthem.

 All at once the players were on the field: the pitcher throwing a few practice pitches, the overzealous first baseman shouting out reminders to her teammates. The smoke was obviously visible in the air, although not quite extreme enough to make a game postponement mandatory. Biggs was the home team, so the Palermo girls started off at bat. There was an out, a walk, and then things started to become heavy.

The umpire was making calls on close pitches and base outs, and consistently in favor of the Biggs team. A Palermo scorekeeper began to bother the umpire about the way he was keeping score, until finally the umpire warned: “One more time and I’ll throw you out!” another close call was made, one that the scorekeeper found so ludicrous that she could not keep quiet, and was thrown out of the game.

The coach took over scorekeeping for the Palermo team, while the newly excited crowd sat forward in their seats, spitting sunflower seeds enthusiastically and calling out encouragement to their favorite team. Both teams resumed playing, the Palermo team taking the field in their crisp new uniforms, with newly sewn on All Star patches, and the Biggs team stepping into the batter’s box. Two innings later, the Palermo coach was fit to be tied due to the umpire’s calls. When the coach began to attempt to speak to the umpire about his calls, the umpire confined the coach to his team’s dugout, forbidding any further comment from the man or his team.

 The coach was not content to stay within his dugout peacefully however, and in between innings he stomped out onto the field to confront the umpire. The umpire’s immediate response was to throw the coach out of the game. Now the crowd was really excited, the umpire had thrown TWO of Palermo’s officials out of the game! There was a great deal of calamity as the team’s manager became scorekeeper while the coach stormed off the field, throwing his hat off angrily.

As the sun beat down on the players, the crowd really had their eye on the umpire, who began to call less and less miraculous base outs and unbelievable strikes. By the end of the game the Palermo team had made a comeback in the game, winning the Biggs team by a thin margin. It was this ability to come back from a loss, and their habit of doing so, that was to later earn them the nickname among their umpires “the comeback team.”