Head Down

‘Double-play ball!’ Waterman shouts, and hits one to Matt Ki

The throws are executed flawlessly. Mike Pelkey, Bangor West’s number two pitcher, is right where he’s supposed to be, covering first. It’s a move he doesn’t always remember to make, but this time he does. He grins and trots back to the mound as Neil Waterman gets ready to hit the next combination.

‘This is the best Little League All-Star team I’ve seen in years,’ Dave Mansfield says some days after Bangor West’s trouncing of Millinocket. He dumps a load of sunflower seeds into his mouth and begins to chew them. He spits hulls casually as he talks. ‘I don’t think they can be beaten – at least not in this division.’

He pauses and watches as Mike Arnold breaks toward the plate from first, grabs a practice bunt, and whirls toward the bag. He cocks his arm back – then holds the ball. Mike Pelkey is still on the mound; this time he has forgotten that it is his job to cover, and the bag is undefended. He flashes Dave a quick guilty glance. Then he breaks into a su

Mike nods and trots over – better late than never.

‘Brewer,’ Dave says, and shakes his head. ‘Brewer at their field. That’ll be tough. Brewer’s always tough.’

Bangor West does not trounce Brewer, but they win their first ‘road game’ without any real strain. Matt Ki

Absolutely no exceptions. Sixty per cent of batters walked score in Little League games.’ Not in this game: two of the batters Ki

After the game is safely in the bag, Matt Ki

‘Wait until you see Hampden,’ Dave says dryly. ‘They all hit.’

When the Hampden squad shows up at Bangor West’s field, behind the Coke plant, on July 17th, they quickly prove Dave right. Mike Pelkey has pretty good stuff and better control than he had against Millinocket, but he isn’t much of a mystery to the Hampden boys. Mike Tardif, a compact kid with an amazingly fast bat, rips Pelkey’s third pitch over the left-field fence, two hundred feet away, for a home run in the first i

In the third, however, Bangor West breaks loose. Hampden’s pitching is good, Hampden’s hitting is awesome, but Hampden’s fielding, particularly infielding, leaves something to be desired. Bangor West puts three hits together with five errors and two walks to score seven runs. This is how Little League is most often played, and seven runs should be enough, but they aren’t; the opposition chips stubbornly away, getting two in its half of the third and two more in the fifth. When Hampden comes up in the bottom of the sixth, it is trailing only by three, 10-7. Kyle King, a twelve-year-old who started for Hampden this evening and then went to catcher in the fifth, leads off the bottom of the sixth with a double. Then Mike Pelkey strikes out Mike Tardif. Mike Wentworth, the new Hampden pitcher, singles to deep short. King and Wentworth advance on a passed ball, but are forced to hold when Jeff Carson grounds back to the pitcher. This brings up Josh Jamieson, one of five Hampden home-run threats, with two on and two out.

He represents the tying run.

Mike, although clearly tired, finds a little extra and strikes him out on a one-two pitch. The game is over.

The kids line up and give each other the custom-ordained high fives, but it’s clear that Mike isn’t the only kid who is simply exhausted after the match; with their slumped shoulders and lowered heads, they all look like losers. Bangor West is now 3-0 in divisional play, but the win is a fluke, the kind of game that makes Little League such a nerve-racking experience for spectators, coaches, and the players themselves. Usually sure-handed in the field, Bangor West has tonight committed something like nine errors.

‘I didn’t sleep all night,’ Dave mutters at practice the next day. ‘Damn, we were outplayed. We should have lost that game.’

Two nights later, he has something else to feel gloomy about. He and Ron St. Pierre make the six-mile trip to Hampden to watch Kyle King and his mates play Brewer. This is no scouting expedition; Bangor has played both clubs, and both men have copious notes. What they are really hoping to see, Dave admits, is Brewer getting lucky and putting Hampden out of the way. It doesn’t happen; what they see isn’t a baseball game but gu

The diamonds, on which the teams of District 3 play out their six-i