Everything I need to know I learned in Little League

This post is by Bob

“Little League” is what we call baseball for kids in the United States. I often tell people that I learned a ton about how to behave and how to approach problems, teamwork, and life in little league. Turns out I’ve been saying that for a while. My sister just sent me this little poster I made for my dad at some point.

Dad repeated this advice regularly, even decades after my baseball-playing days. I still believe it’s good advice, so I’m sharing.

I put the most important advice first—keep your eye on the ball. That’s really key to just about anything.

I have found that hustle is also really critical in life. Dad and I loved hustling baseball players like Pete Rose. Dad used to drive me from Detroit to Cincinnatti in the early 70s to see the Big Red Machine in person, then drive back for work the next day. I find it demoralizing today how players just watch their hits rather than hustling as soon as there’s contact. I really miss “little ball”, which is why Cleveland’s my favorite team (that and it’s Mitzi’s home town).

The staying loose part is also really important and really hard. No editor, so I included keeping your eye on the ball twice. Without the duplication, I could have saved enough space to not cramp the bottom—otherwise, my graphical layout’s pretty good.

For me, sportsmanship is really critical. I also makes me sad that players only shake hands with their own team after the end of the game. We always had to go and shake every other player’s hand and tell them “good game” (even if it wasn’t). And the pros did the same.

I can’t emphasize the teamwork advice enough for the real world—part of that should have said “there’s enough credit to go around.” I should have put that higher up. Listening to how star players respond to interviews is key—it’s usually along the lines of, “I’m just trying to play my role and help the other 8 guys out on the field.”

Getting in front of the ball is also super important not only literally in baseball, but also metaphorically in life. You can do so much by just getting in front of the ball. It might hurt a bit when it hits you if you can’t catch it cleanly, but at least it didn’t get by you! I might rephrase “throw overhand” as “take the straight ahead approach” rather than “trying to get fancy.”

As a bonus, my sister also sent along this photo of our Little League days in Detroit.

That’s dad in the back and me on the far left of the back row. This is 1972 or 1973, so I was 8 or 9 years old (top row, far left) and dad was only 29 or 30. At the time this was taken, he was paying his way through law school photographing sports teams and accident scenes (I tagged along to both and “helped” in the darkroom). I love the attention to detail in the arrangement of gloves on the first row and the classically crossed bats—I also learned photography and design from dad, not to mention printing. Also notice how poor the neighborhood was. One of my teammates, Adam (can’t recall his last name), is wearing dress shoes; you can’t see Tibor’s shoes in the back, but they were mostly duct tape. We couldn’t even afford new baseballs, so I’m not sure how dad managed the spiffy uniforms—probably shilling a pizza joint or auto body repair on the back.

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN LITTLE LEAGUE^*

DAD ON THE GAME keep your eye on the ball

DAD ON HUSTLE run, don’t walk

DAD ON BATTING stay loose, keep your shoulder down & keep your eye on the ball

DAD ON SPORTSMANSHIP don’t be a bad loser & don’t be a bad winner; shake hands

DAD ON TEAMWORK there are 8 other players to help you

DAD ON FIELDING get in front of the ball & keep your eye on it

DAD ON THROWING overhand, it goes straight

^* FROM MY DAD [Mack L. Carpenter]