What Little League Means to Me

There is probably no day that is more important in Imperial Beach than Little League Opening Day on March 8. That is when more than 300 children and their families, the foundation of our blue-collar community, gather to celebrate a rite of childhood and America’s pastime. 

For me, a father with two teenage sons who I taught to play ball about a decade ago and who played IB Little League, baseball has always been more than just a game. It was the vehicle through which my immigrant father who arrived in America in 1939 to escape the Nazi occupation of Europe (many of his family members who stayed in Europe later perished in concentration camps), became an American kid and later allowed him to teach me to become one too.

The year that my dad arrived on a boat from France with my Grandma Lotti and Uncle Roland, he didn’t speak a word of English. But after he settled in Queens, New York, he picked up baseball. 

“The boys played in empty lots,” my father told me. “You learned by watching other guys. There were no Little Leagues. I got conked in the head a couple of times. For gloves we made do with what we had. Guys at bat lent gloves to those in the field.”

Dad came became a New York Yankees fan during what is arguably the greatest year in baseball history—1941, the year that Joe DiMaggio tore up baseball with his 56 game hitting streak. That was the year the Yankees pummeled the Brooklyn Dodgers in five games during the World Series with a lineup that included greats such as Phil Rizzuto, Lefty Gomez, Tommy Henrich, and Charlie “King Kong” Keller. 

“I was an avid Yankees fan. DiMaggio was my favorite player. I usually went to games with another kid. We had to take the subway to the Bronx. With all the trouble getting to Yankee Stadium, I made it a point to go only to double headers. Your grandma packed me a bag of food and something drink plus a sweater. Never bought a hot dog. No Cracker Jacks.”

After the war ended my grandparents moved back to France. But dad never forgot America. He joined the American Air Force during the Korean War. After the war he settled in New York where he joined a softball team and purchased a full grain cowhide Tommy Holmes (a slugger for the Boston Red Sox during the 1940s) signature model glove. 

Later in the early 1960s, my dad and my mother, an immigrant from England who spent her childhood in bomb shelters during the Blitz in London, moved to Los Angeles. After I was born and became old enough, dad taught me how to play ball in a park near our home in Arroyo Seco, helped coach my t-ball team, and took me to see the Dodgers.

I was seven years old when we moved to Imperial Beach in the fall of 1971. A few months later I signed up to play Southwest Little League in the Tijuana River Valley. To prepare me to move up from t-ball to real baseball, my father practiced day after day with me in our driveway. I had to catch the ball ten times in a row without dropping it or we had to start all over again. 

When Little League season commenced, I stood on the field and recited the Little League Pledge about trusting god, loving my country, playing fair, striving to win and always doing my best. After that I placed my baseball cap over my heart, clutched dad’s Tommy Holmes glove, and sang my heart out during the National Anthem. Then we’d all yell “play ball” and the game would begin.  

So in the coming when months when families, who hail from all walks of life, come together on our Little League fields in Imperial Beach to celebrate their children learning to embody the values of fairness, teamwork and doing your best, I will hold my dad’s now 60-year old baseball glove in my hands and remember how through his love of baseball, my immigrant father became an American.

Serge Dedina is a candidate for Mayor of Imperial Beach. He can be reached via Facebook.com/Serge4IBMayor.