Yelow Springs tee-ball is a treasure. Our friend Bob got this picture of the boys with their friend (and Bob's son), Max. Each year there are new P (for Perry League) caps, with a new color, and each year there is a mob of kids on the field, throwing dirt, yelling, running, hitting, catching and smiling. It's definitely the least organized sport you've ever seen, and yet somehow it all comes together week after week, year after year, in pretty much the same way. No one ever strikes out in teeball, there is no keeping score, and when the ball does finally get hit, there are parents behind the batter to throw out additional grounders to the 27 kids in the field.
As if this fine Friday evening ritual were not enough, coach Jimmy Cheshire also writes up an article about the kids several times during the season. He's a fine writer and his love for the children is so clear. I'll paste in an example from a few years ago (I'd link to it, but there's some scrolling involved, and this is easier. )
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Batter up for t-ball opener
By Jimmy Chesire
Perry League, Yellow Springs’ happy, happy t-ball
program, opens its 2006 season Friday night, June 2, at 6:30, in Gaunt
Park.
It’s the village’s noncompetitive beginners’
baseball program for girls and boys ages 2–9. Two- and 3-year-olds
are welcome if accompanied on the diamond by an adult. There are no fees,
no sign-ups, no registrations, and no requirement to play every week.
Come when you can, come when you like. We will play on 10 consecutive
Friday nights, June 2 through Aug. 4, and you can begin on any of those
10 nights, up to and including our final potluck trophy night on Aug.
4.
If you’ve got one of those remarkable creatures
in your life, one of those Hi-Energy Love Beings — aka toddlers,
preschoolers, kindergartners and kids in their middle childhood —
and if that creature is frequently flinging him or herself about; or if
you have a little person often found roaring about in mysterious raptures
we adults can only dimly remember; or if you have a kid who is occasionally
going off like a rocket on the 4th of July, that kidder-roo seemingly
exploding with an overabundance of something — zeal? passion? an
early on-set dementia? — then we may have just the program for you:
Yellow Springs’ exuberant, joyous, unpredictable and what some might
call mildly demented Perry League.
We’ve got the bats, balls and gloves —
gloves: which many of our darling young charges find clunky, obstreperous
and as often as not, totally useless. We’ve also got both the beautiful
Gaunt Park baseball diamonds every Friday night for the rest of the summer.
All you need is the time and inclination — and, of course, one of
those passionate pint-sized whirling dervishes, one of those Hi-Energy
Love Bugs. Just bring her out, just bring him out, cuz we’ll be
out there, ready and willing, looking to have ourselves a good time. You’ll
find us lining up on the third base line and then running out to right
field (it will not be a race this summer, Steffi Cooper, no, it will not)
where we’ll do our peculiar Perry League brand of calisthenics —
doing one thousand seven hundred eleventeen twelve push ups, four million
twelve thousand two-hundred-teen jumping jacks and four hundred million
zillion quadrillion trunk twisters. Right? Right.
We try to keep it simple and we’re serious about
keeping it noncompetitive. There are no outs in t-ball, no runs, no scores
and no one ever strikes out in the Perry League: you get a thousand strikes
in t-ball. Every child gets a chance to field and bat a couple of times
each evening. The first 100 or so kids showing up will get a free cap
and a chance to buy the 2006 edition of the often beautiful, frequently
glamourous, but always glorious Perry League t-shirt.
We’re a Yellow Springs Recreation Board program.
United Way funds — which come through the good work of the Yellow
Springs Community Council — get us started each summer. Then the
sale of t-shirts, donations from generous parents, loving grandparents,
awesome aunts, ugly uncles, silly stepsisters, bodacious brothers and
the many supercalifragilistic friends of the program — with the
Lions Club being uniquely and most sensationally supportive of us these
past six or seven years (they’ve been paying for our trophies) —
and gifts from the kids themselves, allow us to pay back the Rec. Board
and pay for the program ourselves.
We welcome all the community’s children regardless
of race, color, creed, national origin, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation,
ability or disability. And we work assiduously at being tender, patient,
kind and loving to them all.
So, you-all ready to play a little t-ball? Ready for
another fantabulous, mugglelicious summer of fun? Yes? Yes? Yes! Of course!
Then come on out to Gaunt Park, Friday, June 2, 6:30–8 p.m. We’d
just love to have you, to see you again, to play with you-all again. We
really and truly and honestly would.
