When teams, at whatever level, move to different cities, or when franchises or leagues fold, regardless of popularity, a void is left.
It's a void that captures what that particular team or league meant to a community. It's a void that shows how much it added to the community's history. It's a void that reminds us what that team or league could've meant to future generations.
Haverhill Little League's departure from the community sports scene has left such a void.
The history of the area's youth baseball leagues is as complicated as it is politically-charged. There were multiple leagues with different rules and different formats. Some leagues brought in more middle- to upper-class kids, while some others were more attractive to more urban, inner-city kids.
There was competition.
And baseball was never more popular.
All parties involved are saying the right things. The leaders of Haverhill Little League are praising Riverside-Bradford's organization and marketing, and the leaders of Riverside-Bradford are lamenting the loss of such a historic program. But behind the drapes of praise and positivity hides an ugly truth both leagues have acknowledged as part of the sport's downfall.
Kids just simply aren't as interested in baseball as they used to be. Some estimates claim that participation is down nearly 25 percent this season.
That's the saddest truth of all.
Some of my fondest childhood memories come from baseball and Little League. I remember watching the 1991 World Series with my family, a series that is widely regarded as the greatest seven-game playoff series of all time. I remember my dad kneeling at the end of our driveway, as I woefully attempted to throw a curve ball. I remember going to the now-broken Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome with my friends for Tuesday-night "Dollar Dog Night," where the limit was six hot dogs per person. I remember my Little League coach giving me the nickname of "Professor Popup" for my propensity to catch any and all pop-ups in the infield.
I think about how much my dad loves the game he grew up playing, and I remember how much he loved watching me play. He's the one who threw me grounders and pop flies in the cul-de-sac, and he's the one who taught me the rules and minute idiosyncrasies that make baseball America's pastime. He taught me about Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Tony Oliva and Harmon Killebrew.
Those memories, that precious father-son time, will last forever.
One of my biggest regrets from that time in my life is leaving the game I loved. One fastball to the shoulder, and I was done. I left because of that one fastball. I left because I couldn't stop thinking about if that fastball had been three inches higher.
I quit the game. And I know how much it hurt my dad to see me leave the game he loved so much growing up. He never said anything, but he didn't have to. Nothing gave him greater joy than to see his son catch one of those fly balls or to hit a laser shot single up the middle. Nothing.
That's what makes Little League baseball so special. And that's what makes the cancellation of Haverhill Little League so disturbingly sad.
This isn't just about a league folding, and it's not that those kids won't have other leagues to join. They will. Riverside-Bradford has picked up the pieces, making room for the Haverhill Little League players, and is moving forward with its 2011 season. That's not the point.
The point is that this season's cancellation of Haverhill Little League is simply another indication that a bridge that once so wonderfully tied past generations to those in the future is splintering.
I suppose Riverside-Bradford is the big winner in all of this, but their enrollment is down, too. And they know they'll be competing with flashier options like lacrosse, spring AAU basketball, theater groups, 3-D video games and the other million activities offered to kids nowadays.
For some reason, baseball, the sport I grew up on, the first sport I fell in love with, the first real, tangible activity that my dad and I did together, doesn't seem to have the allure that it used to.
That's the saddest truth of all.
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