I am truly grateful to be standing here today for so many different reasons. As some of you may already know, I was hit by a car on Christmas Eve while walking home with my kids from Hamilton Park. I cannot begin to express the gratitude our family has for all the love and support we received from our PALL family. It is this family environment that makes us love little league so much. This is my 3rdrand final year as PALL president, and it has been an absolute honor to serve this wonderful community. Thank you to everyone for adjusting to the different protocols and changes that the pandemic brought to our little league season. Your love for this game and for the joy it sparks in our kids kept baseball alive at PALL. We had the largest number of players in the district last year, and we grew even more this year to have the most players in District 17 out here playing this wonderful game.
Parents, we all know that your kids will have a great time playing baseball this year. What you may not realize is that you can have a great time with baseball as well. After all, you’ll be spending a lot of time at our fields too, so you might as well enjoy yourselves. A whole Saturday on the baseball fields became a favorite for our family, and I hope it does for you too.
There are two ways that you can make baseball a fun experience for you.
First, get involved.
Volunteering really is a lot of fun. You get to do things most people don’t get to do. How many people do you know get to drag an infield? When you watch the grounds crews at Dodgers Stadium, you can tell your friends, “Yeah, I do that too.”
Volunteering is also a great way to meet new people and make new friends. Like I said, we’ve met some wonderful people in Little League, not just here at PALL, but from other leagues. These are people we wouldn’t have met if we didn’t get involved.
The best thing about volunteering is that you can see the results of your efforts. When you set up the field before games and practices, or you clean up afterwards, you free up time for the coaches to help your kids. When you sell food at the snack bar, purchase one of our apparel items, and help support our fundraisers, the money you make directly benefits the kids. For example, we hope to upgrade our batting cages at Hamilton and add new batting cages and a scoreboard to Victory Park. If we raise the money, we can improve the overall experience for all our players. The quality of our program depends on parents like you getting involved.
The second way to make this a fun experience…lighten up!
I know how hard it is for us to keep our feelings in check. Sports unleash a wide range of emotions, from euphoria to despair to even anger, and all of them heightened by the adrenaline rush that comes from competition. It’s that emotional thrill that makes sports so enjoyable. But we must remember that Little League is just kids playing baseball. They are learning what is actually a sophisticated sport that takes a while to master. These kids will make mistakes. So will the adults who coach them, umpire for them, and administer the program for them. Give all of them your patience and encouragement.
We must also remember that our so-called opponents are also our neighbors and friends. The great thing about our league — the thing that I believe makes it better than some other baseball programs — is that we draft new teams every year. Our opponents from last year become our teammates this year, and vice versa. We get to watch these kids grow up together. So, no matter how intense the competition gets on the field, we leave those feelings behind once we get off. Inside the fence, we play hard to win. Outside the fence, we’re all friends and part of one community.
Little League is an experience that parents and children can enjoy together. So, get involved, but also keep things in perspective. We can’t guarantee that every kid will become a superstar, but we can work together so kids can learn how to play and enjoy a sport we love.
Kevin Lewis
PALL President