For Every Little Leaguer, Williamsport Is The 'Holy Grail'

It's pretty obvious that the Little League World Series is the biggest event of the year in Central Pennsylvania, the one that has the greatest impact socially, culturally and economically.

Since 1947, the tournament has taken place in Williamsport, a quiet community of just over 30,000 located in a picturesque valley next to the Susquehanna River.

It has always seemed like an unlikely setting for one of the world's most recognizable sporting events, yet the championship game  routinely draws 40,000 and the entire tournament annually attracts more than 250,000 people to the region.

While the Little League World Series certainly doesn't have the global appeal of soccer's World Cup, it is actually the largest sporting event on the planet. Eighty countries participate with more than 8,000 leagues and nearly 200,000 teams world-wide. And just one will be crowned world champion.

For Vic D'Ascenzo, a Pennsylvania native who coached the Fairfield Junior Babe Ruth team this summer, Williamsport is a place of innocence, a place where you can be a little boy again.

The scene of the kids sitting on the hill just beyond the outfield fence at Lamade Stadium is something right out of a Norman Rockwell painting and may be the best setting to watch a baseball game this side of the bleachers at Wrigley Field. Of course, the fans who sit in the bleachers at Wrigley aren't known for their sobriety.

Located about an hour east of  State College, the home of Joe Paterno's Penn State Nittany Lions, Williamsport is not the easiest place in the world to get to, but that also is part of the charm.

 "Williamsport feels just like Malvern, Pa,  my hometown, or Fairfield, my son's hometown," D'Ascenzo said. "It's comfortable and it allows you to forget about the pressures of the every day and it takes me back to when I was 11 and 12. It's just a great place to enjoy some great youth baseball and to see dreams come true."

Major League Baseball is, of course, a billion dollar industry, but for D'Ascenzo, Williamsport is a reminder of the time you first fell in love with "America's Pastime" while playing catch with dad in the backyard. No sport connects fathers and sons the way baseball does.

"As a Little League baseball player from Pennsylvania, Williamsport was always the Holy Grail," he added. "Every 11- and 12-year-old wanted to make it the World Series. As a lifelong baseball fan, I still get excited about that dream of playing a foreign country for the world championship. It's that sense of excitement that never gets old.

"It's also something that I can share with my son who had that very same dream. It's also that international flavor of 12-year-old ballplayers from all over the world to capture that very same dream I and my son had. It's also the innocence of the sport –  the players still laugh, they still cry and they play the game as it was meant to played – with fun."

The players stay in an Olympic style village and the state-of-the-art complex includes two fields: Howard J. Lamade Stadium and Volunteer Stadium, which was completed in 2001, when the tournament was expanded from eight to 16 teams.

This year's festivities begin Thursday evening with the annual "Parade of Champions" of all the teams. Recent Hall of Fame inductee Andre Dawson is this year's grand marshal of the parade.

Another attraction is the Peter J. McGovern Little League Museum, which traces the origins of Little League Baseball from its humble beginnings as a three-team league in Williamsport in 1939.

Last year's inductees were vice president Joseph Biden, who played in the Green Ridge Little League in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Chris Drury, the hero of the 1989 Trumbull team that shocked Taiwan, 5-2, in the championship game in one of the biggest upsets in LLWS history. Drury currently is the captain of the New York Rangers.

Other recent inductees include Dusty Baker in 2007 and Lloyd McClendon in 2006, but the museum isn't reserved just for former baseball players.

Hockey player Pierre Turgeon, who was a member of the Canadian Little League national championship team in 1982 and went on to a  stellar career in the NHL, also was enshrined in 2007.

Baltimore Ravens general manage Ozzie Newsome was the only inductee in 2008. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was inducted in 2002, a year after the 9/11 terrorist attacts. The year before that, President George W. Bush was enshrined.

Other inductees include actor Kevin Costner (2000), former NFL quarterback Brian Sipe (1999), humorist Dave Barry (1998), Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy (1998) singer Bruce Springsteen (1997), NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1992), newspaper columnist  George Will (1992), actor Tom Sellick (1991), vice president Dan Quayle (1990) and senator and former NBA star Bill  Bradley (1989).

Costner deserves enshrinement simply because of his performance in "Field of Dreams", arguably the greatest baseball movie ever made.

The most famous participants in the LLWS include Jason Bay (1990), Derek Bell (1980, 1981), Sean Burroughs (1993), Matt Cassel (1994), Billy Connors (1954), Drury (1989), Ray Ferraro (1976), Charlie Hayes (1976), Carney Lansford (1969), Jason Marquis (1991), Stephane Matteau (1982), McClendon (1971), Boog Powell (1954), Gary Sheffield (1980), Brian Sipe (1961), Turgeon (1982), Jason Varitek (1984) and Rick Wise (1958).

Amid the romanticism, there also is a business side. Hotels in and around Williamsport generally jack up their prices during the Little League World Series. Nothing wrong with that, we suppose. It's supply and demand.

Still, the experience of watching their sons play in Williamsport can get quite expensive for families, especially if their home town team makes it to the championship game.

This year's LLWS starts on Friday and extends 10 days until August 29. It is not beyond the realm that parents sticking around until the end could spend $2,000 -or more - during the trip. And, of course, that doesn't factor in missed work time. Most hotels in the area have a five-night minumum stay requirement

According to John Nardone, father of Fairfield American pitcher Nick Nardone, the families already have printed two sets of tee-shirts for relatives and siblings. They also wanted to hang a banner in Bristol, but that was denied because ESPN  owns all the signage.

"You just get caught up in it and keep writing the checks," Nardone said while laughing over the phone.

Then there is the logistical issue of finding lodging and getting all the families together in the same hotel. There's six members in the Nardone traveling party, so two rooms will be required just for them.

Little League's first priority is taking care of the kids, and they do a good job of keeping them sequestered, even from their parents. The families, however, have to fend for themselves in terms of finding lodging.

"It is a logistical nightmare," Nardone added.

But the effort and potential cost are worth it for a once-in-a-lifetime experience at Pennsylvania's "Field of Dreams."