Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Ballplayers

What kind of mother doesn’t wash her kid’s pants despite grass streaks, dirt patches, juice stains–for two, four, six weeks in a row? A Little League mom, that's who.

“When the team was on a winning streak, Johnny told me not to wash his pants,” said Carol Lombardi of Morris Plains, remembering her eldest son's Little League days. “He said it was bad luck to wash the pants if they'd won the game before. So I wouldn’t wash them.” 

Some mothers might wag their fingers at Lombardi, but a Little League mom knows these types of rituals come with the territory. Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio would always run from the outfield and touch second base before going to the dugout. Hall of Famer Wade Boggs would eat chicken before every game. Cubs and Mets pitcher Turk Wendell used to wave from the mound to the centerfielder, who would wave back every time he came into a game. He'd also brush his teeth and eat four sticks of licorice between innings while pitching, plus crouch down every time the catcher stood up and stand up when the catcher would crouch. 

Carol Lombardi's Little League adventures started with a few wiffle ball games in the yard, affectionately dubbed Lombardi Morris Plains Field.

“We’re still friends with a lot of the guys we started playing wiffle ball with when we were kids,” said Carol Lombardi's other son, Matt.  

“All the parents knew where their kids were. The kids told them, ‘We’ll be at the wiffle ball house,’” she said. “They were all a close knit, nice bunch of boys.”

But do nice boys break, “every window on that side of the house,” as they did on the section of the Lombardi house that served as its “Green Monster,” like the left-field wall at Fenway Park? Lombardi had to weigh the pros and the cons of the situation. The boys were knocking out windows at home, but knocking them out of the ball park as well. 

Carol Lombardi said that in Little League, her sons didn’t just develop their baseball skills, they developed a sense of friendship and fair play–and community. “As my kids continued to play baseball in Morris Plains, we developed great friendships throughout the community- kids and parents.”   

Now Johnny works for Weichert Realtors with Carol. Ironically, he and his brother Matt both work part-time for Primavera’s Pizza, their Little League team’s sponsor.   

Only now, Carol is happy to report, they go to work with clean pants.