T-Ball League Gives the Hit Sign to Deaf

Like all good T-ball catchers, 7-year-old Ryan Mannon wanted to intimidate batter David Rodriguez when he stepped up to the plate Saturday. But rather than the usual chatter, Mannon gave a thumbs-down sign.

Five-year-old David, who is deaf, got the point of the gesture, which also symbolized what the first game of the Mainstream Sports League was all about: improving communication between the hearing and the hearing-impaired.

He smacked the ball to the right where it was scooped up and he was thrown out before he reached first. Even so, organizers of the new league say the players are winners already, regardless of the games’ outcome.

David and Ryan, who can hear, are among 19 participants in the new league, which includes some children who can hear, some whose hearing is impaired and some who are deaf. The majority of the players are deaf, though, and organizers hope the league will teach hearing children how to be comfortable with them.

“Parents have told me that it is difficult for their children to be the only hearing-impaired one on a team, although the team is mainstreamed,” said Chuck Chavoor, director of the Panorama Recreation Center in Panorama City, where the game was played. “This is reverse mainstreaming.”

For now, the players are just picking up what sign language they can. In the fall, however, Chavoor and other organizers hope to train the hearing players how to sign. They also want to attract more players.

Saturday’s T-ball game was as wild as any other that involves children learning the game: Three White Sox players barreled down the third base line at once. Batters admired the flight of their hits while coaches screamed at them to race to first. Outfielders decided it would be quicker to run the ball in rather than throw it, while runners dashed for extra bases.

But few, if any, of those errors could be attributed to some of the players’ disabilities. Throughout the game the players frantically signaled each other to throw runners out, hit the ball to the open field and run like mad.

“The hearing kids don’t see these kids as different,” said Gabbi Piste, 20, one of the coaches for the league’s two teams, the A’s and the White Sox. “They want to learn sign language.”

Ten-year-old Nathaniel Carder, who can hear, said the game was fun. “I can hit. I’ve noticed some sign language, too. I just look at them and they show me the things that they do with their hands.”

The league presents new challenges and opportunities for adults, as well. Coaches, for example, had to learn how to keep their players’ attention.

“I am yelling and screaming at the hard of hearing ones and signing as fast as I can for the deaf ones,” said coach Mary Mannon, Ryan’s mother, of Panorama City. “And you can’t wear a glove when you play with them. You can’t sign that way.”

Miko Burdette, 21, whose 7-year-old hearing-impaired son plays for the White Sox, said the league has given them something in common.

“It’s brought us closer,” said Burdette, who can hear. “This is all he talks about, baseball. I’ve never enjoyed sports. But now that he’s into it, I like it.”

For Sylvia Rodriguez, who helped organize the league after being unable to find a welcoming T-ball program for her son, Saturday’s game fulfilled her dream that he would be able to play in the park without being teased.

“At first, it was very hard for us to accept that our son was deaf, because he would never hear the birds,” she said. “But the other day I said to my husband, ‘Look, out of a traumatic experience something really positive is coming out, not just for my kid, but for other kids.’ This dream really is a reality now.”

With signing classes on the way for the whole team, the only thing left to learn, Rodriguez said, are the fundamentals of the game.

“When we first started practicing, we were using trees as bases,” she said. “When we got the bases--of course, it had to be David--he hit the ball and passed by first base and ran to the tree.”