1 Out, but There’s Still Joy in Quakeville

There were two outs in the final inning. The bases were loaded, and the score was 4-2. The pitcher seemed to be tiring, and now the dangerous cleanup hitter was stepping up to the plate.

The first time up, he struck out swinging. The next time up, he drilled a shot back up the middle, but the pitcher snagged it. What should have been a clean single to center became an inning-ending double play.

The third time, the saying goes, is the charm.

Spencer Gordon gave a mighty swing. But this time, the ball dribbled slowly down the first base line. Gordon sprinted to first, but the throw beat him, and that was that.

Brooklyn Center, Minn., had upset Northridge 4-2 in the first round of the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.

And Spencer Gordon, age 12, figured it was all his fault.

*

“Don’t mother him,” people told Bonnie Gordon.

This, she told me over the phone, was the advice that people around her offered when she called out from the stands to her boy.

What she called out was: “Spence, you OK?”

Spence was not OK. He was taking it hard. And so was his mother.

It’s only a game, they say. But really, it’s not. It’s hopes and dreams crystallized into moments. Bonnie Gordon, who has a law practice with her husband, Eric, may be able to keep her cool when negotiating megabuck business deals, but she has a hard time handling the pressure of Little League.

“I’m a disaster,” she said. “My stomach hurts.”

After watching their boys compile a 16-0 record in the playoffs, by Monday the Northridge parents were as unaccustomed to defeat as the team. And Bonnie Gordon was more accustomed to Spencer’s success.

“So many times,” Bonnie explained, “Spencer has come through and been the champion.” Not this time.

Don’t mother him, people said. And Bonnie held back. But it was Spencer who came to her.

“He held me so tight. He was sad. He felt like he had let everyone down.”

His father, Eric, tried to buck him up, borrowing a familiar line from the movie “A League of Their Own.”

“ ‘There’s no crying in baseball.’ That’s the line Eric gave to Spencer. . . . Well, they’re 12. It’s OK to cry in baseball. . . . I think there’s a lot more to be learned in losing.”

Don’t mother him, people said. And Bonnie found herself acting like a coach, giving a pep talk..

“I told him it’s a team sport. Everyone played this game. Everyone had their chance,” she recalled. “I told him we’re going to kick butt tomorrow.”

It must have encouraged Spencer to know that the loss doesn’t eliminate Northridge from the series. It’s a setback, but the boys of Quakeville could still win it all.

By the time her talk with Spencer was over, Bonnie said, the Northridge cleanup hitter had managed to grin.

*

There has always been crying in baseball, especially Little League. My memories of the game are 98% sweet. That other 2% includes the screaming father who came out of the stands, entered our team’s dugout and gave his son a spanking. A hard spanking. Why? Dad was angry because Junior had foolishly tried to stretch a triple into a home run and was thrown out at the plate. We were 8 years old.

Bonnie Gordon assured me you won’t find any parents like that with the Northridge team. To those who would venture that Little League puts too much pressure on mere boys, she pointed out that pressure is a fact of life. “After what they’ve been through with the earthquake, to say this is pressure? Aw, this isn’t pressure.”

The Northridge boys, she said proudly, have proven themselves winners off the field. In one game after another, she said, parents from rival teams have complimented Northridge parents on the sportsmanship of their boys. A Williamsport waitress, she said, remarked how they were much nicer than the Long Beach heck-raisers who won the World Series the last two years--and won a reputation for yanking fire alarms and filching golf carts.

Which is not to suggest that everything is peachy at this World Series. There is, it seems, a bit of bad blood brewing over some encounters between the parents of the Middleboro, Mass., team and Northridge parents. But, Bonnie assured me, Middleboro started it.

It just so happens that Northridge and Middleboro square off in today’s second round.

“We’re gonna kill ‘em,” Bonnie said.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Ca. 91311.