VOLUNTEERS : At 79, Coach Goes Some Extra Innings : Frank Polito has been a hallmark of Alhambra Little League baseball for 40 years.

For 55 years Little League has endured. And for 40 of them, Frank Polito has been there. The 79-year-old Alhambra man has been volunteering his time all those years for the pure, simple pleasure of teaching kids to play ball.

For Polito, it has been a passion for 40 seasons. Get to know him and you see why Little League carries on. In an era in which Major League Baseball strikes seem inevitable, Little League remains a summer certainty, as comfortable as a favorite glove.

Polito has been a fixture of Little League baseball in Alhambra, a gruff former truck driver who has coached hundreds of kids, a hard-nosed taskmaster whom players unfailingly address as “Mr. Polito.”

Not Coach. Not Frank. Mr. Polito .

Over the years, he coached both of his sons--now in their 50s--and all four of his grandsons. He won so many Alhambra Little League championships he doesn’t remember the exact number.

Former players recall Polito bellowing commands so loud they were audible two playing fields away.

But his players also talk of him patiently teaching the fundamentals not only of baseball but of life: the perils of show-boating, the rewards of teamwork, how to win with humility and lose with grace.

“If you didn’t play on the Giants, you were intimidated by him,” said his son Vince, 51, who himself coached Little League for 18 years. “But if you played on the Giants, you loved him.”

Little League is more popular than ever. From 1 million players in 1982, its player rolls burgeoned to 1.8 million five years ago and 2.7 million today.

And they are led through seasons both good and bad by coaches such as Polito, whose hard-guy exterior and foghorn voice disguise a fundamental affection for kids that was never lost on them.

*

The grandson of Italian immigrants, Polito for many years drove a trailer truck for the Vons supermarket chain.

After work on game days, he showed up on the field dressed in his gray work uniform, his arms sternly crossed over his chest, his eyes squinting from beneath the lid of a black Giants cap as his young charges played their regulation six innings.

Over the years, he has watched as changing demographics and social mores have altered Little League, pushing it inexorably out of the innocent, “Leave It to Beaver” years of the 1940s and ‘50s into the more contentious, and more democratic, 1990s.

He saw the forced admission of girls into Little League baseball in 1974 (when Congress revised the Little League charter over league officials’ objections).

He has seen the effects on kids of a rising divorce rate.

He has seen how the growing Asian and Latino communities in Alhambra have changed the racial makeup of local teams.

He approves of the admission of girls into Little League baseball, saying they have been among his better players.

“I had one year when I had two girls,” he said. “I had one in the All-Stars. . . . She handled herself pretty good.”

He worries about competition for playing fields from adult softball teams.

But when all is said and done, he keeps coming back, season after season, year after year, a gravel-voiced Mr. Chips in cleats, eager for the next inning, the next squeeze play, the next home run.

“I think he loves the kids,” said his son Vince. “I think he loves to see their development. I think he gave a lot of his heart to the kids. And they in turn felt that.”

Vince Polito still plays too--in a softball league every Tuesday night. And in the stands, every week, there is Frank Polito, watching his boy play ball.