I cannot underestimate how hard Jackie Robinson West-mania gripped Chicagoland as the local Little Leaguers advanced their way to the U.S. championship and a shot at the world title against South Korea, which they lost, but not before launching a late three-run rally that didn’t make the game close – the final was 8-4 – but provided one last bit of excitement on the way out.
Chicago didn’t physically empty out to go to the games like Hickory launching a caravan to Butler Fieldhouse in the movie “Hoosiers” – South Williamsport, Pa., is a 10-hour drive away, after all – but if nothing else time seemed to stop when Jackie Robinson West took the field. Traffic actually did stop, at least on
The rate of T-shirts flying off the shelves at the South Loop Dick’s Sporting Goods accelerated as the Washington Heights boys made their way closer to a title. Another 7,000 were put out Aug. 26, the day after Jackie Robinson West arrived home, at the South Loop Dick’s Sporting Goods store that had sold them all through the tournament. According to the league’s Facebook feed, all 7,000 were sold out by mid-afternoon.
When the team arrived back at Midway Airport (not O’Hare – this is a south side squad, after all), they were met by hundreds of screaming fans, not all of whom were parents or affiliated in the league in any way, and a full phalanx of media, followed by a police escort of their bus back to Washington Heights. (I know there was a police escort because as I drove toward my neighborhood grocery store to get some chicken wings, I saw flashing lights as I approached 103rd Street. At first I thought it was a funeral – there is a funeral home across the street from the store – but then I saw the team bus, and a couple more cars with flashing lights behind it.)
The team also got a congratulatory phone call from President Obama. I don’t know if presidents normally make those to Little League teams, but given how Obama marched in a preseason Jackie Robinson West league parade as a U.S. Senator from Illinois, and still has a house just a few miles from the league’s fields, I wouldn’t be surprised if he felt a little more urgency and personal connection to make that call.
On Aug. 27, Jackie Robinson West is scheduled to have a 14-mile parade, from their home field (after a rally there) to Millennium Park. That’s a far longer route than the Chicago White Sox got for their 2005 World Series parade, though Jackie Robinson West doesn’t get Steve Perry to show up and sing “Don’t Stop Believin’.” (For many, that could be a point in Jackie Robinson West’s favor.)
This isn’t a team for just one neighborhood anymore. As the local NBC television station put it in promos for its late newscast on Aug. 26, “OUR Little League team returned home.”
So why did Chicago get so wrapped up in a group of 11- to 13-year-old boys?
Part of it most certainly is their backstory as an all-African-American team excelling in a sport that in recent years has seen a marked decline in black participation. Part of it is a positive story to come out of Chicago, a city that – statistically or not – seems gripped in a never-ending cycle of violence and murder. And part of it is that Chicagoans don’t get to see championship baseball in their name very often, and even if they did, with two major league teams, there is still no unity in celebrating success, unlike with the one Chicago Little League team that made it this far. (I live in White Sox territory, so I had neighbors setting off celebratory fireworks when the Cubs lost the infamous Bartman game.)
So what happens after the parade is over?
Hopefully, pressure won’t be placed on the Jackie Robinson West players – as well as the league itself – to be symbols. In my conversations with the league, the adults understand why that happens, but they want to keep the focus on playing baseball well and providing a positive experience for the families involved. It’s too much to ask Jackie Robinson West to reverse the African-American decline in baseball, or be a shining beacon of hope in a city riven by conflict.
For the players and families, it’s going to be difficult enough coming back to real life from what we called, in the Episcopal church youth events I went to growing up, mountaintop experiences – incredible moments that you want to have last forever, but are supposed to serve as key starting points for the rest of your life.
Incredible athletic experiences and fame early in life are mountaintop experiences (see: Little League flamethrowing, female pitcher Mo'ne Davis on the cover of Sports Illustrated) that can inspire or constrict, depending on how they’re handled. I referenced “Hoosiers” earlier, and one of my favorite lines about youth sports comes from that movie. It happens when Coach Norman Dale and a Hickory teacher, Myra Fleener, are arguing over whether star Jimmy Chitwood should come back to the basketball team:
Myra Fleener: You know, a basketball hero around here is treated like a god, er, uh, how can he ever find out what he can really do? I don't want this to be the high point of his life. I've seen them, the real sad ones. They sit around the rest of their lives talking about the glory days when they were seventeen years old.
Coach Norman Dale: You know, most people would kill... to be treated like a god, just for a few moments.
I happen to believe that it’s possible to have your athletic cake and eat it, too. For the players of Jackie Robinson West, they get the pleasure and excitement of being treated like gods. But for all of us adults in Chicago – not just their parents, or the people running Jackie Robinson West – it’s important that after the parade is over, we help the kids find out what they can really do. Maybe it is baseball. Or, probably, it’s something else. They, and we, have given themselves glory days to talk about the rest of their lives. But it’s up to the rest of us to make sure that these few moments aren’t what wholly defines the rest of their lives. We have to let them come down from the mountaintop.
