James T. Farrell's Roseland

Out in Roseland, on the southeast side of Chicago, I sat in the kitchen of Matthew Dillon, fitter and burner at the big nearby General Motors plant. "We never had anything like Little League when we were kids," said Joe Le Rose, dark-haired and thin, a local coal and oil merchant. There was agreement on this.

While we talked in the kitchen, I recalled my own boyhood on the streets and in the parks of Chicago. In my day it was often an accomplishment to get up a regular baseball game. Most of our games were scrub ones. We suffered from a lack of equipment and there were not always nine gloves to go around. When strange kids were in the game, you had to keep a hawkeye on your glove and on everything else you owned. We played on regulation diamonds for men, and the throwing and running distances were too great for us and, because of this, our games became less interesting.

And there were other problems. It wasn't always easy to get together two teams of nine players each. Umpires were hard to find, and sometimes we had to umpire our own games. When this happened, there was more jawing and squabbling than playing. Some kid would always turn out to be a dynamiter, more interested in disrupting the game than in playing in it. Something always went wrong, and many of our games were frustrating.

And I remembered how I used to dream of playing in a league modeled after the big leagues. I imagined such a league. I envisioned myself and other boys playing in uniform in an enclosed park. I wanted records and averages kept. In brief, I dreamed of a Little League in my own boyhood. There was none, but I should have welcomed one just as eagerly as boys now do. And my dream was not peculiar. It is common to boys who love to play baseball.

The dream has come true for the kids of Roseland, a big sprawling area of factories, stretches of prairie land, and new and old streets. The population of Roseland includes many white-collar workers, teachers, merchants and businessmen. It swarms with kids. They love baseball, and they inherit and gain an interest in it and a passion for it from their elders.

The Little League was a natural for Roseland. The idea of organizing a league originated in the local Lions Club. A committee was named. The coal merchant, Joe Le Rose, quickly became the leading and driving figure on it. The Little League was contacted, and then work began in earnest. Try-outs were announced. Money was raised. The White Sox baseball club made a contribution. Local merchants also contributed. Hundreds of kids reported for the first tryouts. Sites for a ball field were looked at, and one was finally found and rented at 115th Street and Halsted. The field was cleared by the volunteer labor of parents and interested adults. A prairie was turned into a neat ball field, properly surveyed and neatly laid out. Materials for the field were either donated or else procured at cost. Committees of parents, neighbors and community people from all walks of life were formed, and a solid corps of hard-working men was recruited. All members of the league—dues are $1 a year—were indexed and classified according to occupation and skill. In this way, carpenters and other skilled persons were found. The field—a model Little League ball park—was constructed with this voluntary labor. Roseland men, at the end of a day in factory, store and office, did another day's labor at the field. Concrete was mixed for dugouts. Stands went up. The entire field was fenced in. Foul-line poles were placed in left and right field, and a flagpole was donated by the American Legion. A refreshment booth was also constructed. Those who did this work take great pride in their achievement. No one earned a penny for it. It was done for the kids and community.

Monthly meetings were held, and each expenditure, each plan of activity, was considered and approved. The women were recruited into an auxiliary, and wives and mothers also went to work. Childless people, a man and wife who had tragically lost a son of their own, unmarried women, pitched in alongside parents who were seeking to achieve a dream, not only for their kids but also for themselves.

The first season, 1952, was a success. Five to six hundred people went to see many of the games. No admission was charged, but the hat was passed at each game. The kids played in uniforms like small imitations of the big leaguers: umpires recruited from the neighborhood wore blue uniforms and gave the games an added professional appearance. People who had been strangers to one another became friends. Working men and businessmen sat together at meetings and took rakes to prepare the field for play before each game.

To many, friendship, a sense of neighborhood and of community, grew out of this enterprise. The kids love it. Organized play for these boys is good in itself. If the community is interested in this play, the value of this play thereby increases. The kids have a definite need for some direction in their play, and they have an even deeper need to feel that they belong to the community.