Oct 15, 2021 4 min read

We had one last bit of filming to do before the documentary was complete, just a couple of pick-up shots of a baseball player on the pitcher’s mound. The WQED crew and I were at Mounds Park in Monongahela this week, our fourth or fifth time there during production of the film about the youth baseball teams from the town in the early 1950s.

People have talked about those teams all along: how the Mighty Mites went to the Little League World Series in Williamsport in 1952, and how the same team went to the PONY League World Series two years later. The documentary tells the story of all of it – the remarkable talent of the players, the beloved coaches, and the loyalty of the fans.

When I walked into the dugout this week, I was carrying a zipped baggie that held about a half-cup of dirt. I’d been carrying it around since July, when the film crew and I traveled to Williamsport. Little League has a spectacular new ballpark now, but we wanted to see the original, smaller field, where the ’52 team had played.

We interviewed Jim McKinney, who takes care of that field now. He told us that players from decades ago will travel there in a kind of pilgrimage, to revisit the place that held their best childhood memories.

“And sometimes they’ll ask to take home some dirt from home plate,” McKinney said. He’s a big, gentle man; he got a little teary when he told us that. We asked him to scoop up some dirt from the plate, so we could take it home with us.

The dirt is pale, and dry. When I poured it into little bottles, puffs of dust reached my nose and I sneezed a bit.

I handed the first bottle to Scott Frederick, the local historian who led WQED to this story in the first place.

Tom DeRosa got some dirt. He was the bat boy on the ’52 team, and his older brother, Frank, was the catcher.

“I’ll put this on Frank’s grave,” Tom said.

Fourteen-year-old Sam Allen got a bottle of the dirt. He’d reenacted some scenes for the documentary, and said he’d put the bottle on a shelf with dirt from other ball fields where he’s played.

Scott Frederick will send a bottle of dirt to Ed Kikla in Florida. Ed was the star pitcher known for a spectacular series of strikeouts in Williamsport. Another bottle will go even farther, to Honolulu, where Gary Wassel now lives. He was on the ’54 PONY league team.

I’ve saved the last of the dirt for the family of Pete Hoosac, a catcher on the ’52 team. We interviewed him on our first visit to Mounds field. His whole family came to watch from the bleachers that day. I asked them to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” while the camera rolled, and they did. Pete passed away a few weeks after that.

In the documentary, Pete talks about riding in the victory parade after the team won the state Little League championship. It was the kind of tender memory that brings a story to life.

If there are a few bits of dust left, I’ll put that in a bottle and put it in my locked treasure box – a sweet memory of a project that allowed me to retrace the path of the teams, to get to know the players and their families, and to capture it all.

“A Season to Remember: The Baseball Boys of Mon City” will have its broadcast premiere at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, on WQED-TV.