Thirsty Thursday

A toast to Capitol Hill Little League

Whiskey for the coaches and soda pop for the players!

For the first time in history, Capitol Hill swept all three divisions of the DC Little League championships and are in the process of sending their little tykes to the Northeast to possibly play in the big championships later this August.

As a parent, there really is nothing more fun than these three years of baseball for your kids. Travel ball championships really don’t compare to Little League, where the kids all come from the same neighborhoods and the parents all roughly know each other pretty well.

The 10 U team victory sent them to Cranston, Rhode Island. The 11U team ‘s victory sent them to Beverly, Massachusetts while the 12U team’s victory sent them to Bristol, Connecticut.

When my son played for Capitol Hill Little League, we got to the championship game of the DC Finals and narrowly lost our chance to get to Bristol. That worked out fine for us because we had previously scheduled a trip to Ireland with family and friends.

In Washington DC, Northwest Little League has long dominated the DC tournament. They have a good program, better fields and that’s where all the rich people live. On Capitol Hill, it has traditionally been a struggle to get practice fields because the DC public schools aren’t great at sharing their fields with Little League, and certainly don’t spend any money keeping the fields up.

But controversy hit Northwest Little League earlier this year, and as typical for a bunch of type A personalities, it devolved into lawsuits and bad feeling. The other perennial winner in Little League world is Cap City, who we lost to when Jack played in the 11U tournament. Not sure what happened to them, but glad that Capitol Hill was able to beat them soundly.

Because DC opened a bunch of practice fields first at Zimmerman Field and then at the RFK sites, it is much easier to get the kids playing time.

I know how much of a commitment it is for the kids and the coaches to pretty much donate their summers to practice every day to get prepared to play in first the DC tournament and then make the trip to New England to play in the next round.

Baseball is a game that requires the active participation of parents, especially dads. Coaching a Little League champion is the most fun a parent can have, but outside of coaching, just the mere process of getting the kids to the ballpark, playing catch with them, taking them to the batting cages, teaching them the fine points of the game, all of that is a rewarding and fleeting moment in the arc of a parent’s relationship with his or her son.

I am proud of the Capitol Hill coaches and the kids for competing so well this year. I hope they all go to Barrack’s Row Joeys and have a few beers to celebrate. Well, not the kids. They can have a Coke or Sprite or something.