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Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009

Slippery slope supplies a field of screams at World Series

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — It is a scene that is right out of some idyllic childhood photo album. And a panoramic postcard at that.

The pastoral backdrop at the Little League World Series features a steep-sloped hillside that just about stretches across the horizon, foul pole to foul pole, beyond the outfield at the half-century-old Lamade Stadium.

The grassy incline is a field of screams. For kids at least.

Few grown-ups dare tread on the 60-foot peak that is as steep or steeper than your average A-frame rooftop. The younger crowd, however, piloting makeshift sleds of cardboard, flocks to the Everest of Americana by the droves. At any given time most days and nights during the games, there are hundreds of pint-size daredevils rocketing, or tumbling, down the grade with glee.

At the Series, there is often more action there than on the field below. From the stands in the downhill distance, the 100-yard-wide slide is constantly abuzz, a landslide of youthful arms and legs.

The other day, two teens who are big brothers of players on the Warner Robins American team fashioned an extra-slippery chute by lining the run with cardboard, which shoots sliders downhill faster than grass does.

To ride their creation, the Georgians charged older kids a quarter each. They earned $3.

“But they let the little kids go down it for free,” one of their dads, Jimmy Phillips, said.

To children in the crowd at the stadium, the action on the fanny-rutted slope 450 feet away emits the siren song of a playground. Who can watch baseball when there are bodies hurtling along the earth like they’ve been strapped to an out-of-control escalator?

Think skateboard park minus the wheels. They could film Tide commercials for eternity here, compliments of gravity and ground-in dirt.

Denny Logan, a Williamsport native who for years has served as a chaperone for Series teams from around the globe, said he has “been traipsing these hills” for a lifetime.

Oddly enough, the 54-year-old has never taken the plunge himself.

Just never had the urge, he said, to hurl himself down a bump-laden incline that is as tilted as an Olympic ski jump and as long as a basketball court.

“It’s just something the young people enjoy doing. The kids will maybe come here and watch an inning or two and then get a little restless,” Logan said. “So they’ll grab a piece of cardboard and go sliding.”

Robins players Cortez Broughton and Conner Smith went land-luging this week. Broughton, the Robins team’s 5-foot-11, 220-plus-pound first baseman, said theirs was no textbook slide.

“Every time we got on the steeper part, I fell off on top of Conner,” Broughton said, “and he started screaming.”

But, then, that is what the fun, free joys of childhood are.

A scream.

And, if your joints can’t bear them, a scream to watch.

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.