'Coach Tommy' honored with field

Coach Tommy Morris has been a mainstay at Warner Robins American Little League for nearly 30 years.

He started playing at Flint Field in 1959 and was on the 12-year-old All Star team in 1961.

When his son Brad Morris started T-ball in 1985, the father decided to coach and except for a few off years, hasn't quit.

Because of his tireless efforts to help children improve not only their baseball game but in life, Morris was honored with a field named after him.

In the ceremony, held Dec. 27, members of the WRALL family came to show their appreciation to a man who helped change the game for them.

"I was so blown away by all the people who came out," Morris said.

Wearing his mustard-colored Southeast shirt and hat, Morris sat in his wheelchair talking to players as well as coaches he had an impact on.

Morris has been battling lung cancer for more than a year, and the board at WRALL felt it was time to honor the former coach.

"He not only coached me but taught me the right way to coach kids and help run the Little League. We would talk often on the phone of how the game had changed and about new rules, his thoughts on them rules, etc. I was truly blessed to gather knowledge from such a great coach," said Jimmy Dunn, former president of the league.

Several members of the 2007 Little League World Series championship team were on hand to acknowledge the coach who helped them during their championship run.

Keaton Allen, Dalton Carriker, Taylor Lay, Zane Conlon, Hunter Jackson, Kendall Scott, Hunt Smith, David Umphreyville Jr. and Micah Wells all showed up to pay their respects to the man who traveled to the district, state and regional games ending up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to help them win the title.

The bond a player has with his team stays with the player a lifetime. Morris has seen that in his own life as well as in the young baseball players he has coached. A few teammates from his 1961 All Star team showed up for the ceremony.

Morris went on to help several other teams make a bid at the elusive Little League World Series, usually sitting on a bucket full of baseballs and offering advice through the fence.

His son remembers when his dad was on the board for WRALL that they would be the first ones at the park and usually the last ones to leave. The elder Morris served as vice president from 1986-88.

Brad Morris held his bachelor party at his dad's All Star game in 2003. They ended up playing whiffle ball afterward.

"Little league was a big part of our lives. Most of our friends are associated with Little League," Brad Morris said.

Coach Tommy, as he is fondly known, tells of his top three moments.

"Probably the biggest in my Little League life was winning the World Series," he said.

Morris was the unofficial hitting and pitching coach for the 2007 team and traveled to Williamsport. When he got there, he remembered when one of the players first spotted him and yelled out, "coach Tommy is here" and they came running over from the practice fields.

"I hadn't seen them in three or four days. We had a big ole frat boy crying hug," he said.

Before Carriker hit his famous walk-off home run, Morris pulled him to the fence and gave him some advice. That advice would win the game for WRALL.

He also took Umphreyville aside after he had gone 0-9 at the plate during state and regional play, giving the catcher tips on how to improve his hitting. Morris thinks he went 6-6 at the plate after that practice.

The second on his list of memories is the first year WRALL sent a team to the Southeast Regional Tournament, held then in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1992. Morris coached with Tom Nauss.

His third moment is a 1989 team of 9- and 10-year-olds who were playing in the Dixie Youth Tournament in Macon. Little League didn't sponsor that age group in sanctioned tournaments at the time, so the teams would play in other tournaments.

Morris and Nauss, assisted by Jon Kilko and Ronnie Willeby, were facing elimination after losing a Friday night game. The first game was Saturday at 9 a.m. The team kept winning, with nearly no breaks in between games, to win the championship at 12:30 a.m. The team played a total of 37 innings that day. "Those rascals won that game," Morris said.

Some of those same players were on the 1992 state championship team.

It wasn't winning though that kept Morris out until after dark, inviting players to practice at his house whether they were on his team or not.

It was a love of the game that brings families and players together to make memories of a lifetime.

Those family members, former players and former teammates came to honor a man who gave so much of his life to Little League.

Those memories will live on when players take the "Coach Tommy" Morris Field each spring to play baseball to learn not only fundamentals, but about life.

This story was originally published January 5, 2016 at 9:42 PM with the headline "'Coach Tommy' honored with field ."