Treasure Island

First they suck them in with all the trappings, then they roll out the
medicine cart. If you want to stay, you must pay. Please roll up your
sleeve.


BASEBALL LITTLE LEAGUE WORLD SERIES

Free stuff? Cameras? `Awesome'
Youngsters find perks on and off the field are just part of the show
when they reach the promised land of Williamsport

By Brian Hamilton
Tribune staff reporter
Published August 19, 2006


SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- Spying the newly arrived goods caused Mike
Hall Jr. to make a sharp right around the fence next to the batting
cages. It was barely mid-morning Friday, but not too early for yet
another box of free baseball equipment. And for 12-year-olds, it is
never too early to revel in excess.

"Dude!" Hall exclaimed. "We got Mikens?"

Miken--pronounced MEEK-in, for the sadly uninformed--is the producer of
some apparently cool-looking bats. Their appearance, gratis, was merely
the latest momentous event in Lemont's week at the Little League World
Series.

When players deplaned Monday, the first to arrive, a glut of cameras
greeted them before they stepped onto the tarmac. A gussied-up bus
waited to ferry them to the Little League complex. There, equipment,
food and video games were available for the hoarding.

Dare we say the World Series opener Saturday against the West Regional
champion from Phoenix will be anticlimactic? That's because, so far,
everyone agrees things are pretty cool.

Or, as it were, awesome.

"When we got off the plane, I thought we were going to go into a car
and go to the field," center fielder Austin Mastela said. "Then all the
cameras were right there when we got off the plane, and the bus was
right there, and I was like . . . it was awesome."

"I guess we have our own ESPN crew," catcher/outfielder Andrew
Hoffmeister said. "Each team has someone assigned to them. They follow
us around, see, like, what we do before the game, stuff like that. It's
pretty cool."

"It feels like we're pros," pitcher/shortstop Michael Kamp said. "We
get food, we get all this good stuff in advance--helmets, new uniforms.
It's awesome."

The flotsam of poor sportsmanship and overzealous adults in Little
League apparently hovers more than 75 inches off the ground, because it
has gone way over the heads of these 12- and 13-year-olds.

The Lemont players wrestled for prime position in front of the cameras
Monday--despite a 4:30 a.m. wakeup call. The free video games in the
dormitory rec room, especially the NASCAR racing one, are a perk worthy
of kings.

When Lemont players lunched with the team from Moscow, they resorted to
hand signals and Pictionary-like drawings and wound up learning what
dosvidanya means.

As for equipment companies literally throwing bags of goods over the
fence, hoping that players will wear a wristband or a batting glove on
national television?

"We haven't experienced that yet," Hall said. "But hopefully we will."

Still, it has not been all throwing candy from parade floats, or
walking around Lamade Stadium during opening ceremonies Friday to the
strains of "It's a Small World." As giddy as the Lemont players are,
they grasp the business at hand.

"We've been to a lot of tournaments," Lemont manager Mike Hall Sr.
said. "I'm not sure how they're going to be [Saturday] when they're
playing in front of 10,000 people--that could be a little different.
But I really don't see a change in their demeanor."

The elder Hall planned to run any giddiness out of his players in a
Friday evening practice, but it might not take much. Sure, his own son
said he has been smiling "for no apparent reason." Sure, Hoffmeister
doubled back to inform a visitor that his favorite part of the week
were two specific types of bats he received.

But when asked if having fun was enough, the Lemont players deemed that
not cool. Not awesome at all.

"Some teams are just here because they're here," said Josh Ferry,
Lemont's star pitcher and shortstop. "Some teams are here because they
want to win. I think we're here because we want to win."

----------







Copyright © 2006