Pee Wee Baseball Standings that I Couldn't See From Right FIeld

I've mentioned before that I played on the Tigers in Pee Wee baseball.  That was four years.  We didn't have a re-draft each year.  Every team started out having whatever players were left over from the previous year's team.  Any kid who didn't move up to the 9-11 year-old league always new what team they'd be on the next year.

That certainly helped me become a fan of the Tigers.  It helped that Al Kaline was playing for them still.  It was nice of my brothers to let me know when I was 5 or 6 years old that he played right field.  We all know why I was put there and it wasn't for my throwing arm.

Where I live now every year is different.   My kids end up on a different team each time.  And there have been years where MLB didn't allow their team names to be used without con$ent or something like that.  I'm not going to look into any of those rules/meetings/decisions/court cases but I know it was an issue at some time.

Back to my Pee Wee Tigers.  Unlike today's leagues where one can find out the scores and standings on a website and via Twitter, we had limited access to this information.  Almost every day that there was a game, which was every day but Sunday, we'd want to see the updated standings.  The solution was as simple as it was beautiful.

The person in charge of the park district league had a great way to display the standings.  Outside of his office at the park he had hooks that resembled something an elementary teacher would use.  He used a series of team names and numbers on metal hooks.  I spent lots of time checking out the standings since the park was near my house.

The league was separated into AL and NL with six teams in each league.  Just like the big leagues at that time, my Tigers never played NL teams unless we made it to the World Series.  We never made it there either so I never played against my neighbor who was on the Cardinals.  More about that neighbor and an umpire in a future post.

Back to the standings board.  The board was a shrine in our eyes.  I imagine kids of today might walk up and change Cubs to Crud and mess with the standings but that wasn't even an option for us.  Looking at that board and the upcoming schedule to see how the Tigers could move up in the standings was an important part of the day.

If anyone has a picture of that board from inside the old Scottsdale Park I'd love to see them.   There were great memories there including a 22-0 game where the winning team got no hits.  There was no coach pitching in these days.