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LEWISTOWN — By Ray Wilde's count, he has been to about 3,129 Mifflin County Babe Ruth games since 1970.
Of 1,126 possible All-Star games, Wilde has attended 964, or 85.6%. Add roughly 2,165 regular-season games, and the arithmetic begins to explain a life spent around scorebooks, press boxes, tournament brackets and generations of boys who eventually became fathers, bringing their own sons to the ballpark.
Now Babe Ruth Baseball has added another number to Wilde's ledger: Hall of Famer.
Wilde is being inducted into the Mid-Atlantic Babe Ruth Hall of Fame, an honor that also makes him eligible for consideration for Babe Ruth's International Hall of Fame. Jim and Bonnie Winder of Williamsport's West End program are the only other Pennsylvania members from the 13-to-16-year-old league, according to Wilde.
"This is not only a big honor for me but also for the league," Wilde said.
For Wilde, almost every honor circles back to Mifflin County Babe Ruth.
"I owe my success to four different aspects of the game," Wilde said. "We have had a solid program with good players, good coaching, and great parents. And the other aspect is the Sentinel, which gives me the chance to write about the league."
The numbers Wilde has spent 57 years recording tell their own story.
When Wilde arrived in 1970, Mifflin County's All-Star record stood at 19-19, with one state championship and three appearances in the Pennsylvania Final Four. He now lists the record at 795-374, with 25 state championships, 90 Final Four appearances, seven World Series trips, one national championship and three national runner-up finishes. Mifflin County's most recent World Series team finished second in the United States and third in international play this summer.
"I always wanted to make a difference," Wilde said. "My life in the Babe Ruth league has been like a dream. I hope I have made a difference in the lives of the players, parents, and coaches who have come through the program."
Lloyd "Sach" Mowery remembers the beginning, and it sounds considerably less grand.
Mowery was managing Belleville in 1970 when Wilde kept hanging around the team. Mowery remembered him fondly as "this little shrimp" who kept showing up. Wilde had already tried playing and knew that wasn't where he belonged. He had kept score in Little League.
So Mowery found him a job.
The arrangement stuck.
Decades later, Mowery visited Wilde's home and went into the basement, where the accumulated history of the league fills drawers and files. Wilde opened a drawer, pulled out an old scorebook and went directly to the first game he had ever kept score for Mowery.
That Wilde knew exactly where to find the scorebook still amazes him.
"We then realized that we're not going to get rid of Ray, so we keep him around," Mowery said. "He's doing one heck of a job."
Wilde's role quickly grew beyond keeping score. When Mifflin County hosted its first 13-year-old state tournament in 1970, Mowery asked him to handle newspaper coverage. Wilde later became an assistant District Seven commissioner from 1992 to 2002 and commissioner from 2003 to 2017.
He also became Pennsylvania Babe Ruth's historian and statistician, a title that fits a man who treats a missing score from decades ago as unfinished business.
When Wilde arrived, Mifflin County had no complete league records from 1955 to 69. He said it took him about five years to reconstruct the All-Star scores and box scores. Today, only one box score is missing from a 72-year record.
Jim Winder, Pennsylvania state commissioner and an International Hall of Fame member, said Wilde's work reaches far beyond Mifflin County.
"Ray, by far, has covered Babe Ruth baseball better than anybody in the state of Pennsylvania," Winder said. "By far. Not only his league, but the whole state. He has stats for everything and a mind that won't quit."
Winder said Pennsylvania wouldn't have the historical record it has without Wilde. He also said he intends to nominate Wilde for the International Hall of Fame in a year or two.
Wilde kept finding new things worth recording.
In 1977, after both Mifflin County All-Star teams reached the state's final four, Wilde began tracking Final Four appearances as a way to measure sustained success. Mifflin County now has 90, which Wilde says is the state record.
Wilde started the Pennsylvania Babe Ruth Hall of Fame in 2000 because he believed coaches and state administrators weren't receiving enough recognition. The State Hall now has 55 members, including Wilde. He introduced the league batting title award in 1970, while MVP and outstanding pitcher awards followed in the early 1970s. The Sportsmanship Award came in 1984.
Wilde's record-keeping eventually expanded into media guides. He began producing them in the 1970s after reading professional and college media guides during Saturday nights at The Sentinel. He has produced seven. His 2024 edition ran 128 pages, and the collection was accepted into the research library at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Keith Baker, president of the Mifflin County Babe Ruth League, said the records mean more than knowing who ranks first or tenth on a list.
A player can open the newspaper and see his name. Parents and grandparents can see where he fits in league history. Decades later, someone can find the game again.
"No other local league has a guy like this that maintains those kinds of records," Baker said.
Baker called Wilde "invaluable" and said there will be "very large shoes to fill" whenever he steps away. He described Wilde as both a reporter and a cheerleader for the league.
Wilde's enthusiasm has long come with its own refrain: 'MC Baby,' a phrase Mowery called one of his favorites.
Wilde is careful about how much credit he accepts.
"The success of the league has helped," he said. "Hopefully, I've helped with the success of the league, which has made my job a lot easier through the years with the championships and going to the World Series."
His attendance record shows what that commitment has required.
"I hope I don't jinx myself, but I have only missed one All-Star game for injury or illness in my 57 years," Wilde said. "I fell in the press box in 2002 at the first World Series (Connorsville, Ind.), missing only one game. Came home, wrote two stories for the Sentinel, and then went to the hospital for an operation."
Wilde said he has never taken a personal vacation instead of Babe Ruth baseball. When games at different sites made it impossible to see everything, geography beat him. Very little else did.
Next spring, Wilde expects to begin his 58th season, which he said will give him the longest tenure in Pennsylvania Babe Ruth.
Mowery has watched almost all of it, from the kid hanging around Belleville to the man whose records, guides, and stories have become part of the league itself.
"He earned everything that he got," Mowery said. "And he earned it the hard way because he worked for it."
Fifty-seven years later, the kid Mowery couldn't get rid of is still keeping score.