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Last Friday, I was the last person from the Mifflin County Babe Ruth 13-year-old team to leave Ottumwa, Iowa, as my train was three hours late.
That was OK – I had a few chores to do and I got to walk around the city before I left to come home.
But, talking to a few people that morning, not many had picked Mifflin County to be the national champion.
I stopped off at a grocery store to buy some newspapers and I told the sales clerk that I was from Pennsylvania and I was going home with a smile on my face as we had won the tournament.
“Is that right? We expected Hawaii to win the title,” she said.
Then I took my rental car back and the young lady who waited on me said, “We had someone connected to the Hawaii team come in and they said , ‘Don’t worry about the tournament, we have it wrapped up.'”
I guess the 14 players from Mifflin County had other plans.
When you look at the national championship from a historic viewpoint, it becomes even more impressive. Pennsylvania’s record in the Babe Ruth World Series against the Pacific Southwest (Arizona, Southern California, Northern California, Hawaii, Utah, Nevada) was 4-12.
The only time Mifflin County played a league from that part of the country came in 2002, when the local All-Stars loss to El Segundo (Los Angeles) in the 15-year-old World Series and fell 18-0. El Segundo went on to win the national title.
This summer, Mifflin County stopped two sweeps. In the Mid-Atlantic Regional, Atlantic Shore (Atlantic City) won both the 14- and 15-year-old titles. Mifflin County beat Atlantic Shore 11-1 in the 13-year-old regionals.
In the Babe Ruth World Series, the Pacific Southwest won the other two national titles (14 and 15), with Mifflin County winning the 13-year-old title.
For Scott Reigle, the Mifflin County manager, it was his second World Series and that proved to be a big help in winning the title.
Only three leagues in Pennsylvania has a team won a national championship – they’ve won four – and only five leagues (nine teams) have made it to the national finals.
Reigle had the perfect personality for this team. He wasn’t too aggressive and he knew when to get stern and when not to. Remember, he has been coaching Babe Ruth baseball for 45 years.
His two coaches, Jared and Josh Edwards, also played the perfect role. While Reigle was the tactician, the Edwards brothers were able to get the points across in practice and in games.
One thing the people of Mifflin County can be proud of is that the league has done it the right way. The Babe Ruth rules state that a league must play at least a 10 game schedule before it can pick an all-star team. Here in Mifflin County we play a 27-game regular-season schedule so all the players in the league have a chance to play baseball before an all-star team is chosen.
I have been doing this for 47 years and no team that goes any distance on the tournament trail does it without super parents.
This group went above and beyond. The lobby at the hotel in the morning was like eating breakfast back in Mifflin County instead of Iowa. There was lots of talk about baseball and it seemed back home was just a click away from everybody’s phone.
Then in the evening after the games, lots of the parents and players ate together and went fishing. Some stayed behind and did the laundry while others made sure the rest of us who had to work were well fed.
One of the rooms became my office as I used someone’s laptop and had my record books spread out all over the beds and on the floor. Occasionally, there would be a knock at the door just to make sure I was still alive or whether I was hungry.
The last night after the championship game, it was a mass celebration – although we had to tone it down somewhat as Hawaii was staying in our hotel, too.
Needless to say, there were lots of tears. When the last strikeout was in the books and the national championship was on the way back to Mifflin County, everybody was hugging each other and tears were coming down not just one cheek, but many of the people who there in person.
Including the man who just wrote this story.
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Ray Wilde covers Babe Ruth baseball for The Sentinel – and for generations of players, parents and fans in Mifflin County.