About the time I got to Team #1, a number of major things took place in my life. First, my brother was old enough to play little league baseball. He was a minor leaguer! That worked out great because the minor’s played their games on Mondays and Wednesdays and the majors played on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There was no conflict of who got dad at their games. He saw both sons play!
Second, the family had bought a new house and we moved from up on the hill to Church Street. Lost the yard but moved into a neighborhood that had lots of kids my age, that were also playing baseball. There were plenty of backyards nearby that could handle a neighborhood ball game and we had many of them.
Third, and most importantly, a new drive-in restaurant had opened in town. It was an A&W Drive-in restaurant that was happy to sponsor little league baseball! You can’t confuse them with Mel’s Diner from the movies, but they supplied each team with coupons for a free root beer to all of the players and coaches after each game. Sometimes the teams that won that night got two coupons! That meant, between my brother and I, we had coupons for A&W root beer every Monday through Thursday (excluding rain outs)!
As I remember it, neither mom nor dad ever missed any of our games during the 7 or 8 years that I played little league. I went to most of my brothers games and he went to mine. He and I didn’t watch all of our sibling’s games, but we were there, playing with other kids that weren’t playing that day. Of course, we were always anticipating the stop at A&W after the game. It was tradition!