Bracken, R. (1999, May 23). Bellefonte's first Little League All-Star team relives '49 . Centre Daily Times, p13. 

Bellefonte's first Little League All-Star team relives '49

Ron Bracken

They're in the late innings of their lives now, some retired, some soon to be. The world has turned over many times since they were boys in the summer of '49.

But Saturday night the members of Bellefonte's first little League all-star team peeled back the years, revisiting some of the best days of their lives, remembering when .

They got together at the Bush House, diagonally across the street from the site of Poorman's Sports Shop where some of them bought their first baseball gloves.

And they probably weren't much past the handshakes and smiles before talk turned to that long ago summer when they were pioneers and young.

The members of that first team were survivors of a selection process winnowed out of a field of 215 hopefuls who showed up for tryouts that spring as Little League made its debut in Bellefonte.

"I remember the day they picked the teams," said Judge Charles Brown, a 12-year old candidate that spring. "We all went up to the Athletic Field and sat in the bleachers. The managers were down on the field and they yelled out the names, I was so excited."

"All of my buddies, the guys I ran around with, didn't get picked. So when we were walking home, I didn't say much. But I couldn't wait to get home and tell my parents I had made it. That was a summer to remember."

Similar scenes played out all over Bellefonte that day as the 60 players chosen for the four 15-man rosters had to stifle their excitement in deference to their friends who didn't make the cut. For them, there was no baseball that summer. There were no B Leagues, Farm Leagues, Minor Leagues. It was back to the sandlots with the taped bats and scuffed balls and makeshift bases.

The first game in the history of Bellefonte Little League was played on May 23, 1949. As the summer rolled on, the four teams - Foresman Olds, Decker Motors, Keckler Chevrolet and Boughter's Giants - played and 18-game schedule consisting of two nine-game cycles. And when it was over an all-star team was selected to move on to the playoffs.

That roster consisted of : Brown, James Bruno, Ward Cole, James Coslo, John Heffelfinger, Larry High, Hassell "Bud" McMullin, Paul Noll, Bob Schreffler, Billy Sharp, Tom Shultz and Frank Webster, George "Whitey" Noll was the bat boy, John Saylor was the scorekeeper, Pat O'Neill was the manager and John Drogan served as head coach.

In their first venture into playoff territory they were matched up with a team from the Penns Valley area that included future Penn State standout Cal Emery on its roster. McMullin homered off Emery and combined with Shultz, who live in Mt. Eagle but was eligible to play in Bellefonte, to no-hit the Penns Valley squad in an 8-0 romp.

But the next game paired Bellefonte with Lock Haven, which had won the national championship the year before and would win the state tittle that year. Two of the members of that Lock Haven team were Bob Bubb and John Englert, both of who went on to become successful wrestling coaches, Englert at Lock Haven, Bubb at Tyrone High and then Clarion University.

Lock Haven snuffed out Bellefonte's hopes with a 5-3 win. According to the account of the game in the Times, the game turned when McMullin, the pitcher, dropped a throw at the plate, allowing ta run to score and leading to a three-run inning. McMullin and Shultz were the pitchers in that game, too.

"We'd like to play that game over," Brown admitted. "Lock Haven was a good team but we thought we had a good team too. Of course, since that was our first year, we had nothing to compare it to, but we just felt that way."

For the Majority of the players on the team, it was their only year in Little League. By the following spring they had turned 13 and were ineligible.

Still, they had that one summer, that one shining time that still glows in their memories. That's what last night was all about.

"This gives us an excuse to talk Little League without having to be embarrassed about it," Brown said on a recent morning.

It was a night when the boy who still lives within all of them was allowed to come out and play one more time.