Historic Pennsylvania field lifts dreams during MLB Little League Classic

Published 9:20 am Monday, August 21, 2017

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — A minor league stadium in central Pennsylvania was filled with major league spirit and talent as the Pittsburgh Pirates hosted a series-ending matchup against the St. Louis Cardinals.

The event marked a first for Minor League Baseball’s second-oldest stadium — a regular season Major League game at Historic Bowman Field.

The MLB Little League Classic is meant to celebrate youth baseball and stoke interest in the game.

The Little League and Major League logos were painted side-by-side along each baseline. The padding of the outfield walls was stuck with the insignias for each of the 16 regions represented in the Little League World Series.

An estimated 2,500 fans filled Bowman Field’s revamped seating and some additional bleachers brought in for the event — MLB’s smallest capacity crowd in league history. The hundreds unaccounted for looking on from a grassy hill outside the stadium wouldn’t make much of a difference if they were included in the tally.

Coaches, players and parents of each of the 16 Little League World Series teams sat in the bottom section behind home plate — guests of honor, as it were.

“I never thought I’d be at a Major League game,” Angel Genao, a member of the Dominican Republic team representing the Caribbean Region, said through an interpreter.

Genao and teammate Jesus Chevalier stood a few rows behind home plate as the Pirates and Cardinals warmed up on-field behind them.

“I never thought I’d be side-by-side with them,” teammate Jesus Chevalier said of the professionals.

Genao and Chevalier and dozens more like them, all dressed in uniform, may not have known it, but for fans like 7-year-old Landynn Bieber, of Lewisburg, they were every bit the stars as the men who played on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball.

Steve Bieber looked on as his son tracked down Little Leaguers, holding out a marker and autograph book, collecting signatures from the big kids.

“I got the whole team,” Landynn Bieber said, showing off a page of signatures from members of the Venezuela Little League team. He got the entire squad from South Korea, too.

Steve Bieber spent his own youth walking from his childhood home in Williamsport to Bowman Field — now formally known as BB&T Park and home to the Philadelphia Phillies Class A affiliate, the Crosscutters.

“Everyone all weekend long has been telling him how lucky he is. To experience this with my son in a place I came to growing up, it’s incredible,” he said.

Jack McKernan, a Lycoming County commissioner, was dressed in a classic Williamsport professional baseball jersey, long before the club adopted its current team name. The city’s name stretched across his chest in red lettering across a cream-colored field.

A few weeks back, he was in Pittsburgh for a Pirates game. Three rows from the top of the stadium, he said.

“Instead of being a mile away, it will be like everybody will be on the field,” McKernan said, gesturing to Bowman’s Kentucky Bluegrass.

The drum line of the Selinsgrove Seal marching band took to the Dunkin’ Donuts Dugout Deck along third base. They performed at the top of the fourth and fifth innings and for a half-hour outside the park pregame.

Katie Bowers, 17, a senior, wasn’t nervous about performing in the stadium. She figured that might change when they got their cue between innings.

For junior Will Switara, 16, he was nervous already.

“I have friends from all over the country who will be watching,” Switara said.

All over the country, baseball fans got their first look at Bowman Field, touched up as it was for its primetime debut.

On Monday, the prior week’s work to transform the Minor League park into a Major League setting will begin to be reversed.

Eventually, down will come the video board in left-center, the batter’s eye in dead center, the outfield padding and Major League banners.

The Crosscutters return Tuesday and Bowman Field will soon look as it had before the Big Leagues came to Williamsport. It’ll look good, too. More than $4 million in upgrades were made before the start of this season.

An MLB spokesperson wouldn’t say if Sunday night’s one-off would become an annual event. Hopes of just that happening were overheard from some in the crowd, long before the final out was recorded.

Scicchitano writes for the Sunbury, Pennsylvania Daily Item.