Jul 12, 2025
Bill Hammond at Little League age. Submitted Photo
My fifth and final year in Little League wasn’t that much better than my fourth year.
My team, the underperforming USW-CIO Steelworkers, was a bottom-feeding, cellar-dwelling club in Dunkirk for a second year in a row.
It was 1963 and the chief reason for our rank ineptitude was our roster. It was virtually unchanged from the previous season. There had been no turnover of players because there were no 12-year-olds on our 1962 team.
The same untalented crew won twice each season, frustrating me to no end. When opposing teams weren’t deliberately walking me, I was foolishly expanding my strike zone and swinging at nearly every pitch thrown my way.
Teams learned soon enough that they could get me out without throwing a strike.
Bill Hammond
No amount of advice to occasionally “take a pitch” from my dad and others helped.
I had a terrible habit of swinging at the first pitch of each at-bat. Rarely would I see multiple pitches in an at-bat because I rarely swung and missed.
And I was a dead pull-hitter, rocketing numerous foul balls off the newly constructed Dunkirk High School beyond the left-field fence.
As a pitcher I matched my previous season’s mark and won two games.
I also pitched a no-hitter against my brother’s team, the Dunkirk Police, and lost. Walks and errors hurt.
A good hitter, I launched three home runs that season, including a memorable “over the wires” shot off my brother. Tom got his sweet revenge though, striking me out later in the game his team won handily.
But the biggest disappointment of the season was the news Dunkirk would not be participating in the district’s Little League All-Star Tournament.
The reason? I was told by a longtime league official that our local league had run afoul of a critical Little League rule.
Teams are not allowed to play regular-season games against teams in another hometown division.
There were two divisions in Dunkirk, the American (players who lived east of Main Street) and National (players who resided west of Main Street).
As a National Division player I had games against my American Division friends every year I played.
So why was this suddenly a problem?
Rumors suggested jealousy played a part in banning our all-stars from competition. They were jealous of Dave Criscione. The future major leaguer was finally old enough to be an all-star. We would have been among the favorites to win the district title and move on to the sectional tourney.
A rival league allegedly reported our offense and we were subsequently banned from the 1963 postseason.
As a crummy consolation prize, the Dunkirk Little League staged a best-of-three city series pitting the Nationals against the Americans.
Criscione pitched our Nationals to victory in the first (no-hitter caught by my brother Tom) and third games. I pitched the loss in the middle game.
The best part of the season was being on the same team with not only Dave Criscione, but with my talented younger brother for the first time.
It was not the last time that trio terrorized opposing defenses and found sweet summer success. And sometimes, we did it all with my dad as our coach.
I so enjoyed my Little League experience that I managed and coached Dunkirk Little League softball and baseball regular season and all-star teams for more than 20 years.
***
DO YOU have a favorite memory of your time in Little League? Drop me a line or send a photo to mandpp@hotmail.com.
ııı
Bill Hammond is a former EVENING OBSERVER sports editor.
Copyright © 2025 Ogden Newspapers of New York, Inc. | https://www.observertoday.com | PO Box 391, Dunkirk, NY 14048 | 716-366-3000
