Philadelphia Phillies go all “little league” at Bowman Field

The Philadelphia Phillies played on a “Little League” field on Sunday night. Problem is, they played to their field level.

The Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets met Aug. 19 in Williamsport, PA for the second game at the heart of major league baseball’s newest tradition – the Little League Classic, a major league game in the minor league town hosting the Little League World Series during that series. MLB has invested a great deal of money in revamping Historic Bowman Field in Williamsport so that it is “worthy” of the fine players who grace it once a year, and Sunday night all the ceremonial stops were pulled out.

I am very familiar with Bowman Field as a long-distance fan of the single-A (short season) Williamsport Crosscutters, now an affiliate of the Phillies. Once a year, usually, my family and I take in a Cutters game. We’ve been doing it for a while now, watching the Pirates-affiliate club of the same name before the current team, and before them, the Williamsport Cubs.

Bowman Field is always Historic Bowman Field because it is America’s second oldest minor-league venue, having opened in May of 1926. I know this because I have a souvenir ball celebrating an anniversary of minor league baseball in the former logging capital.

The park is intimate, and one wouldn’t think MLB had to pour four million dollars into renovating the place before last year’s inaugural game, as ESPN’s broadcasting crew pointed out Sunday night, but apparently that much money was spent on leveling and re-sodding the field to MLB standards and replacing aluminum benches in the stands with individual seats. No other renovation is readily apparent, but there may also have been some upgrade in the tech equipment involved in ESPN’s yearly broadcast.

For tradition’s sake, seemingly, the outfield wall at Bowman is still covered with ads for local companies. It’s a beautiful place to watch baseball, and for the Classic game, money and time are definitely wasted. Colorful, different uniforms for the teams involved with the players’ nicknames on the backs are trotted out – “Big Fella” for Rhys Hoskins, “Bigger Fella” for his teammate Tommy Hunter, and so forth. One player from each team involved in the actual Little League tournament is involved in the “first” pitch, which is actually 16 pitches end-to-end.

(To be fair, the MLB uniforms will be used for Players Weekend as well.)

Only Little Leaguers and their parents are admitted to the game, and they are not charged admission. The atmosphere is, as ESPN reminds TV viewers about every four minutes, “very special.” Everyone coos over the old Little League photos of the MLB players involved in the game as though such things are rare religious relics.

It becomes cloying, and especially so if the team you follow comes out and plays like the last place team in a Little League, the one that couldn’t, on its best day, beat the best team minus its best three players.

On Aug. 19 the Phillies did just that. They came into Sunday’s Classic tied with the Atlanta Braves for first place in their division, and played down to the level of their competition, just as they had in a recent series in San Diego. They lost, 8-2.

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Mets hurler Jason Vargas held Philadelphia to two runs on six hits with an assortment of pitches that must have been cagy enough to fool the team in red and baby blue. Vargas clearly outpitched his previous performances this year (he came into the game 2-8) as well as his lifetime records (88-89, 4.32 ERA now). His most recent win had come on May 30.

The Phillies’ only bright spots aside from some hard-hit fouls or balls directly at Mets fielders were a double by Hoskins and the home run by Carlos Santana that followed in the sixth inning.

Maybe some TV viewers were actually entertained by Alex Rodriguez blathering on in the first inning about “the energy” of “the young men and women” in the ballpark, oddly during an actually quiet moment, or later, about how close the Mets are to competing again if they can just get Daniel Murphy back and the Wilpon family hires at “stellar” general manager.

Most, however, were likely as antsy as the kids in the Bowman Field stands in the fifth inning, I’d bet, especially those cheering for a Phillies team playing like a Little League squad.