Place in Time: Youth, Community & Baseball

This is a story about a place in time. The place was Leominster, Massachusetts. The time was the early 1970's. 1971-1973 to be precise. This is a story about baseball. Pick-up baseball. Little League baseball. Babe Ruth baseball. And eventually high school and American Legion baseball. But most importantly, this story is about community.

This story is about the players and coaches. But it is perhaps most importantly a story about the role of the Leominster, Massachusetts community, its neighborhoods and schoolyards where kids had safe places and opportunities to thrive. It is about sports and other recreational activities that provided kids with the opportunity to develop the necessary skills to cope and succeed as adults. But sadly, this story is also about the erosion of those very things at a time when we as a society perhaps need them most.

With his hometown of Leominster, Massachusetts in the late 1960's and early 1970's as the setting, the author celebrates the autonomy of youth, the safety and support of community, and the astounding success of a generation of ballplayers. A place in time indeed.