Watching the Alexandria Aces, I Remembered the Little Girl Who Loved Baseball

ALEXANDRIA, VA – Last week, I was at the home opener of the Alexandria Aces at Frank Mann Field.

Before the game, a handful of Alexandria Little League players joined one or two Aces players on the mound for a ceremonial first pitch. They looked absolutely adorable in their little uniforms and caps, eyes wide as they looked up at the college ballplayers in their shiny navy-and-white uniforms.

The stands were packed with young families. Kids wandered between the concession stand, the announcer’s booth, and the fence line while their parents watched the game and occasionally called them back into view.

Seeing all the kids and the genuine joy in the atmosphere took me back to the ballpark in Delray Beach, Florida, where I grew up.

Once upon a time, I was one of those little kids in a baseball uniform too.

The funny thing is, I grew up in a family that didn’t particularly care about baseball.

My father wasn’t a baseball fan. Neither was my mother. Nor were any of my grandparents.

Not at all.

We weren’t a sports-watching family. We didn’t go to games. We didn’t have any allegiance to any sports teams. We watched old movies and sitcoms.

But like a lot of kids growing up in the 1970s, I became fascinated with the Cincinnati Reds.

I became a little baseball nut.

Every time my mother stopped at the store, I was begging for another pack of baseball cards. I traded them, organized them, studied them, and wore them out. I had a blue plastic box full of cards that went from mint condition to softly tattered because I was constantly rearranging them. I memorized statistics and enthusiastically shared baseball information that nobody in my family particularly cared about, although they were kind enough to pretend they did.

So my dad was very generous and would occasionally watch baseball because his little seven-year-old daughter wanted to watch it.

I’d be camped out on the shag carpet as close to the television as I could get without “hurting my eyes,” which, according to every adult I knew, was apparently a very real possibility.

Back then we relied on a rooftop antenna, and if a summer storm rolled through or the wind shifted just enough, the picture would dissolve into static, sending my father through the sliding glass door, around the side of the house, and toward the antenna on the roof.

Cable television wasn’t even an option yet.

“A little more!”

“Too far!”

“Right there!”

From my spot in front of the TV, I yelled fine-tuning instructions, and together we’d eventually coax Johnny Bench and Pete Rose back into focus.

Baseball was everything to me then.

I’m sure it started because my best friend Shawn and I were constantly throwing and catching baseballs in the yard. He lived three houses down, and unlike my family, his family actually liked sports.

His dad even coached a team, and Shawn was on it.

That seemed like the greatest thing in the world.

I had to be on that team too, or I was sure I was going to die.

I showed Shawn’s dad my black Hank Aaron glove from Sal’s Sporting Goods and demonstrated that I could throw and catch.

Lucky for me, he agreed.

It was an all-boys team.

Except me.

I could catch anything.

One day at practice, Shawn’s dad suited me up in catcher’s gear and parked me behind home plate.

I loved it immediately.

Every pitch seemed to find my glove. I was snagging balls, firing them back to the pitcher, and throwing down to second base. To my young mind, I was a Venus flytrap. If a baseball came near me, it wasn’t getting away.

By the end of practice, Shawn’s dad had apparently seen enough.

I came home absolutely glowing.

“I’m going to be the new catcher!”

I can still hear my father’s response more than fifty years later.

“Oh no you’re not.”

“Whaddya mean?”

I was dumbstruck.

“Look at Johnny Bench, Dad.”

Johnny Bench was the man. He always seemed to be in the middle of everything. The way he flipped off his catcher’s mask, gave signals, and took charge of the game made catcher look like the most important position on the field.

Dad wasn’t impressed.

He got up and headed for the front door. He was on his way to find Shawn’s dad and tell him I couldn’t play catcher.

I followed him.

“Why not?”

Dad finally stopped and turned around.

“Your mother and I are not spending all that money on braces just to have a baseball knock your teeth out.”

At seven or eight years old, I couldn’t understand what one thing had to do with the other. I wasn’t thinking about orthodontia. I was thinking about the fact that I could catch baseballs better than anybody on the team.

Dad walked out the door.

Meanwhile, I swear my mother barely looked up from whatever book she was reading.

I ended up in my room crying, stomping my feet, and feeling certain that a grave injustice had been committed against one of the finest young catchers in South Florida.

I had already promised Shawn’s dad I was going to be the best catcher he’d ever had. Now my father—who didn’t even like baseball—was on his way to undo the whole thing.

I was devastated. At least in my eight-year-old mind, life as I had planned it was now a complete disaster. Five decades later, I’ll finally concede my dad may have had a good point.

Looking back, Shawn’s dad must have been completely blindsided.

One minute he had a catcher.

The next minute he didn’t.

The subject never came up again.

I played first base. And I was pretty good at it. Good enough to make the All-Star team, anyway. Two years in a row.

As it turned out, first base suited me just fine. Every runner eventually came my way, and I liked having my own little corner of the field to manage.

I loved first base, and every now and then I’d snag a ball that drew a few cheers from the crowd.

Then came Little League.

To me, Little League was the big leagues.

Those kids had real uniforms, with stitched team names and numbers on their backs, and actual teams with prestigious names like the Fire Department, Police Department, and Palm Beach Cadillac. I’d been wearing a faded maroon T-shirt with Arnst Service Center emblazoned on it for two seasons.

On the day of tryouts, Dad started stuffing my hair under a baseball cap and calling me M.J. I remember thinking that was strange because nobody had ever called me M.J. before.

What I didn’t know was that he had signed me up as M.J. Wadland. It never occurred to me that there might be a reason I wouldn’t be allowed to play.

It seemed like a long day waiting in the bleachers watching a lot of kids rotating in and out of the infield. Finally they called my name.

I ran onto the field with my trusty black Hank Aaron glove, fielded ground balls, caught throws, took my turn at bat, and did my best to look like I belonged there.

I was selected for the Fire Department team, widely considered the league’s best.

I was over the moon.

And wouldn’t you know it?

The uniforms were red and white.

Just like the Cincinnati Reds.

The coach was thrilled, too—at least until my father walked over and delivered the news.

“You do realize M.J. is Mary Jean,” he told him. “You just picked my daughter, and she plans to play.”

Things got considerably more complicated after that.

This was 1977, and the idea of a girl playing Little League still rubbed some people the wrong way.

My father wasn’t one of them.

I remember discussions about lawyers and courts and whether the league could legally keep me off the team. My father was prepared to fight.

I was allowed to play.

My mother took me to pick up the uniform at Sal’s Sporting Goods.

I loved that place.

The minute you walked through the door, you could smell leather gloves, cleats, rubber, new baseballs, footballs, and jerseys.

The whole store smelled like possibility.

When we got home, I laid the uniform out on my bed and stared at it. I rolled around on top of it. Then I hung it up.

This was remarkable because there were usually clothes scattered all over my room, but not that uniform. My white baseball pants and jersey with the red piping hung neatly in the closet like a priest’s robe.

To me, it looked like the major leagues.

The season itself is a blur.

I don’t remember the coach’s name. I don’t remember most of the kids on the team. I don’t remember many of the practices.

What I remember is how it felt.

The coach didn’t want a girl on his team.

He didn’t want me there.

And he wasn’t particularly interested in hiding it.

Every now and then, he’d stick me in the outfield instead of first base, where I’d always played.

What I do know is that I went from loving baseball to dreading it.

The details have faded.

The feeling never did.

I stopped playing.

I stopped paying much attention to baseball.

Golf eventually took its place.

But every now and then, baseball finds its way back into my life.

And when it does, I’m reminded of the little girl who loved it first.

The Alexandria Aces won 16-4 that night.

But years from now, most of those children wandering around Frank Mann Field won’t remember the score. They’ll remember chasing friends around the ballpark, pestering their parents for another hot dog, staying out later than usual on a summer evening, and feeling like summer might last forever.

They’ll remember being kids.

I know I did.

Because sometimes, the game is the excuse.

[Publisher’s P.S. Go see your hometown Alexandria Aces during June and July.  Take the kids.  Adults are $7.00 and kids are $3.00  To see the schedule, visit Alexandria Aces Schedule – 2026 Baseball Season]