It was an ordinary day. Lancaster County baseball season is about to come to a close for the summer of 2021. We missed the baseball season last year due to COVID-19, so this season was a bit more special than ever before. My grandson Caden played for the Hempfield Black 16U (16 years old and under) team this past summer. Hempfield High School is one of the largest high schools in Lancaster County which means you have to be a pretty good baseball player to make the team. The high school season ended with the team from nearby Manheim winning the County Championship. Soon after that season ended, the summer league began play with close to 16 teams. Since Hempfield is larger than most other areas, they entered two teams in the league. My grandson played on the Hempfield Black with about a dozen other boys while the Hempfield Red team had about the same amount of players. I suspect the high school coaches tried to make the teams as equal as they could to make both teams competitive. Well, the season is almost over and Hempfield Black is undefeated, but does have one tie with...you guessed it...Hempfield Red. At the end of the season will be played the annual tournament that at one time was known as The New Era Tournament. The tournament began 75 years ago and is sponsored by our local newspaper.
It is an honor to play and coach in this annual tournament which has three different age brackets once known as Midget-Midget (ages 9-12), Jr. Midget (ages 13-14), and Midget (ages 15-16). Today they are 12 and under (12U), 14 and under (14U), and 16 and under (16U). The tournament began back in 1946 when Lancaster County seemed to have a little bone to pick with its youngsters. It was shortly after the end of WWII and the county elders though that the kids in town were getting into too much trouble. So, the local newspaper's sports editor, George W. Kirchner, decided he would do something to pull those kids away from less wholesome pursuits and organized a baseball tournament. Mr. Kirchner wrote in the newspaper about the brand new baseball tournament . He figured if you could take the kids and "steer them into a path that would lead to good, clean, healthy fun, it would get their minds off things that would lead to mischief." That first summer 65 teams in Lancaster County competed in the Midget division which at that time was ages 12-14. Another four teams of 9-11 years old had a shorter tournament. On August 20, 1946 the team from New Providence beat Hamilton 6-3 to claim the tourney's first ever tournament championship.
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| The 1946 New Providence Champions. |
The game was played at Stumpf Field along the Fruitville Pike in Manheim Township. Stump Field at the time was the home of the Lancaster Red Roses, who played in the Class B Inter-State League from 1940-1953. The game drew quite a crowd. Across the front page on August 21 was a panoramic photograph of the jammed stadium the night of the game. The headline read: "Record Crowd of 7,250 at Stumpf Field for Finals of the New Era Midget Baseball Tournament (Story on Sports Pages.)" It seemed as if all of Lancaster County turned out for this grand finale. That was the start of what today is still just as big as it ever was for Lancaster County. On the 50th Anniversary of the tournament, Mr. Curt Aspril, the New Providence ace pitcher in that very first game, thanked former sports editor Bill Carroll for a story marking the tournament's 50th Anniversary. As you can see, the New Era Tournament has been, and still is, a big deal in Lancaster County.
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| The first page of the Sports Section in today's newspaper. |
It now has three categories and is no longer known as the New Era Tournament, since the newspaper is now called LNP LancasterOnline. Hey, no big deal as long as they will sponsor the tournament. My personal journey through the tournament will be my story tomorrow. Follow along... It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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| Another insert in today's newspaper telling about the upcoming tournament. |
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