Little Leaguers find spotlight brings demands, responsibilities

For one week last August, the most talked-about baseball team in America might have been 12 Little Leaguers from Warner Robins, Ga. The youth players charmed millions of fans by winning the Little League World Series over Tokyo and, even more so, by the sportsmanship they displayed in consoling the distraught Japanese players afterward.

What happened next is testament to the growing importance of youth sports in American culture. Rather than go home to relatively normal lives as Little Leaguers would have done a generation ago, the Warner Robins players became public figures. Requests to appear at sporting events, receptions and other functions have been so plentiful that the boys have had few weekends without a commitment during the past five months.

The victory tour cranked up early. In the first week after the World Series, all 12 players were guests on “Good Morning America.” Dalton Carriker, the seventh-grader who hit a timely home run to win the game, appeared on the “Late Show with David Letterman” where he bantered with Dave about his clutch hit. (“With the count 2-1, I wasn’t thinking he would throw me a curveball …”).

A marketing company has helped the Warner Robins, Ga., Little League World Series champions handle business requests.

For months, red carpets were rolled out for the Warner Robins boys. The players witnessed a shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center, flew in the belly of an Air Force tanker plane, took batting practice with the Atlanta Braves, and were introduced before Atlanta Falcons and University of Georgia football games.

That was all a prelude to the ultimate VIP experience: a visit by the team with President Bush at the White House on Nov. 1. There also were celebrations back home in Warner Robins (population 57,907), where the locals have been toasting the youth players.

The adulation is no surprise considering the pull of the Little League World Series. In Atlanta, the championship game scored an average TV rating of 10.8, more that twice the audience for a Braves-Cardinals game airing at the same time. For the final 15 minutes of the Little League title game, ratings shot higher, to almost triple that of the MLB competition.

Warner Robins parents and league officials prepared for the spotlight. A local marketing company stepped forward to handle requests.

Parents of the players considered proposals for public appearances and trips. Two that were rejected: an invitation for the boys to be honored at a pro wrestling event and an overture from a Hawaiian surf shop to fly the team and their families to Hawaii for an unofficial rematch with the Tokyo team.

“That was pretty strange,” said Roman Jones, president of the Warner Robins American Little League.

So far, the only book on the team is a compilation of news accounts published recently by The Macon Telegraph, the local newspaper. Jones said the team’s coach, Mickey Lay, also has talked about writing a book.

The World Series experiences have been mind-expanding for the Little Leaguers, say their parents.

“One thing that’s come out of this: Dalton can talk to adults now,” said Patti Carriker, Dalton’s mother. “He doesn’t have any problems giving interviews.”

Yet there also have been challenges, including balancing the boys’ school work and need for free time with the objective of being gracious ambassadors for Little League.

In the early weeks after the World Series, much of the attention focused on Dalton Carriker. At times, the Carrikers received a half dozen letters a day addressed to their seventh-grader, many seeking autographs.

Fans also quickly discovered Dalton’s baseball-themed MySpace page and began contacting Dalton.

“Just last night he got another message: ‘Great hit … but I was rooting for Japan,’ ” said Patti Carriker, a physical therapist at a local elementary school.

Carriker said she explained to Dalton, the middle of her three children, new rules in effect until the attention passed. During the first few weeks after the World Series, if the phone rang, Dalton shouldn’t answer it. If someone contacted him on his MySpace page, she wanted to know.

Carriker said she considered the experience a teaching moment.

“The boys on the team are great ambassadors,” she said. “But there are always people looking to see them do something wrong. I’ve said to Dalton, ‘You have a responsibility.’”

One such responsibility has been to give back to the Warner Robins Little League, which expects a 30 percent surge in registration this season in response to the excitement of last season.

In December, the league broke ground on two new Little League fields at a cost of $125,000. Also planned: a 4-foot black granite monument to the Little League champs, etched with the names and stats of the players.

Already, the league has raised more than half that sum, Jones said, much of it from a series of autograph signings at shopping malls and other local businesses. The boys scribble their names for free, but souvenir hunters pay $6 for baseballs, and some sponsoring businesses have made donations to the league of $5,000. The signings are over for now, but may return in the spring, along with baseball season.

Mark Hyman, a journalist and a lawyer, is writing a book about youth sports and the role of adults.