The Cuyahoga Falls Amateur Baseball Association golf outing in Ohio serves several purposes.

1. It’s a chance for long-ago partners in helping the youth of Cuyahoga Falls learn life lessons through baseball.

2. Money went to the CFABA itself to help future Falls youths.

3. A bunch of old codgers had reunions, some with people who worked with 35 years ago.

4. The golf was average, in the case of our 4-man scramble, but the fun was A+.

5. It’s a memorial to Joe DiGeroloma, an outstanding coach and greater person in the CFABA program history of fine folks who helped the young people develop into tomorrow’s citizens of society.

6. Brookledge Golf Course, Cuyahoga Falls, Aug. 1, 2015.

 

I feel good about my 40 years of contributions to helping young people learn about life through baseball in Williamson, West Virginia; Dayton, Ohio; and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

 

And that I created and oversaw the first integrated baseball program in Williamson, for 12 and under children, BEFORE Brown v. Board of Education forced the entire nation and state to do it. As they aged, each league for older players embraced the no-color-line attitude, too, so integration spread ever onward and upward. Denying children a chance at anything because of their color or religion or ethnic background is so ignorant. Thank God America advanced beyond those embarrassing days.

 

I got far more rewards from all this than I ever gave to the young people. It's thrilling when future generations come back and tell me that they are passing on the lessons they learned from me to the generation following them.

 

I'm big on loyalty and tradition, as anyone who has been overwhelmed by my "WV" clothing, lamps, framed large photos of Mountaineer Field crowds, drapes, books by Jerry West, Mickey Furfari and Don Nehlen, even my Alabama cap as a remembrance of Brother, one of our celebrity Lions, knows.