This Is Beyond Scrub League...

What do you get when you take 20 16-year-old boys with a passion for sports and an empty summer? What do you get when you give them ballpark and an idea that lasted for five long months? What do you get when you find boys considered "not good enough" for their high school or travel baseball teams, but still have a love for the game of baseball? What you get, is Scrub League.

It was like a scene of out of the Sandlot in the summer of 2009. Three times a week, boys stood there in ratty ball clothes and Converse All-Stars (okay, maybe not THAT far). Boys who didn't view 1:30 in the afternoon in the middle of July as a time to take a nap or play inside, but instead a time to play ball.

Boys who dusted off their old little league gloves that hadn't seen any action since they were nine or 10. Boys who just wanted a chance to pitch to a live batter or hit their first home run. These boys wanted to play like the Major League Baseball men they watched on TV.

We didn't spend a summer tossing around the ball a few times, having an occasional home-run derby, or playing a few loosely called five inning games. We may have played like a bunch of scrubs, but you wouln't have guessed it from our rules. Nine-inning games. First 20 to arrive, bat nine on nine, complete with a catcher and one bench player.

Those who werent lucky enough to make the game that day would either wallow home in despair or stick around for a chance to maybe get some hits in if some one got injured, though we played through blood and bruises.

The pitching wasn't fast, but don't you dare tell that to the Scrub League Ace's. They were proud of the 40 MPH cheese they were hurling, and you can bet money they can tell you the exact number of "K"s they had that day. Everybody got a hit at one point or another. Everybody had a great moment.

You would have thought that these boys had just won a championship judging by the look's on their faces after a walk-off victory. To these boys, it was more than just a game.

The summer came and went, the home run king was crowned, the "Cy Young" iced his arm. Yet on the last day at the ball park when the final out of a 7-3 game was called, the boys walked away not sad that the summer had come to and end and so had their dream of playing ball.

Instead, the boys that walked away had satisfied looks and goofy grins spread wide across those pre-pubescent faces. They had just gotten the call up from manager. They had just conquered Scrub League.