Aside from a few memories “the real verifiable League history becomes hazier each year,” Jim writes. “The old League minutes and records have been misplaced and destroyed as leaders rotated and officers move. It happens in most volunteer community organizations. And reliance on oral history gets less dependable every year, as memories fade and old leaders, managers and players die.”
“Everyone knows that Little League in Rising Sun began in 1954. The charter on the wall says so. Aside from that, however, there are virtually no documents, scorebooks, photos or old record left that tell about the origins of Rising Sun’s Little League. Whose idea was it? How did this community baseball tradition begin? Who were the leaders, the managers the League officials? Who was this group or ordinary citizens with a love of baseball, pride in their hometown, and an extraordinary vision?“
“Today’s players need to understand where it all started,” Jim continues. “There is a need to have a written record, describing the beginning of the Rising Sun Little League tradition. So the purpose of this written account is to honor those League founders by documenting the early memories and by reconstructing the remaining written fragments of League history.”
Jim has done an excellent job of documenting and aspect of our community history that would otherwise be lost with the passage of time. The book is available for purchase from the Historical Society and as part of the celebration of this aspect of our past the Society opened a special exhibit on the subject at its museum on 135 E. Main Street in Elkton. Be sure to check it out.
