Local Miracle League disproves notion of no crying in baseball

Tim McGarry remembers coming home after a night of socializing, flipping on TV and watching a bunch of special-needs kids in Georgia navigating the bases in walkers and wheelchairs during a segment on HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel."

He recalls his heart and emotions wrestling with the notion "there's no crying in baseball" and wondering if maybe Rockford Peaches skipper Jimmy Dugan wasn't wrong about that in the movies.

The next morning McGarry called HBO seeking information on this baseball game in Georgia, this Miracle League where special-needs kids get to swing the bat and run the bases and feel the sun beating down on their shoulders, just like their brothers and sisters and the other neighborhood kids do when it gets warm outside.

HBO put him in touch with Diane Alford, the executive director of the original Miracle League, the one in Conyers, Ga., as seen on TV. McGarry, a local attorney whose brother, Rory, had a birth defect and died at 29, asked if there was a Las Vegas Miracle League, what could he do to help and who was in charge.

"Well, darlin'," McGarry said, effecting his best impression of a woman speaking with a genteel Southern drawl, "I guess I'm talkin' to him."

McGarry's not alone anymore. Some five years after determining Las Vegas' special-needs kids should have a league of their own, they do. He partnered with the Ralph and Betty Engelstad Foundation, the First Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, local builders Geotechnical & Environmental Services, Inc., and Breslin Construction and dozens and dozens of volunteers in transforming the former John Potowski Field at 101 S. Rancho Drive -- the same field on which McGarry ran the bases as a youth -- into Las Vegas Miracle League Park.

There are spiffy restrooms and a concession stand and desert landscaping and a sound system and brightly painted yellow-gold foul poles in left and right field. More important, there are wheelchair-accessible dugouts and a rubberized field that makes it easier for the special-needs kids to leg or wheel out an infield single -- although, having now seen them play, I would wager most would figure out a way to do it on a dusty sandlot, too.

There are special rules in the Miracle League: Every player bats once each inning, all are safe on the bases, every player scores a run, and community children and volunteers serve as "buddies" to assist the players.

Except for the part about the buddies, it's sort of like the Cubs' Carlos Zambrano pitching against the Braves on Opening Day.

Games last two innings. The smiles and the joy and the tugs on the heartstrings last a lot longer.

On Saturday morning, a doe-eyed 7-year-old tyke who suffers from a brutal genetic bone disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta -- brittle bone disease -- performed the ceremonial first-pitch duties on Miracle League Opening Day and threw a perfect, knee-high fastball to Mayor Oscar Goodman. A little later, when it was his turn to bat, Little Dan McCarty knocked a ground ball past the third baseman and proceeded to scoot, on his butt, all the way to first base.

They had a wheelchair if he wanted it. Dan didn't want it. Or need it.

Although he was self-conscious about scooting all the way to first on his butt like that and holding up the game, Little Dan did it, because heck, that's the way he gets around at home most of the time.

"I thought it took a lot of courage for him to do that," said a vivacious woman with a heart of gold named Nicole McCarty -- coach of the Miracle League Red Sox, program director of the Las Vegas Miracle League and Dan's mom.

By the time he got to first base, Dan looked a little winded, like Prince Fielder beating out a bunt, were that possible. But everyone in the crowd was cheering and slapping high-fives and calling his name, and Little Dan McCarty's face lit up like the sky above Cashman Field on Fireworks Night.

One spectator had to turn away. His heart and emotions also were wrestling with the notion there's no crying in baseball and seemed on the verge of getting pinned.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352.