I’m just wondering if the former Little Leguers here had similar experiences with their banquets as I did or more like another one I was at.
First off, did you have a banquet at the end of the season?
We had one every year. It was where the winners got their trophies. We had it at a decent banquet hall. Sit down meal. Everyone wore suits. We sat with our teams. No one ran around like lunatics. Each year we had a guest speaker. I still remember my guest speakers. Ed Kranpool, Paul Blair and Jeff Torborg. A few years earlier my brother saw Rusty Staub. It impressed me to hear stories from real life major leaguers.
Fast forward many years and I’m taking my stepson to his banquet. It was total chaos. No one dressed up, tshirts and jeans. It was a buffet at the local firehouse. The kids ran around like wild animals. Some off them broke and flooded the bathroom. When I asked someone about a guest speaker they looked at me like I was crazy. It was an awful experience.
So was I the only one to have banquets like we used to? Are they all like the more recent one I went to?
When I was growing up, ours were at the local pizza place, or a persons house and a bbq, nobody wore suits, very informal, and a “guest speaker” was unheard of.
My kid’s end of season parties have all been just about identical to the ones I had when growing up.
FTR I’m 44. So do the math to see how long ago Little Legue was. I’m guessing that the lower level players back then needed to supplement their income more than they do now. And I grew up suburban middle class. This was not a rich town.
I’m 30, so my last Little League banquet was almost 20 years ago now. They were always held at the local amusement park. Kids got to run around like nuts all day, and then we ate pizza and wings in the picnic area. Around 7 or 8 or so, we’d all gather on the stage where the league commissioner would give the bigass trophy to the champs and then everyone else would get their participation trophies.
We had a dinner at a local pizza place, nothing formal. We wore our uniforms with regular shoes instead of cleats. Had pizza, soda, and played video games. The pizza place showed cartoons and old Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang shorts. No guest speakers or anything like that.
I’m 49 and mine were very similar to yours. I can’t remember how dressed up we were, and if the guest speakers were baseball players or not, but everything else was the same.