Amateurs

What do 1090 AM radio, Baltimore Used Appliances, and Pat’s Pub have to do with sports? We usually talk about the major sports and major sports teams, but what about going down past the minor leagues, past college, past high school to when we were really young, to elementary school.

We had different local businesses sponsoring our local little league baseball teams. The team I played on was the 1090s, sponsored by 1090 AM radio station which broadcast all the Orioles games and probably the Colts games as well.

On our little league team, we definitely had no one who was a future major leaguer much less a Hall of Famer. But we had fun, and to this day we remember our sponsor, so it probably made business sense as well as any generosity or magnanimity.

Baltimore Used Appliances is sponsoring a Hispanic little league team and Pat’s Pub is sponsoring a local bowling team. These are just a few of the many small and large businesses who sponsor and support local teams. Not just little leagues and young kids but what my wife calls the Old Fart Leagues. This could be masters lacrosse, adult soccer teams, softball teams and bowling leagues.

One funny anecdote. One time we were playing a masters lacrosse game and after the game was over the refs were chatting with us. They were funny and insulting at the same time. They said they had only refereed high school and college games before this and didn’t know what to expect. They said they were surprised that we actually had stick skills and knew what we were doing but it was like watching a game in slow motion. Even so, we had a lot of fun and we got exercise and it helped us stay in shape. At least a little bit.

So, thank you to all those many businesses out there that sponsor all the little league teams in different sports and also all the teams in various adult leagues.