Originally published August 19, 1981, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe
This is a story about a little league baseball team, the Parkway All Stars of West Roxbury and Roslindale; two big league guys, Paul Nicholson and Frankie (Ballgame) Long; and a bush league company, New England Telephone. It will just take a couple minutes to tell.
Nicholson and Long work for the phone company. The two men are service representatives in the Brookline business office. They both live in Roslindale and manage the Tigers in the Parkway little league.
Both guys are nuts about baseball. As a matter of fact, Nicholson, every summer on his vacation, drives his family to Williamsport, Pa., for the Little League World Series. That’s 400 miles one way.
This summer, the Tigers won their regular season division with a record of 17 and 3. Finishing first meant that Nicholson and Long got to manage the league allstar team entry in the state championships.
Three hundred and twenty two teams started playing for the state championship about a month ago. A week ago Friday, only four teams were left in the semifinals and the Parkway AllStars were one of those clubs.
“We never got that far before,” Nicholson said.
The games were scheduled for Friday afternoon at Downey Memorial Field in Brockton. Swampscott was going to play Easthampton and Parkway was going to play Taunton West at two o’clock. The winner of the series would be state champs and get the shot to go to New York for the East Coast finals and then on to Williamsport for the championship of the whole world of little league.
Naturally, Nicholson and Long asked the phone company if they could take Friday off. Naturally, they were told no.
Three days before game day, Nicholson, the manager, asked for a half day off. He was told he could leave at one o’clock. This meant that he would miss a coaches meeting at ll o’clock and team practice but he took what he could and told Joe Petitpas, his coach, that he would be there just about two o’clock.
Frankie (Ballgame) Long was told at the Brookline Telephone office that he could leave at 3:30. After all, he was just the assistant manager.
On Wednesday, two days before the series, the schedule was changed and Parkway’s game was moved from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Neither man said anything about the change because they already had been granted charity, without pay, by their employer.
“I said beautiful’,” Paul Nicholson remembers. “That gave me a chance to run a pregame practice.”
Friday came and Paul Nicholson left the office at one o’clock for Brockton. Ballgame Long got up from his desk at 3:15, went into the men’s room, changed into his game clothes and left the office at 3:20.
Taunton West beat the Parkway All Stars, 50. Swampscott beat Easthampton, 71 and went on to win the state championship by edging Taunton West, 64, in the finals.
“The kids were disappointed naturally,” Nicholson said. “But they had a great year.”
None of the kids were as disappointed as Nicholson and Long were, though, when they got to work a week ago Monday. There, the men were taken into separate offices and informed that they were suspended indefinitely for “falsifying reasons for time needed off” and, in Long’s case, for leaving work early.
Someone, it seems, had discovered that the ballgame actually began at 4:30 instead of 2. And, because the phone company is obsessed with time, Nicholson and Long, in addition to being suspended without pay, were told they would lose all overtime work.
Nicholson’s suspension lasted two days. Long was out all week. Both were not paid for the days involved.
“I still can’t believe it,” Nicholson was saying. “Little league is a community thing. It’s not like we were beating the phone company out of anything.
“Out of eight games we had to play to get to the semifinals, five were on weekdays and we left an hour early from work to get to those games. We just came in an hour early in the morning and made it up on straight time. And we beat eight good teams.”
“What if you had won the state championship?” he was asked.
“They weren’t gonna let me go,” Nicholson answered. “Imagine that? I had already asked. Just in case.”
Obviously, Nicholson and Long should have just called the field where the game was played. If they called after five and dialed it themselves, they could have talked for six innings without losing a dime. After all, that’s what the phone company is all about.
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