BALLS

Tom Pry

The 7/31/05 Three Rivers Edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette had an interesting article on Searcy’s first sanctioned Little League baseball team.

This photo shows the “Little Major Leaguers,” and Coach/league organizer “Pinky” Berryhill.

The copyrighted article also contains contemporary photos of Linos Abbott, Gerald Casey, and Elmer Dale Yancey.

Among the many in-town names I recognized on that first team were Roger Wooten, Larry Crain, and the late Dr. Robert Elliott. Among the out-of-towners (now) who were in the league back in 1951 are listed Clifton Carson, Jimmy Riddle, Larry Morgan, John Alex McCoy, and Bill Dobbins.

If you feel like forking out $1.95 to buy the article digitally from the DOG (or Dem-Gaz, as it’s sometimes known), go to http://library.ardemgaz.com/ .
------------------

There is some perversity in my nature that makes me feel free to recommend movies and books to other people, but something makes me resist partaking of other people’s recommendations.

So it was with some reluctance that I accepted a Library copy of a book by an author highly recommended by no less than Suzie Hoffman Boyette. The author has the unlikely name of Ferral Sams. A doctor from a small town in Georgia, his books recount, like this column, long ago days – with unerring accuracy, plus more than a bit of humorous seasoning.

The book Suzie gave me is entitled “Run with the Horsemen,” and I’ve run through about half of it so far. It’s a riot, and rings very, very true.

Pick up a copy: how could you ignore a recommendation from both an inveterate reader AND the Head Librarian for this whole cotton-pickin’ county?

And, while we’re copping copyrighted photos by the talented Greg Benenati of the Searcy Daily Citizen, here’s one run recently of Buddy Phillips. It is worth noting that Suzie and Buddy are of an age that many of the youngsters around think is Over the Hill, Suzie’s picture was to note the opening of a new branch library, this one in Rosebud, and the story about Buddy was about the new livestock exhibition building making its appearance at the Fairgrounds.

Nice going, kids.