In any city, Camden included, there are local institutions. Places that are safe havens, that reach out to youth, that are run by community leaders, and that serve as anchor points for community. These are the places that communities can count on amidst churn all around them. One of those is the North Camden Little League; a fantastic program by local resent Bryan Morton. I’ve struggled with what to write about the North Camden Little League, in part because I haven’t been out to see a game yet, and in part because it is already being written about. GQ did a wonderful piece highlighting the little league.
Photo via NPR
It is a remarkable thing when a local organization pops, and youth programs like Sophisticated Sisters or the North Camden Little League get national attention. It helps them raise money, it makes them more stable, and its great for the youth too. When I first saw the Sophisticated Sisters, one of their youth stood up and said, “It’s how we tell the world we were here.” How powerful.
But these national narratives can also follow a familiar script. They have to be defined in terms of how terrible life is around them. That is an important story; people need to understand Camden and the tremendous need here. But it is also not the whole story. So when Stephen Paur sent me a poem he wrote on little league’s opening day, titled Up in The Sky, I decided to share it:
North Camden Little League parade of teams. 11:45am. Three blocks long. Firetruck-led. City Hall on 5th to 2nd to State to 7th to Pyne Point Park. Coaches & players & families & bikes & wagons. Uniforms, all colors. Phillies, Black Sox, Riversharks, Marlins, Pirates…Us: the Angels, red-and-white. Back-&-forth chants, girls then boys: “SOFTball!” “BASEball!” ”SOFTball!” “BASEball!” Porches crammed. Toddlers hanging on railings. Heads sticking out third-story windows. Doorways framing whole families. Then, at the end-point: each player shoulder-to-shoulder. A line of humans securing the perimeter. The infield’s perimeter. No gaps. The anthem. The mayor. The GQ lady. Pulitzer-winning photographer lady. The League president wearing tennis ball yellow. Documentarians roaming. Chief of Police pitches first. Free burgers. Free cleats. Killing time until pictures: baseball players on the basketball court. Our players. The chain net snags. Another court opens. They migrate. A Shop-Vac lies in the dirt after trying in vain to clear last night’s rain but one field’s dry at least & it’s sunny & we had our picture taken in the breeze & there’s music & hits into cotton flurries on Opening Day.
What Paur gets at so clearly is the joy and earthiness of the day. It was an event. It was part of the bigger picture; the way that these institutions give communities something to rally around.
It reminded me of my own eye-opening experience with the North Camden Little League. Mine happened in an unlikely place; I was on a basketball court. I was with a couple of friends participating in a 3-on-3 basketball tournament in North Camden. Like the little league, it was part sporting event, part social event. Youth kept showing up. And one of them wouldn’t take off his baseball glove. Everywhere he went, everything he did, he cradled that glove.
That is what a community institution looks like. It gives an eight year-old something to cherish. It is so deeply engrained in community that it can be found everywhere. It is a baseball glove at a basketball court and a firetruck at opening day.
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