Small Plays Big in Little League Dixie Baseball

By Mandy Catoe

It takes a bit of conniving to get Larry Small to stand in the limelight.

The Lancaster Dixie Baseball League board members lured Small to the mound to throw out the ceremonial first pitch on March 23, the opening day of LDB’s 61st season. 

After a long, but in no way complete list of what he has given local youth baseball, LDB secretary Jill Laney said, “Mr. Small from this day forward, Field 6 will be named the Larry Small Field.” 

Briceson Hall, 11, returns ceremonial first pitch to Larry Small. Hall plays in Ozone League for 11-12 year olds. Hall who has played on the fields since he was 4 said “I understood what he has done and this was a tremendous honor. I felt that I was lucky that I got to catch it”

Small, 71, has served the local baseball community for 44 years and is still going strong.

He says the kids keep him young.

“I was very humbled and honored,” Small said. “I don’t know what to say. I’m usually the one in the back of everything and I am shocked that my people did this to me.”

Small constantly praises others. He understands and teaches teamwork.

“The gift of baseball is learning to work with other people,” he said. “The best pitcher in the world has to have someone to field that ground ball and throw the batter out.”

In addition to his time, Small shares his money and his faith. He has paid the registration fee for children who wanted to play but had no money. And he prays for all them. 

“We will not turn a child away from Dixie Ball,” Small said. “We never have. We will find a way.”

As a coach, he drafted a little boy with muscular dystrophy to play on his team. On the last game of the season, he did a little conniving of his own to make sure that kid knew what it felt like to make it safely to first base. 

Laney said Small is a reminder of what we should all strive to be.

Once word got out on facebook about the naming of Field 6, many former little leaguers began reminiscing and posting their decades-old Dixie Baseball pictures. 

Small has coached hundreds of little leaguers and affected thousands of kids. The league fields at least 300 kids every year and has had as many as 700 a couple of seasons. 

Every little boy in uniform dreams of making it to the big league. Small insists that they keep their focus on their grades. He coordinates with the school district to insure no games are scheduled the night before major academic testing.

He reminds the dreamers that only a tiny percentage will make the pros.

“Your education is more important than anything you will do,” he tells them.

His players have become lawyers, bankers, ministers, and all-around good young men.

Nearly 30 of the boys he coached played college or professional baseball.

One of the most famous is Pep Harris who pitched for the Anaheim Angels from 1996 to 1998.

“Larry was one of my first pitching coaches,” Harris said by phone last week. “He taught me to stay relaxed, not rush and just throw strikes.”

Harris, who now resides in Irmo, said Small is like family and he was happy to see Lancaster honor someone who gave so much to the youth.

Harris didn’t have a major league photo of himself to share for this story, but five minutes after the phone interview, he sent a text of a team photograph from the 80s. It was the Lancaster County Natural Gas team and a young Harris was standing next to Coach Larry Small.  

A young Pep Harris stands next to Coach Larry Brown in the early 80s.

Found online: Pep Harris in MLB uniform, Anaheim Angels in 96-98.

Robert Howey, sports editor of The Lancaster News, played a little right field as a youngster at Wylie Park. 

He feels Small deserves the honor of having one of the fields named in his honor.

“If Lancaster Dixie Baseball had a hall of fame, Larry would be a first-time unanimous selection,” Howey said.

Small began coaching in 1971 after two years of military service in the army. Forty-eight seasons have come and gone since then. He took four years off to watch his son, Brad, play baseball for Erskine College in Due West, SC. Larry, his son Brad and grandson Blayne all learned the fundamentals of the game on the Dixie Baseball fields at Wylie Park. 

Small and his wife Gayle recently celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary. He still works as a licensed contractor and gets up before dawn to work at his daughter’s restaurant. 

His son Brad is Vice President at First Citizens Bank and his daughter Kelly Gibson owns and runs the South 200 Grill that has been in the family since 1965. The Smalls have five grandchildren.

Larry Small with his wife Gayle and son Brad.

The Dixie Baseball League fields have been quiet during spring break. The games will resume the week of the 22nd. Small will be back at the park, cooking in the concession stand, walking the grounds offering praise and encouragement and high-fiving the kids. 

Small summed up what he has learned and taught for nearly half a century. He took a second, gathered his thoughts and said, “You learn there is more than you in this world.”

 (All photos in this story were supplied. A version was published in The Lancaster News  April 19, 2019.)

AJ's Marc Truesdale Finishes the Boston Marathon

By Mandy Catoe

Local runner Marc Truesdale added an orange Volunteers flair to the 123rd Boston Marathon on Tuesday.
Truesdale, 39, sported the cross country colors of the Andrew Jackson High School team he coaches, completing the 26.2-mile course in 3:18:45. The Kershaw native teaches government and economics at AJHS.
The weather was warm and very humid, with Truesdale battling dehydration, nausea and fatigue at the end.
Immediately after the race Truesdale said, “It was a bad day and a good day. I struggled today, but I finished.”

For the first 18 miles, Trusedale was on pace to finish under three hours. He reached the halfway point with a time of 1:28:40.
Some have described the marathon by saying the halfway mark is at Mile 20 when the body has used up its glycogen stores and the runner feels intense pain in his legs, lower back and hips.

The legendary Boston course has an incline at that critical 20th mile, known as Heartbreak Hill.


Truesdale said when he was running the hills between miles 16 and 21 the heat began to take its toll. He said he thought it was just the terrain and that he would be fine once he was back on level ground, but by Mile 22, Truesdale’s had depleted his physical reserves and had to rely on sheer will.
“Coming down Chestnut Hill which is after Heartbreak Hill, every step was so painful, I had to stop,” he said. “I hydrated, ate an orange slice and poured water on my head and tried to re-gather myself.”
The father of three then spotted his wife, Stephanie and daughter, Charlee, 9, on the side of the course next to their hotel. The Truesdales also have two sons, Denton, 7, and Connor, 4. Denton has been diagnosed with autism.
For a spit second, Truesdale thought about walking off the course into the comfortable room to end his agonizing pain.
“I thought about the AJ top I was wearing and how I was representing my community and all the hard work I had put in to just get here,” he said.
Then Truesdale told his wife that he would finish even if he had to walk the remaing distance.
He trudged ahead and began to slowly jog at a 9-to-10-minute pace and in the last mile he quickened to an 8-minute pace.
“My legs were hurting. Every step was so painful,” Truesdale said.
Near the end, he spotted a photographer and hammed it up a bit.
“I saw that camera and I said I am going to act like I am happy and I am going to smile,” he said. “I put on a show.”
Looking back, Truesdale said he would have been wise to back off his pace earlier to keep “something in the tank” for the final miles.
“It feels great to finish,” he said. “I was humbled by the course.”

The Finisher's Medal

A little perspective
About 30,000 runners lined up to run the 26.2 miles. Truesdale was the 6,251st runner to finish. After he crossed the finish line, there were 24,000 runners still hoping to reach that point and get a finisher’s medal.
The first one to cross the finish line was Kenyan Lawrence Cherono with a time of 2:07:57. The last one was a lady named Red Hilton whose time was nearly nine hours.
One hour and 10 minutes after Truesdale finished the race, a marine, Micah Herndon, nine years his junior, crawled across the finish line.
For a runner, the Boston Marathon is the ultimate goal. It is one of the most challenging marathons in the world.
To run Boston, one must qualify based on age and gender. For Truesdale, that meant he had to run the 26.2 miles in three hours and 10 minutes. He ran the Tobacco Road Marathon in Cary, N.C., in March 2018 in 3:02:40 and came in under three hours (2:57:30) at the Kiawah Island Marathon this past December.

“It’s the holy grail of marathons in the United States,” Truesdale said.  “It’s a bucket list item that I knew I was capable of based on my past running times.”
Support system
Stephanie Truesdale had complete faith that her husband would finish the marathon. She shared her thoughts before the race.
“He has been training tirelessly for years now, while still finding time to coach the cross country team at AJ, be an amazing teacher, and a dedicated husband and father,” she said. “Most of the time that means getting up at 4:30 a.m. and running in the pitch-black dark and returning home in time to help me get the kids ready and off to school.”

Marc, Stephanie, Charlee, Denton, Connor

Marc Truesdale said he owes a lot to running buddies Keith Crapps, Tony Yarborough, Michael Knight, Cole Horton, Brent Stogner, and Jareth Bailey.
Truesdale played soccer until his mid-30s.
As he and his friends began to raise families, he transitioned to running. He has won the last three annual Laps for Lancers, a local 10K. One of his most meaningful victories was when he won the Pacing for Pieces Autism Half Marathon this past March.
“I won that one for Denton,” he said.

(Similar version published in The Lancaster News April 21, 2019. Photos supplied.)