‘A Season to Remember’: Documentary of 1952 Little League team includes director’s cut
Courtesy of Little League Baseball
Play at third base in 1952 Little League World Series
The year 1952 featured one of the greatest sports stories in Western Pennsylvania history.
A baseball team comprised of kids from Monongahela advanced to the championship game of the Little League World Series. To date, it is the only team from Western Pennsylvania to reach that game.
It is a story of triumph, tragedy and redemption, all of which has been captured in WQED’s documentary, “A Season to Remember: The Baseball Boys of Mon City.”
A shorter version of the film premiered in October. A new, expanded director’s cut, featuring 10 additional minutes, premieres at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Ringgold Middle School.
“There was a lot of content that we couldn’t fit into a 30-minute broadcast window,” explained Beth Dolinar, writer, producer and narrator of the documentary.
Dolinar, a native of Finleyville and a 1977 graduate of Ringgold High School, said she’s wanted to do this documentary for a long time. That’s understandable, because this story has many legs.
Scott Frederick, a retired history teacher from Ringgold High School, feels there are four chapters to the story.
The first chapter involves this team of 14 boys called the Monongahela Mighty Mites winning the state Little League championship.
In the state championship game, Monongahela slugged four consecutive home runs in the fifth inning to stretch a 2-1 lead over Hickory to the eventual final score of 6-1.
“The newspaper said it was the greatest Little League team in history to that point,” Frederick said. “They really were. In their first 15 playoff games, they only gave up five hits.”
Dick Sacane pitched a complete game one-hitter in the state title game, which came on the heels of a one-hit pitching performance by George Fabian in the semifinal contest – an 8-0 win over Mid-Valley. Sacane, who hit one of the four fifth-inning homers in the championship game, was tabbed as “The Babe Ruth of Little League.”
It was a team that combined great hitting with outstanding pitching on a staff that included left hander Eddie Kikla, referred to as the “Cy Young of Little League.” He was no slouch at the plate, either, with two home runs in the state title game
“The 1952 team was so talented,” Dolinar said. “They were considered unbeatable. We interviewed daughters of the coaches. They remembered their fathers saying they had never seen so much talent in one place.”
The second chapter deals with tragedy, a part of the story Frederick, a Monongahela native, did not know much about until he made a 2016 visit to Williamsport.
Many Monongahela residents traveled to Williamsport for the state championship, including a group of recent graduates of Monongahela High School.
A known criminal came upon three of the boys as they slept in their car. He killed the driver, Raymond Smith, 18, and forced Herbie Hixenbaugh, 17, to drive.
“These boys were sleeping in a car in a parking lot,” Frederick explained. “A career criminal accosted them. He held them hostage. He shot the driver, who subsequently dies.”
Quick thinking by Hixenbaugh saved his life and that of another teenage boy as he signaled SOS with the car’s brake lights as he sped past a parked police car.
The headlines in the Aug. 18, 1952, edition of The Daily Republican mark each event. One reads, “State LL Champions Given Rousing Welcome Home” with pictures of the parade honoring the team. The other reads, “Local LL Fan Slain Near Williamsport.”
“You had this horrible thing happen the same day this wonderful thing happened,” Dolinar said. “How do you hold two completely different emotions in your head at the same time? That is what was required to tell this story.”
Chapter three is the team’s participation in the Little League World Series as it continued to roll all the way to the championship game.
In the semifinal round, Monongahela walloped a team from Hackensack, N.J., by a 10-1 score.
This set up the championship game against Norwalk, Conn. A fifth-inning home run by Sacane gave Monongahela the 3-2 lead it took into the sixth and final inning, while Kikla was dominating on the mound.
However, Norwalk tallied two runs in the sixth and won 4-3.
Tom DeRosa served as the team’s bat boy. His brother, Frank, was a catcher on the team.
“They were all my buddies,” he said. “It was really exciting to be there. That team was phenomenal. They were crazy good. You never went there thinking they were going to lose. It’s a group of kids that were seconds away from being the world champions.”
He said he remembers those days vividly, including the celebratory parade to welcome home the state champions.
“That Little League team just drew everybody’s attention,” DeRosa recalled fondly. “Everybody in the town knew about them. Even people in other towns like Donora and Charleroi knew Mon City kids were in the Little League World Series. The sidewalk was like a ticker tape parade to Yankee Stadium. It was loud. You couldn’t even park in Mon City. It was a big, big, big deal.”
Chapter four of the story was not written until two years later when a Monongahela squad featuring 11 members of that Little League team won the Pony League World Series in Washington.
Monongahela defeated teams from much bigger cities like San Antonio, Texas, and Beverly Hills, Calif., before knocking off Chicago 8-2 in the championship game.
“They were resilient,” Frederick said. “Some of them said it was redemption, not just for them, but for the whole community. From my perspective, it really was good over evil. This really is a story of underdogs winning. It’s a redemption story, really, for everyone.”
Tickets are free for Wednesday’s screening but required due to limited auditorium capacity. They are available on Eventbrite or can be picked up in person at the Monongahela Area Historical Society at 711 West Main St.
Doors will open at 6 p.m.