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Jersey Shore players from 1st series honored at opening ceremonies

MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette Members of the 1947 Jersey Shore Little League team wave to the crowd after their introduction before the Conncticut vs New Jersey game at Lamade Stadium Thursday. The team played in the Little League World Series in 1947.

The first game ceremonies at Howard J. Lamade Stadium on Thursday honored six Little League veterans who participated in the then-named, first annual National Little League Tournament.

The Jersey Shore All-Star alumni, who played in the 1947 National Little League Tournament, were honored before Thursday’s New England versus Mid-Atlantic game and marked 70 years since the members of the team had played on the original baseball diamond at Carl E. Stotz field on W. Fourth Street.

“It was a treat to see some of my old teammates after 70 years,” Jack Hooser, catcher for the 1947 Jersey Shore team said. “There are no words to describe this setting right here.”

The six alumni did not originally plan to come to their old stomping grounds to be honored by the series that they played in so long ago. Earl Thompson, also a catcher for the Jersey Shore All-Star Team, had contacted his fellow teammates in the hopes that they could have a reunion.

“Dale Straub coordinated it,” Neil Klinefelter, pitcher and shortstop, said. “Earl raised the question that we would all come down together, but Dale picked it up from there.”

“I contacted the series but I thought there was no way that was going to happen,” Dale Straub, of the Jersey Shore team, said. “Scott Rosenberg, director of publicity, called and said they would have us.”

Klinefelter threw out the first ball in the name of the Jersey Shore All-Star team. “Back in ’47, we had no idea it would come to this,” Klinefelter said. “The good thing is that they kept it in Williamsport. It wouldn’t have been like this anywhere else.”

During the 1947 Series, the Jersey Shore All-Star team lost in their first game against the Maynard Midgets of Williamsport, who would go on to win the Series.

Little League was born nine years before it held its first series. In 1938, Carl E. Stotz, an employee at Lundy Lumber Co. in Williamsport, began forming the league after he had asked his two nephews after playing baseball with them in their yard, “How would you like to play on a regular team with uniforms, a new ball for every game and bats you can really swing?”

The rest is history and a nice slice of it includes the Jersey Shore team honored Thursday.

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