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34 GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS | 2021– 2022 died of complications related to his heart the next day on Sept. 7 — his 34th birthday. His family and community mourned him at funeral ser- vices held at Central Chapel AME Church on Sept. 12, 1967. On June 15, 1970, Minor League coaches Hank Chapin, Bob Dixon and Jonas Bender announced that — with the permission of his father, Kingsley Perry — they had renamed the league in honor of Don Perry. In the same YS News brief in which the league’s name change was announced, it was reported that the trio of coaches had begun experimenting with a new system which would allow “every player to bat (off a practice tee) in every inning, with outs not being counted.” In a 1989 letter to the YS News, Chapin recalled why the trio of coaches had made the change-up to the normal state of play in the youth baseball league: “The result was more interesting action. Before the tee, Minor League games consisted of the pitcher and catcher playing endless catch, innumerable walks, few players getting up to hit and a lot of standing around. Incidentally, I made the first batting tee by using a plumber’s helper [a plunger] with a small length of garden hose attached to the handle,” Chapin wrote. In the decades that fol- lowed, that particular experi - mentation would become an enduring legacy of noncom- petitive play, in which all kids with enough gumption to step out onto the diamond would be rewarded with numerous chances to hit and field — and, of course, to pick clover in the outfield and roll in the dust if they so preferred. That 1970 season was also the one that would end Minor League’s “boys only” member- ship. As Chapin wrote in the same letter: “Perry League created so much interest that girls immediately asked the coaches if they could play, too. The girls were so pleas- ant, enthusiastic and confi - dent they would be treated fairly that ‘yes’ was the only possible answer.” The admission of play- ers of any gender eventually extended to the village’s Little League program, now divided by age into the Major, Intermediate and Minor Leagues, for all those young athletes who want to try their hand at playing baseball by its intended rules. In Perry League, however, the tee remains at home plate. There are no teams, no outs and — as Coach Jimmy has reminded readers of the YS News since the late ’80s — a thousand strikes. Following in the footsteps of Chapin, Dixon and Bender, Jimmy Chesire has helped guide the Perry League’s metamorphosis into its cur- rent incarnation — a whirl - wind of joy and chaos where there are few rules other than fun — since the summer of 1986. That summer, Chesire took his daughter, Adrienne, to her first Perry League game. As the story goes, the first night Chesire and Adrienne showed up to play was also the night that the league’s then-organizer and coach, Harry Calvert, decided to step down. “He said that if any of the adults wanted the program to continue, we should come out on the field with him,” Chesire told the News in August of 2021. “I was sitting next to the high school principal, so when he went out, I followed him.” “That night, I took the equipment home,” he said. He continued to take the equipment home for the rest of the season — and, eventu- ally, every season for the next 35 years. That first season, at the suggestion of his wife, Robin Suits, Chesire sent in a short write-up about the program to the YS News. He continued to do this for the next several years, growing the league — and the length of his narratives. Eventually, Chesire was asked by the News to officially contribute his work as a sports page col- umnist, and over the years, he developed a distinct narrative voice, describing kids at bat with generous onomatopoeia and patently unconventional adjectives. “I remember once, I was writing about the way a little boy addressed the ball and swung his bat — I called it ‘delicious,’” Chesire said, laugh - ing. “One of the previous edi- tors [of the News] didn’t like that and cut out the word — I understood that, but to me, it fit the emotional dynamics of what I was trying to do.” Three-year-old Eliza Minde-Berman, captured mid-swing at a Perry League t-ball game in the summer of 2009. | PHOTO BY AARON ZAREMSKY Continued from page 33 108 Xenia Ave. (Downtown Yellow Springs) 937-767-2131 Over 45 years in Yellow Springs VEGETARIAN FRIENDLY! 5% military discount when in uniform W W W W HAHA PIZZA Jail House SUITES Beautifully renovated historic jail house built in 1878. Just one “cell” block from downtown Yellow Springs. Available for overnight and extended stays. www.jailhousesuites.com 111N.Winter St., Yellow Springs, OH 45387 937-319-1222