While many suburban dads may have visions of iPads and flat screen TVs dancing in their heads, at the very top of Tim Lockwood’s holiday wish list this year is a new indoor facility for the children and coaches of the Cranbury Plainsboro Little League.
“A new indoor facility will allow kids to practice all year round. Once they get better at the game, they love it more and are inspired to work harder. They also learn that hard work pays off,” says Lockwood of Plainsboro, the newly elected president of the CPLL board.
“The dream of an indoor facility has been floating around for years, through at least three board presidents before me. It’s always been about getting a plot of land from the town, but the wheels are in motion and we are hoping to build the facility on a piece of parkland in Plainsboro. We’re actively pursuing the location along with exploring environmental impact tests, including wetland testing. We figure it could cost upwards of $200,000 so our board is launching a fundraising campaign to figure out how to pay for it.” Lockwood notes that the facility would be self-funded; there is no plan to ask the township for any money to build it.
One of the fundraising ideas is a raffle to be held on the final day of the CPLL season in June, a day traditionally reserved for the championship game, homerun derby, awards ceremony, and picnic. Lockwood says the league will be looking for grants and corporate sponsorships and asking businesses to donate prizes.
“Part of this is to drum up new players. In Plainsboro we have a diverse community with many families that have moved in from other places that don’t play baseball. The idea is to let them know that Little League is a great way to get involved immediately with the community and have fun.”
Many neighboring Little League towns, including West Windsor and Hamilton, have indoor facilities with pitching machines and batting cages so players get individual instruction and can practice year round. “We want to be more competitive with those towns,” explains Lockwood. “If you look at the teams that win district titles, they all have indoor facilities. Not only will our kids stay sharper, they can also stay more physically active and fit, especially during the winter when it’s easy to become a couch potato. It also helps coaches keep their skills sharp. Whether you’re a coach or a kid, if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.”
Last year CPLL had 450 children ages 4-12 playing baseball and softball. The goal this season is to increase that number to 500. Every spring the league loses a few players to other sports, including lacrosse, which is why Lockwood is working with Lightning Lacrosse to coordinate scheduling so kids can play both.
Lockwood also has an idea based on “Friday Night Lights.” “We envision four different Friday nights throughout the spring baseball season where a majors game will be played at Plainsboro Community Park. We’ll make it a huge community event. We’ll bring out the grill, have an old-fashioned cookout, and draw people out to watch the national pastime.”
Baseball was very much a part of Lockwood’s childhood growing up in Owego, a small town in upstate New York near Binghamton. Tim and his two older brothers were coached by their dad in Little League, and when he was 12, Tim played on the All-Star team, just as his two sons do today. Tim continued playing first base through high school and also was quarterback for the football team. At Cornell he majored in agricultural economics. He knew he wanted to work in the food industry, so he went to work for Wegmans in Ithaca. He worked his way up the management ladder and currently manages the Manapalan store, which has 550 employees. The people skills required on the job will stand him in good stead as the leader of the 18-member CPLL board.
Lockwood has held many positions in CPLL leading up to his presidency. It’s kind of inevitable since he has three children in Little League — Jeremy, 12, who plays in the majors; Justin, 8, who played Triple A last season, and daughter Jillian, 7, who started as a softball rookie last year. Their mom, Maria, is a pharmacist for the Wegmans store in Mount Laurel. The couple met at a Wegmans company function in 1994. “We were playing volleyball,” recalls Lockwood. “I went to spike it and she blocked my shot.”
Lockwood says he sees baseball and softball as more than just games played on a field. “I’ve met so many of my friends through Little League, and it’s the same for our kids. It’s all about bringing the community together. As for the kids, everybody wants to win and we try to do that, but being a part of Little League teaches kids that it’s not just about winning and losing. It’s about hard work, practice, and doing your best.”
My Four Sons. As the board member in charge of fundraising for CPLL, much of the responsibility for raising the money for the new indoor facility is going to fall on the shoulders of Ed Doherty of Plainsboro, who has four sons who have come up through Little League baseball. He’s a firm believer in the facility, and as a long-time CPLL board member, he’s been part of the team that’s been keeping the dream alive all these years.
“It’s something that’s desperately needed and long overdue,” says Doherty. “The facility is going to open the door for us to get more kids involved and train the kids we already have to make them better. Right now our fields are not given to us until April, which means that our kids go into the season cold, without much time to warm up for tryouts and practice. If kids can tune up their skills, the more fun they have and the more they want to do it –– this is true of anything, and especially baseball.”
Doherty grew up in northeast Philadelphia. “It was all football, basketball, and baseball, with a very vibrant Little League. You had to try out for Little League, but there were rec teams too and everybody had a chance to play.” Doherty recalls his father telling him about playing baseball in the streets of Philadelphia when he was a kid. “These days you might have as many as four generations at a baseball game. Grandma brings great-grandma and everybody watches. Little League makes for the perfect family pastime.”
Doherty was the second of six kids. He had three brothers and two sisters; the boys all played baseball and both girls played softball. “We all loved it. And when you weren’t playing organized games, you were playing stickball. You took your mother’s broom, cut the handle off, and then grabbed a bunch of coke bottles so you could redeem them for some money to buy a little pink ball. Then you’d go out to the high school parking lot and on any given day a couple of dozen kids would show up to play. You only stopped playing when the ball got lost or your stick broke or you had to go in for dinner.”
Doherty played Little League from the age of 7 to 12 and then in local travel leagues through high school and college. He graduated from Cardinal Dougherty High School, and then went to La Salle, graduating with a degree in marketing and economics. When he’s not working as a salesman in office supplies, he’s either raising money for CPLL or coaching. He started coaching when Matt, his son from his first marriage, was only 7 years old. Like his dad, Matt enjoyed catching. He played all the way through Babe Ruth and high school at St. Joe’s in Metuchen. Now 33 and a graduate of West Point, Matt is a civil engineer in Jacksonville, Florida.
With Doug, 17, a senior at West Windsor Plainsboro High School North, it was actually his mother, Denise, who started him off on his own successful baseball career. “He was two years old when she started throwing a wiffle ball to him in the backyard,” remembers Doherty. Doug played CPLL until he aged out at 12, then played for the school team at Community Middle School for two years concurrently with Babe Ruth. He played for the freshman team at North, a year on JV and then will play two years on varsity, concurrently with Babe Ruth and American Legion. While he loves playing third base and outfield, he is a standout catcher.
Scott, 11, started CPLL at 5 and was a member of the 11 year-old All-Star team that won the Viking Tournament Championship in South Brunswick this summer. He is also a catcher.
Andrew James, 8, aka AJ, started with T-ball and just finished his second year of All-Stars. His team, coached by Rob McMahon and Ray Cella, went to the semi-finals of the USABL League tournament. It’s not hard to guess what position he likes to play –– catcher.
“We’re a traditional baseball family and baseball is the all-American game,” says Doherty. “It’s such a wholesome sport. It involves team play and discipline and it’s the true family game. Baseball is also a game of pure talent. There’s none of the violence of hockey or football. With other sports, if you make a mistake, you’re in the penalty box. With baseball, you have three chances, three strikes before you’re out.”
