Minneapolis principal’s ‘sandlot’ baseball team works social muscles during summer break

Three families gathered at Lake Hiawatha Park last week for Minneapolis Sandlot Ball and lined up by age — 6 to 40-something — to determine the batting order. As the youngest stepped up to the plate, a couple of the moms introduced themselves and headed to the outfield.

Unbound by baseball’s usual rules and regulations, the casual pickup game was curveball-packed. One kid sat on a base. Another played in the home-plate dirt. A dad who called his beloved baseball “a hard sport to play” (due to the number of players required), slugged one deep into center. A runner tickled the third baseman.

A 9-year-old walking by with his grandpa saw the fun and wanted in.

“Can I play?” he asked.

Of course. The kid got a hit and ran to first, losing his sandals along the way.

Just a generation after the 1990s cult classic “The Sandlot” immortalized the nostalgic American pastime, the Associated Press had already declared ragtag neighborhood baseball games to be “on the verge of extinction.”

Video games, parents’ fear of crime and the proliferation of high-pressure, exclusive “select” teams were to blame. And sandlot’s decline meant kids were missing critical skill development, not just in the sport’s fundamentals, but in organizing teams, negotiating rules and making judgment calls.

This summer, Christian Alberto Ledesma created Minneapolis Sandlot Ball to bring back the scrappy, inclusive style of play. At the group’s low-key weekly games, there’s no need for uniforms, spiked shoes or athletic aptitude. Strangers are welcomed, and you don’t even need to remember your teammates’ names on a field where “Principal Ledesma” will answer to: “Hey, Mets shirt.”

This month, Ledesma, the head of nearby Roosevelt High School, was named as his division’s Principal of the Year by the state association of secondary-school principals.

But four decades ago, he was a child of Ecuadorian immigrants learning to love baseball in Brooklyn. Though Ledesma downplays his baseball background as “pretty simple,” he has the bases covered.

He played baseball as a kid and has been a longtime spectator (he aligned with the Mets because he thought the Yankees’ colors were “boring”). As an adult, he joined recreational softball leagues and helped coach his children’s teams.

Back in “the good old days,” Ledesma said, a game could be conjured in brownstone-lined Brooklyn practically in the time it took to grab a ball and a bat.

“Somebody would go up and down the block saying, ‘Hey, we’re gonna get a game of stickball going,’ and then suddenly you have a dozen kids out in the street playing.”

These days, Ledesma’s front yard often transforms into a de-facto diamond. A pinecone is the pitcher’s mound; a dirt spot is home plate, a next-door neighbor’s tree is first base. He and his kids — ages 6, 10 and 13 — often play a condensed version of baseball where “ghost runners” round the bases.

When the family wanted to play at Lake Hiawatha Park but realized they’d be dwarfed by the full-size ballfield, Ledesma put a call out on Facebook. His post drew two other families. (“One mom showed up in flip-flops and still grabbed a glove.”) To better coordinate meetups, Ledesma created a Minneapolis Sandlot Ball Facebook page, which quickly acquired more than 80 members.

After a Sandlot game’s time and location are posted, everyone who shows up participates and supports one another, Ledesma said. Though some kids also play on traveling teams, and others are in T-ball leagues, the group can accommodate skill differences.

The littlest get unlimited pitches and run when they make contact, foul or not. And teen fielders “accidentally” drop balls to level the playing field. The older kids embrace the schtick, Ledesma said. “You should see the smiles on the big kids’ faces, seeing the little guy run around the bases.”

The Sandlot group has recruited other players encountered at the park, among them a skilled father-son duo who made quite an impression, Ledesma said. “The dad blasted some dingers, and the kids were like, ‘Wow!’ And I thought, ‘How often does the dad get to do that?’”

Youth sports programs typically separate kids (on the field) and their parents (on the bleachers, often scrolling their phones). At Sandlot, adults share in the exercise and team camaraderie.

“It’s fun to have adults get the opportunity to swing a bat, grab a glove and run the bases, even if we do end up talking about how old we feel,” Ledesma said. “Like, ‘Ow, that actually hurt!’ Or, ‘I’m winded after running the bases.’”

One Sandlot player, Cassie Zonnenfeld, noted how joining a youth sports team usually requires planning ahead and registering online. As a social worker, she has seen language and technology barriers keep kids from participating, and said she appreciates how Sandlot can be more spontaneous and doesn’t require setting up yet another digital account.

While she and her husband likely would have been playing the same sport at home with their baseball-obsessed 6-year-old, they joined Sandlot for the social factor. “We can do something fun as a family with neighbors and meet others in the community,” she said.

Last week, her family met a father and his teenage daughter who were playing volleyball near the outfield when the Sandlot group invited them to join their game.

Having grown up in Africa, the father explained, he’d never played baseball and was unfamiliar with the rules. But after Ledesma’s wife, Wendy, explained the basics, father and daughter got their first-ever hits and rounded the bases.

“I loved it,” the father said afterward. “It was really fun,” his daughter added.

Ledesma views Sandlot as an antidote to the isolation he sees among his students, who are still struggling to rebound from pandemic lockdowns and mired in a virtual social scene.

“We haven’t really worked on our muscle to be social, and to go out of our way to interact with others,” he said.

Today’s kids have lived through a lot of historic events, Ledesma noted, and informal ways to be social and cultivate interpersonal skills can help them feel connected instead of overwhelmed.

“The world is a lot right now,” he said. “And kids need to have fun. And kids need to connect. And not just the kids, because you see the parents wanting to connect, too, and have a good time.”