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More than fans, the Allens are baseball nuts. With four kids on at least one team each, they spend evenings and weekends cheering each other on. TV? Who needs it?
By LANE DeGREGORY
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 28, 2003
GULFPORT -- Afternoons with the Allens smell like infield dirt and freshly mowed grass. They taste like steamed hot dogs and strawberry Ring Pops and strong coffee in plastic foam cups. They sound like cleats clicking on sidewalks, bats thwacking, children cheering.
Afternoons melt into evenings. Sherbet sunsets dripping over the dugouts. Doubleheaders beneath the ballfield lights.
Ten games a week, at least. Plus 16 practices. The Allens are on a field every day, 40 hours a week, from February through June. Sometimes the family is divided among two or three diamonds.
"Every spring, it gets really, really wild for us," says Kelley Allen, 41. Four games a day, some days. At fields on opposite ends of the county. Plus weekend tournaments in Orlando and Lakeland.
After a dozen years, the Allens are experts at juggling baseball schedules.
"Sometimes, it's hard to keep up," Kelley says. But she has a system.
She color-codes her calendar.
The Allens have four kids: two boys and two girls. Tully, who's in kindergarten at Perkins Elementary in St. Petersburg, is playing his second season of T-ball. He can smash that small ball over everyone else's head, catch pop flies and fast grounders. On the calendar, his color is brown.
Mallory, third grade, just got moved up to Gulfport Girls' Majors. She's the youngest member of the Angels, playing with girls three years older. She can already whip a mean windmill pitch. She's green.
Maggie, a high school freshman, is starting for Gibbs' varsity softball. She's red. She also plays on a Senior Girls' team in Gulfport Little League. For those games, her color is black.
Casey (yep, named for mighty Casey at the Bat) is a Gibbs junior, a shortstop who is batting .520. He's being scouted for college scholarships. Hoping to take a swing at The Bigs. On the calendar, he's blue.
The Allens have two dogs, two cats and two rabbits. They have a two-story house in Gulfport. But they're never there.
They live at the ballfields. Their sofa is four canvas lawn chairs, set close against the fence behind third base. Facing home.
Their life is mapped out on a Baseball as America calendar in multicolored magic markers. Thick, bright squares surround every day in March, all but two in April. Blue and red games this day. Black, green and brown every Saturday. Sometimes all five colors crowded into the numbered box.
Kelley keeps a separate calendar for school field trips and concerts, birthdays and dentist appointments. "But that one also has all the baseball practices," she says. "I couldn't fit the practices on the same squares with the games."
It's the top of the fourth here at Northeast High in St. Petersburg on a sunny Friday in mid March. The visitors, the Gibbs Gladiators, are up 1-0. Two outs. Man on second.
"At the plate, No. 8," the announcer says. "Casey Allen."
All the Allen kids are No. 8. Casey started it, and over the years his siblings followed. Tully and Mallory and his mom and dad are in the front row, as usual. Feet propped against the fence.
Dad, whose name also is Kelly (without the second e), came straight from building houses on Tierra Verde. He gets up for work at 3:30 every morning, leaves before dawn. That way, he's finished before the ballgames begin.
Mom picked up Tully and Mallory at school this afternoon and came straight here. She brought their Gameboys, coloring books and crayons, notepads and pencils for them to do homework and, of course, gloves and balls so they can practice. She packed a cooler with Capri Suns and Famous Amos cookies.
Maggie is at softball practice. When she's finished, she'll have a friend drop her here so she can catch the last couple innings of Casey's game. She's got her own game tonight at 8, for the rec league team.
If Casey makes any big plays, Mom promised to leave a message on Maggie's cell phone.
Now he shoulders the bat. He squares his hips.
Tully stops tossing his T-ball, locks his eyes on his big brother. Mallory puts down her Pokemon cards and looks up. Dad tilts back his ball cap. Mom turns the tripod toward the plate and clicks on the video camera.
She tapes every at-bat for each one of her kids. On rare nights, when the family is together around the television, they watch game films.
"All right, Casey! Bring it around!" Mom screams through the fence.
The pitcher winds up. The throw is fast and low. Casey doesn't swing.
"Ball," rules the umpire.
But then the next two he calls, "Strike!"
Dad scowls, shakes his head. Mom prays, "Let it be this time." Tully and Mallory stare through the fence, holding their breath.
What are the odds, really?
You have four kids, spread over 12 years, and they're all good at baseball? All four of them?
And what's even more odd, they all like it. LOVE it. Taste it and talk it, live by it, die by it.
"Maybe it's in their blood," Mom says.
Kelley didn't play baseball herself, growing up. She went to some of her younger brother's games. But he played only a couple seasons. When she fell in love with her husband, she says, she fell in love with the game.
Kelly grew up in it. His dad played major-league ball for the old Boston Braves. One season. Then he got called into the Marines, sent into the War instead of the Show. "He hurt his arm in the war. Couldn't play much after that," Kelly says of his dad. "But he always took us boys to see Red Sox games."
Kelly and his two younger brothers would crouch behind the dugout, watching Carl Yastrzemski, collecting broken bats. They'd take the bats home and tape up the pieces. Play ball on the dusty back lots of Boston.
"We had a team, each neighborhood. Ours was The Projects," Kelly says. "That's where we lived."
He scored a scholarship to Jackson State in Mississippi. Proved a strong catcher. Then, his wife says, "He threw it all away."
Kelly laughs, smiles sheepishly under his ball cap. "It was the '70s," he says.
When his first boy was born, Kelly named him Casey. Never considered any other name. He taught the kid to throw and catch before he could walk. Showed him how to hold a Wiffle Ball bat away from his diaper.
Dad coached Casey's first T-ball team and every one after. In 12 years, he's never missed one of Casey's games. Maggie (named for Rod Stewart's song, Maggie May) came along soon after and started swinging bats with her brother. Mallory has amazed everyone this season. Usually shy, she's become aggressive on the field. She's helping Mom and Dad coach Tully's T-ball team, too. Teaching the next generation.
Mom also keeps stats at Casey's games. Dad hopes to coach Casey's American Legion team all summer.
"It slows down a bit for us after school's out. But it never stops," Mom says. Casey also plays on a scout team, in the fall.
"There's not one month I'm away from baseball," he says.
Grandmom and Granddad get their own color-coded calendar. Aunts and uncles are always here, too. Sometimes, the kids play their cousins.
"Mallory and Tully grew up on baseball fields. I'd haul strollers, playpens, all kinds of toys out here. They learned to amuse themselves, to be outdoors instead of in front of a TV, to cheer for their siblings and be part of a team," Mom says. They learned patience, and that practice pays off. They learned to keep their eyes on the ball and their head in the game. They learned math, keeping game stats. They learned strategies, trying to predict the next play. They learned to launder their uniforms, study in the back seat, juggle schedules, pick priorities, work for what they want.
"We don't push them," Mom says. "But we try to be supportive, help them set and meet their own goals."
You can drag a kid to the ballfield. But you can't make them passionate about the national pastime.
The Allen kids all want this. Want it bad.
Casey has never been able to get an after-school or summer job because of baseball. Because of baseball, he hasn't had time to learn to drive. Maggie misses school play practices and church youth group parties. Sometimes, she hauls herself there but is too tired to have fun. "I don't feel like I'm missing out, though. I mean, it doesn't bother me that I am," she says. "I want to be a college catcher. I don't really know what else I'd want to do."
Mallory sacrifices sleep-overs and sleeping in and other stuff 9-year-old girls take for granted. Tully would rather toss a baseball than transform a Transformer or watch cartoons.
"You'd think they'd want a break," Mom says. "But we all get really bummed out if a game gets rained out or a practice gets canceled. It's our family time, our social time. Some of these other players and parents, we've known each other 10 years or more, since T-ball. We've watched each others' kids grow up, gone through all these seasons together. Sure, we all get worn out. But this is normal for us."
So the count is 1-and-2. Casey can't miss another. The Allens are leaning forward in their lawn chairs, eyes and video camera focused through the fence.
"And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go," as the poem says. "And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow."
His namesake struck out.
But this mighty Casey sails one over the centerfield fence.
"Home run! Home run!" Tully and Mallory start shrieking. "We got a home run!"
All the Gladiators pour out of the dugout and run to slap Casey's hand as he comes home.
Mom leaves the camera rolling. She digs in her purse to find her cell phone and calls to leave a message for Maggie, "Hurry! He just got a home run!"
Dad tugs at Tully, taps Mallory on her shoulder. "Hey y'all," he says, grinning. "Let's go get that ball."
The Allens save every home run ball. Each kid dates and autographs his own, with a black magic marker. Mom keeps the baseballs in her china cabinet, like the finest crystal. "Only more valuable," she says.
Maggie shows up about 5:30 p.m. The game's over just after 6. Final score: Gibbs 6, Northeast 0.
"We won!" Tully and Mallory keep shouting, running up and down the metal bleachers. "We won! We won!"
In this family, successes are shared.
Dad races to the dugout to slap his son five. Mom rewinds the video camera to replay the hit for Maggie. "How was practice?" she asks, hugging her daughter for the first time since 6 a.m.
"Okay," says Maggie, squinting to see the Sony screen. "My arm hurts."
"So are you going to play tonight? You don't have to, you know. You probably ought to rest up for tomorrow's doubleheader."
"Is Dad going with me?"
"No, I am," says Mom. "Dad's got to coach T-ball. Then Mallory's got a game in the afternoon. I'll drive you to Lakeland and maybe we'll be back in time to see the end of Mallory's game. So you've got a busy day tomorrow. You don't have to play tonight, really."
"I want to," Maggie says. "I'm going to. Tomorrow's games are serious stuff, for school.
"Tonight is for fun."
So Dad loads the lawn chairs, the cooler, the video camera and Casey into his truck. Mom brings the backpacks, the duffel bags, the other three kids in her minivan.
By the time they pull out of the parking lot, the moon is rising above first base.
They get home after 7 p.m. Corn flakes and grapes are dinner. Sometimes, even Tully gets sick of concession stand candy.
"I made chicken noodle soup in the Crock-Pot two nights ago, and no one ate it," Kelley says.
"No one's been home," Maggie reminds her, running upstairs. She takes off her Gibbs uniform. Steps into her Gulfport catcher's outfit.
Then, a half-hour after the Allens got home, everyone leaves again for another ballfield.
Maggie catches well, despite her sore arm and burning thighs. She bats in a run. Helps win the game.
At 10:10 p.m., she pulls off her catcher's mask and unwraps her long, dark hair.
Dad packs up the camera. Tully and Mallory finish a game of catch behind the bleachers. Mom takes out her calendar.
There's a brown circle around the next day, Saturday. T-ball starts at 9 a.m.
In less than 12 hours, all the Allens will be back at a ballfield, inhaling infield dirt and just-mowed grass. Listening to cleats clicking, bats thwacking, children cheering.