By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer
America’s pastime has been Auburn’s pastime for 50 seasons.

AUBURN – Fifty years of making the world a smaller place? That beats the Internet by a solid four decades, CNN by almost three.

Fifty years of transforming children’s daydreams into reality, then topping it off with hot dogs and ice cream? Let’s see a video game try to replicate that.

Auburn Suburban Little League is wrapping up its golden anniversary season. This month, all-star teams fan out across the region, playing district and state tournaments in their age brackets.

Based on the league’s track record, every year there’s a splendid chance one of those teams will advance to a regional playoff or beyond. That adds up to more memories made, more self-confidence birthed, more bright futures written.

At least two Suburban alumni have played professionally. Others have become successful businessmen, accountants, coaches, teachers and parents. Some lessons learned on the diamond never could have been conveyed in a classroom.

“It was sort of the first real lesson in the value of teamwork and what it takes to be part of something,” said Gene Benner, owner and sales representative at Bessey Motors in South Paris.

Benner is best known athletically for his record-shattering career as a football wide receiver at the University of Maine. But he also played center field on the first Auburn Suburban All-Star team to win a state championship, the 1963 senior squad.

Eleven years later, Mike Coutts celebrated that same state title and a trip to the Eastern Regional tournament in Delaware.

Coutts followed the pipeline to Maine, where he played and coached. Today, he shares his homegrown love of the game with the next generation of baseball enthusiasts at Frozen Ropes, an indoor training center in Portland.

“It all started there at Auburn Suburban,” he said.

The early days

Paul Butler, Clarence and William Cox, Joe Maloney, Dud Tribou and Al Pratt steered the effort to organize Auburn’s bustling youth baseball scene in 1957.

Four teams played the first season on existing fields at East Auburn and Six Corners. The upstart organization also constructed a makeshift field out of a pasturelike configuration at the Auburn-Lewiston airport.

“It was really just a half-assed ball field,” said Ted Lambert. “It was all we needed. That first year, we played wherever we could play.”

Lambert, who managed the Food Town Tigers, is one of the few founding fathers around to celebrate the current milestone. “I guess I’ve outlived them all,” he said.

His family tree has deep Auburn Suburban roots. Son Bryan Sr. coached several championship teams. Grandson Bryan Jr. was a three-sport star at Edward Little High School and now pitches in the Washington Nationals’ organization.

Auburn Suburban put its shine on the airport complex and christened it home in 1961. According to the league’s written history, currently archived by 40-year volunteer Dennis Sweetser, the land was leased for an annual price tag of $1.

Parents were less involved in the early years. They tended to trust the hired help implicitly and seemed content to watch from the bleachers, if at all.

“I remember driving around, picking up most of the kids, bringing them to a practice or a game and taking them home after,” Lambert said.

The airport quickly developed character and ambiance. Auburn Suburban regularly hosted regional and state tournaments.

Three decades of players, many of whom won championships and enjoyed trips to the bright lights of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Indiana, still look at the old Suburban digs as their Field of Dreams.

“I miss the airport,” said Bill Reynolds, who starred at the University of Maine and played in the Oakland Athletics’ organization in the mid-1980s. “That was one of the best fields in New England, in my book. Everybody couldn’t wait to get to the ballpark in those days. I have two daughters, so maybe I’m more in tune with the softball side of things, but I just don’t get that feeling today.”

The league relocated to its current Garfield Road complex in 1990. Two baseball fields and an adjacent softball layout are buzzing five nights a week during May and June.

A winning league

Maybe it’s bad form to emphasize winning or losing at the learning level of youth sports, but hey, Auburn Suburban teams have won more championships than most league volunteers can remember.

Memories stick with players like the gum stuck to the wax-pack baseball cards you could buy back in those days. Benner practically recites the lineup card from memory today, 43 years after ASLL’s first championship.

“Jim Chaplin was probably our top pitcher that year. Bobby Jacques was the catcher. I played first base during the regular season, then moved to center field for all-stars,” Benner said. “Earl Austin was the coach. I still see a lot of those guys today through work-related events.”

Reynolds played a central role in Auburn Suburban’s crowning moment, when the league’s all-star team finished third in the 1979 Senior World Series.

“It was amazing. It was a phenomenal thing,” Reynolds said. “I mean, there we were, playing Chinese Taipei.”

Sweetser coached a team that lost only to the eventual world champions from the Orient and a pitcher from Tampa, Fla., named Dwight Gooden.

His grasp of both those details and proper perspective are impressive after spending almost his entire adult life in the organization.

“I didn’t have boys of my own,” Sweetser said. “It started out in 1967 with me saying I’d help a friend of mine for a year or two. He walked away shortly after that, and I’m still here.”

Due in part to parental involvement and an ever-increasing number of sports and leisure time alternatives, Little League has changed dramatically since the ’60s. Sweetser says the kids, however, have basically remained the same.

Peers and former players rave about Sweetser’s role as the glue that holds the league together.

“Other than John Winkin (at Maine), Dennis is the greatest coach I ever had,” Reynolds said. “That’s saying something. God bless him. People ask me why Im not a coach, and I don’t want any part of it.”

Through the efforts of Sweetser and hundreds of others, nearly three generations of Auburn youths have been blessed with a baseball program that stacks up with the best in the world.

“Certainly, I never would’ve had the opportunity to play at Maine and go to the College World Series,” said Coutts, “if it wasn’t for the people who taught me in Little League.”