"Legendary Lloyd" McClendon

“It was an almost out-of-body experience as a youngster to be able to do that, and now I’ve learned to appreciate it more as an adult.” Lloyd McClendon

Fifty years ago, my first summer in Gary, Lloyd McClendon led a team from the “Steel City” to the Little League finals in Williamsport, PA, against a squad of suspiciously mature players from Taiwan. Leading up to the championship game, the 12-year-old had hit two home runs against teams both from Kentucky and Madrid, Spain. In an interview the Taiwan manager claimed that his pitcher, Chin-mu Hsu would pitch to McClendon because it would be dishonorable to walk him intentionally. In the first inning Hsu walked the Basemore brothers, Ralph and Vincent; then on the first pitch McClendon hit his fifth straight round tripper. His next four at bats in what proved to be the longest game in Little League history at 9 innings, he was issued intentional walks. Hsu, who was taller than the five-foot four McClendon with a high leg kick that resembled Juan Marichal, went on to strike out 22 batters as his team notched the score in the sixth and won it going away, 12-3, in the ninth.

McClendon went on to play for Gary Roosevelt, whose coach, Benny Dorsey, named him team captain his freshman year. After an all-state career, he obtained a scholarship to Valparaiso University, where he was a league MVP. He ultimately enjoyed an eight-year career as a major league player, his most productive season being in 1989 with the Chicago Cubs, with whom he hit 12 home runs; in the NL championship against San Francisco, he went 2 for 3 as a pinch hitter. McClendon then had a long career as a coach and manager. In 2013, after Seattle named him their skipper for the upcoming season, Seattle Times reporter Geoff Baker looked back on the 1971 exploits of “Legendary Lloyd,” interviewing teammate Carl Weatherspoon, who told him that there were more than a half-dozen Little League organizations in Gary back then, including their Anderson Field league, and that steelworkers such as his and Lloyd’s dad encouraged kids to get into baseball and let them stay outside after dinner because neighborhoods were safer then. “We all played in the streets until dark,” Weatherspoon recalled. Sunday’s NWI Times front page article by David P. Funk emphasized that Gary’s 1971 squad was the first all-black team to play in the championship. McClendon told him, “You’re 12 years old. You don’t think about economics or racial factors, what it does for a city on so many fronts. You just strap it on and go out and have fun.” Prior to the game, TV announcer Tim McKay and Yankee great Micky Mantle interviewed him. McClendon said, “That’s one of my most cherished memories of everything that happened there. I was terrified. I tried to run past them. I was like, ‘My God, that’s Mickey Mantle.’” Third baseman Roy Lawson, whose father Jesse was the head coach, recalled that few balls were hit to him because opponents couldn’t catch up to Lloyd’s fastballs. After Lloyd weakened in the ninth and left the game, his father and Coach Lawson told him how proud they were of him. McClendon remembered: “What they did for me in that moment defined who I was to become, not only as a baseball player but as a human being and a man of character.”

Second baseman Marcus Hubbard, who batted clean-up behind McClendon, saw himself as a second lead-off batter because Lloyd’s drives generally cleared the bases ahead of him. One thing that impressed Hubbard is how boisterously all-white teams they’d defeated from Maine and Kentucky and their fans cheered for them. When the team returned to Gary, the city arranged a parade in their honor, and the celebrities rode on top of a firetruck down Broadway and were greeted by Mayor Hatcher and Governor Edgar Whitcomb. Said Hubbard, “We didn’t realize until on our way back how proud the city was.”