news

Former Cranston Western Little League star Craig Stinson coaches daughter Hailee

VaselineJuly 18, 2024

1 5 minutes read

Former Cranston Western Little League star Craig Stinson coaches daughter Hailee

PORTSMOUTH — Hailee Stinson can tell when her father gets nervous.

She knows the telltale signs. Sometimes she’ll be standing at shortstop and she’ll look into the dugout and see him hunched over with his head down, or sometimes she’ll see the sweat on his head as she stands at first base and he stands next to her in the coaches’ box.

It’s not uncommon for dads to get nervous at a Little League softball game, but this case is a little different.

If any parent knows the pressure of playing in big Little League games, it’s Craig Stinson. He was the star catcher for the 1996 Cranston Western baseball team that stole the heart of the state, and then the nation, with a run to the Little League World Series championship game.

Now, he’s watching games from a different perspective. On Tuesday, he was in the dugout at Davidson Field in Portsmouth as an assistant coach, watching Hailee and her teammates beat Tiverton 12-0 to win the 2024 Little League Softball Rhode Island State Championship. They kept their own summer of fun going with a trip to the 2024 Little League Softball New England Regional Tournament.

“It’s definitely more nerve-wracking to coach than to play, because when you’re playing, I didn’t feel anything,” Craig Stinson said. “When you’re out there and it’s an exciting game, I now know how my parents felt when they were my age.”

If you’re of a certain age, from Rhode Island, and even remotely interested in baseball, you’ve probably heard of Craig Stinson.

He and his teammates were viral before viral was a thing. It was before cell phones, before social media, but everyone in Rhode Island knew about Stinson and the Cranston Western Little League team in 1996.

If you win the state tournament, you’ll soon be on TV and somewhere in the sports section of the newspaper. Win the regionals? You could be in the A-block on TV and on the front page of the sports section.

Cranston Western went a step further and became the lead story on the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. TV news and was featured on the front page of newspapers in Rhode Island and beyond.

With Stinson behind the plate and covering the ball, the Cranston Western boys went on a run. On his 13th birthday, Stinson hit a home run in a win over Florida that sent the team to the Little League World Series Championship game, where he hit another home run in an eventual 13-3 loss to Taiwan.

The team didn’t know how big it was. The kids were just playing baseball, trying to soak up every minute of summer and trying to delay their inevitable start to the school year.

“We didn’t know it was that big of a deal until we got home and we were on every news channel and TV show and those 12,000 people showed up to greet us at Cranston Stadium,” Stinson said. “We just didn’t know. We were 12, 13 years old.”

Stinson became an All-State catcher at Hendricken and won the Gatorade Player of the Year award in 2002. He played at Texas A&M and was selected in the 12th round of the Major League Baseball Draft by the Washington Nationals before injuries derailed his playing career.

Despite the success, he is still remembered, at least locally, for what he did in the summer of 1996.

“Every now and then, if I haven’t seen someone for a while or something, and someone introduces me to someone and mentions my name, they’re like, ‘Oh, that Cranston Little League kid,'” Stinson said. “That’s still me, 20 years later.”

Hailee has heard the stories. Not so much from her father, but from people who tell her about her father and what kind of baseball player he was.

“I think he likes it,” Hailee said with a grin. “A lot.”

“Those days are gone,” Craig Stinson said. “I worry about parenthood, fatherhood, husbandhood. Things have changed.”

Soccer was Hailee’s favorite sport before her father gently nudged her toward softball. It was a good decision.

You can see Hailee’s potential. She’s tall, athletic, and has a cannon for an arm. It’s similar to her father’s skill set at the same age, except her favorite position is shortstop. Her infield movement is impeccable, her swing is fluid, and on Tuesday she barely seemed concerned about playing in the biggest game of her young career.

“It just felt like a normal game — any game,” said Hailee, who went 1-for-2, scored three runs and had an RBI in the win. “There was no pressure. We just played freely and had fun.”

Fun is a message Stinson preaches to his daughter and her teammates. When he utters a word, it’s heard only in the dugout, and when it’s time to give Hailee instructions, he steps back and lets head coach Lalo Marcano or assistant John Graziano handle it.

“We have other coaches to coach my daughter. I coach the rest of the team,” Stinson said. “I say some things, but it’s different coaching your own daughter. Sometimes she listens to me, sometimes she doesn’t.”

“I try to ignore him,” Hailee said. “I don’t really ignore him, but I do look at the other coaches more.”

Tuesday’s win sends Cranston Western to Bristol, Connecticut, for the regional tournament. They arrive Saturday and are scheduled to play their first game at 8 p.m. Sunday against Connecticut’s competitor in a match that will be streamed live on ESPN+.

“It’s going to be intense,” Hailee said. “For sure, we’ve got to put our best foot forward and try to win.”

The last time Craig Stinson was in Bristol, he hit a three-run home run in the seventh inning to give Cranston Western a 4-1 victory over Franklin, Pennsylvania, sending the team to the Little League World Series.

On Sunday, that same field will undergo a facelift, with the mound and infield grass removed and the field converted into a softball field.

That means Hailee Stinson will be playing on the same field where her father hit a home run.

“It’s really weird, definitely,” Hailee said. “It’s definitely weird to think that in 1996 I’m playing on the same field as him.”

“It’s like déjà vu. I think when we get to Bristol I’ll see the same plaque on the wall as when we were there in 1996,” Craig Stinson said. “I didn’t even know it was played on the same complex, on the same field as us.

“It will bring back a lot of memories when I go there. Obviously I haven’t been back to that place since we left.”

It’s not reliving old memories that excites Stinson about returning to Bristol. It’s seeing his daughter get the chance to create her own.

“He just says, ‘Have fun,'” Hailee said. “That’s what he does.”

“It’s just enjoying the experience right now, just taking it all in,” Craig said. “They don’t really know what they’re doing right now. They’re just playing softball.”

That was the idea in 1996. It eventually became much more.

“I remember (Cranston Western head coach) Mike Ferrato, to this day, on our first day of practice, I remember us sitting in the stands at West Cranston and him saying our goal was to make it to the Little League World Series,” Craig said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, just like everybody else.'”

Stinson paused to watch Hailee and her teammates as they filmed a social media fundraising video to help cover the cost of their baseball outings, then finished his thought.

“You’re so young, you don’t really know what you’re doing,” he said, “but as you get older you find out what you’ve done.”

VaselineJuly 18, 2024

1 5 minutes read

Vaseline

Related Articles

美国总统竞选进入最危险时期，候选人如何应对外国干预

Misinformation has hurt Helene’s recovery efforts: What you need to know

Attack on children: politicians violate rules for their dumbbells

Paris Olympics: Filipino Carlos Yulo to receive lifetime supply of ramen for winning Olympic gold