Musco Lighting - Safety wins at Little League Baseball World Series

Safety wins at Little League
Baseball World Series

National and regional winners of the ASAP safety contest are recognized on field during Little League World Series week in Williamsport, Pa.

Musco has co-sponsored Little League’s A Safety Awareness Program with CNA Insurance since 1995.

When you think about Little League, you think about summer days, about kids playing baseball, laughing, and having a good time.

The Little League World Series is all those things and more. As the environment where generations enjoyed their first sports experience, Little League Baseball® has a special place in the hearts of people around the globe. In a week’s time, over 200,000 people attended the free games at the complex in Williamsport, Pa. for the 1999 Series.

Musco is a proud sponsor of Little League Baseball, and provides the official sports-lighting system of Little League Baseball® — Light-Structure 2™. The Little League Baseball World Series first played under lights when Musco installed permanent broadcast-quality lighting at Howard J. Lamade Stadium in 1994.

What a week! Baseball, hot dogs, Kenny Rogers, baseball, ice cream sandwiches, pretzels, Robin Yount . . . did we mention baseball?

Little League and Musco make it safer for the kids
Also as a sponsor, Musco facilitates A Safety Awareness Program (ASAP), which seeks to encourage leagues to develop safer atmospheres for the children learning the great game of baseball. For the fifth year, Musco again donated a Little League-sized lighting system to the league which developed and implemented the best safety plan in the country. Fairfax Little League of Virginia took that distinction and prize this year.

Fairfax Safety Officer Mike Dec spoke glowingly about the support he had received to make his award this year possible.

“I was elected in September, and the first thing I did was to go to the statewide safety meeting in Virginia Beach, Va. I came back from there with a completely different view of what the safety officer did. I kind of bought into the idea.”

“It was probably the single best thing that happened to our league, ” Dec said of the meeting. “Coming out of that meeting, I was motivated and had the information to succeed.”

Mike asked then-second place regional finisher Virgina Beach Little League Safety Officer Andy Adler for help, so Andy e-mailed his coaches’ manual on to Mike.

The next year, Andy’s plan took first in the nation, and Mike’s was second in the region. Quite a jump from just getting started. But he matched that accomplishment this year by taking the national award, proving his plan had staying power. In addition, Mike’s coaches’ manual was the ASAP example to help safety officers develop their own plan.

“The thing I tried to do from the start was to document what I was doing for the next safety officer,” he explained. “It’s much easier to maintain a program than it is to start up a new one.”

In all, over 25 percent of all leagues in the U.S. implemented a safety plan through ASAP in 1999, up from 19% in 1998, and 11% two years ago. •