Stephen Montoya
Robert Ratliff holds a photo of the Handley-Meadowbrook Little League team known as the Senators in the mid-to-late 1960s. Ratliff is in the top row fifth from the left.
Over a month ago I had the distinct honor to meet a man named Robert Ratliff, whose father’s battle with cancer was the catalyst for the movie detailing the story of the 2002 Westside Little League All-Stars.
“You Gotta Believe” opened in theaters last week, including a world premiere in Fort Worth.
I met Robert at the Westside Little League Field, a hallowed place for him where he says he feels closest to his late father, Bobby Ratliff, who lost his battle to melanoma when Robert was approaching his teen years.
The Westside All-Star team rallied behind Bobby, a coach on that team, and used his personal crusade against terminal illness as inspiration for its run to the 2002 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
The story of the Westside Little League team has become part of the city’s lore.
However, unknown to many — probably most, if not all — and certainly all of the players involved in the Westside Little Leaguers, is the other Robert Ratliff, this one an east-sider, who lived a tale eerily similar to the Ratliffs but 33 years prior.
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This Robert Ratliff’s father was also his son’s Little League coach. And this Robert Ratliff’s father, C.A. Ratliff, also died prematurely when oldest son was just 11 years old after a milestone Little League game.
Robert Aaron Ratliff played baseball for the Handley-Meadowbrook Little League team known as the Senators in the mid-to-late 1960s. In 1969, this Ratliff played for his league’s all-star team. The Handley-Meadowbrook all-stars were “one and done,” as Ratliff remembers it.
Nonetheless, it was a major milestone for Ratliff personally and for the team and his father Clarence Aaron Ratliff, who took over coaching duties for the Senators in 1967.
“He spent time with every player,” Ratliff says. “He didn’t just give his attention to the best players. He would actually give more attention to the kids who needed more help.”
Ratliff played third base as well as “rover,” an informal term for a defensive player who is positioned in a nontraditional location, in this case on the infield. The rover in Little League baseball has gone the way of the dodo bird.
His upbringing on the east side of town was a wholesome one, he says, filled with late night ballgames and rushing home to watch “Batman.”
Ratliff’s father, better known to his friends as C.A., worked for the Federal Aviation Administration. The family had its own plane, he says, and would use it to take family trips from time to time. Ratliff, only 11 at the time, says his father would allow him to fly the plane, though he never learned how to land it.
Mere days after the Senators All-Star game in 1969, C.A., who had had heart problems, suffered a heart attack and died at age 46.
Bobby Ratliff was age 50 when he died after the Little League World Series in 2002.
Stephen Montoya
“It’s been at least three decades since I’ve been back here,” Robert Ratliff says as he surveys what is left of Handley Field on the east side of Loop 820. “Sitting out here, I can hear the crack of the bat. And they had announcers that would call your name in a permanent structure behind the backstop.”
As Ratliff, now 66, walks the field he glances over at the visitor’s bench, the last place he remembers seeing his dad in action as a coach.
“My dad wanted to use everybody on the team to achieve success,” he says. “And it worked.”
Our meeting was not one of chance. Ratliff called me after reading our article on the Westside Robert Ratliff, who gave us a firsthand account of what happened to him and his team in 2002.
“When I read that article, tears came to my eyes,” Ratliff says while trying on his old Little League cap. Next to him was a collection of items that more than commemorated his father’s legacy and Little League career. A color photo of the team rested next to a small trophy, some used cleats, a little league baseball bat and glove, as well as a Little League baseball still in the original box from the ’60s.
“I was thinking, golly, how bizarre that here you have 55 years apart [between 1969 and the new movie], a guy with the same name, same situation,” Ratliff says.
C.A. stood about 5-foot-5 and was a mild-mannered man who loved to coach baseball. Originally from Coleman, Alabama, C.A. served in World War II as a U.S. Marine and participated in the six-month battle for Guadalcanal.
After the war C.A. married Reba Laverne Ratliff, a registered nurse whom he met before being shipped off to war. Soon after the two were married, C.A. moved the family to Fort Worth where he worked for the FAA as an airplane inspector.
“He even let me drive his 1966 Mustang, when I was just a kid,” Ratliff says. “He said if we ever got pulled over, we would just switch seats quickly. Yeah, right.”
What really sticks out in Ratliff’s memory, though, is his father’s time on the baseball diamond.
“He would pull up to the practice field in that Mustang and we would help him take the equipment bag out of the trunk and prepare for practice twice a week,” he says. “My bike wouldn’t fit in the trunk, so I would ride my bike all the way home, which was just a few blocks from here.”
Fifty-five years later, Handley Field still exists, only now as an adult softball field. Gone is the large scoreboard and backstop concession stand. The practice fields that once surrounded the field are also gone, taken over by the Handley Meadowbrook Community Center. What does remain, though, are the memories of a team and the bond of a father and son.
“I played baseball one more year out here after my dad died, and I just wasn't into it,” Ratliff says. “It just wasn’t the same after he was gone.”
Asked if he’d be willing to meet Robert Ratliff of the West Side, he says emphatically, “yes.”
“It'd be different if the Robert Ratliff you wrote about lived like in Atlanta, Georgia, or Ohio, but I mean he’s just on the other side of the road basically. I would love to compare notes.”
