One Year - In Memory of Bill Peters

A year ago today, Bill Peters passed away.

I have thought about that sentence a hundred times since last spring, trying to find a way to write it that does justice to what the man meant to this community and to me. There is no such way. So I will start simply and work from there.

Bill was 72 years old and had spent nearly four decades at Crescenta Valley Little League, first because his son Matt played tee ball in 1971, then because his son Greg played, and then because he could not stop. The league became part of who he was. When I first joined the CVLL board, Bill was already the institutional memory, the keeper of the records, the person whose phone you called when you did not know the answer and did not want to guess. He had spent years at JPL helping to put Surveyor, Voyager, and Mariner into the sky, and he brought that same precision to keeping score on a folding chair at Montrose Park.

He was the one who put together the Rally Tally.

If you were a player in this league during those years, you remember it. Bill assembled the Rally Tally every week — a detailed account of every team, every game, every hit, every run, every player who did something worth noting. Families waited for it. Kids who tore past it on the way to the field would double back when they thought no one was watching, just to see if their name was in print. Bill knew that. He was counting on it. What he never did was use it to criticize a player. Not once. He knew these were children trying their best, and he refused to discourage even one of them. That was not an oversight. It was a decision he made every single week.

He also kept something else: the long record of players who had been part of CVLL every year of their Little League careers, from tee ball through Majors and Juniors. He tracked them quietly, the way he did most things, because he believed that kind of loyalty deserved to be recognized. After Bill died, the league named its legacy award in his honor. It goes each year to the players who stayed the full distance. His name is called at closing ceremonies now, and it will be called for as long as the league runs.

Shortly after Bill's passing, CVLL nominated him for the Glendale Unified School District's Character and Ethics Award. His widow, Collette, and their children accepted it on his behalf. I was glad we did it, though the timing felt backward, that a man this decent needed a formal committee to recognize what anyone who sat next to him at a game already knew.

When I was elected president of CVLL, the election was not without friction. The politics of a youth baseball league can be surprisingly fierce, and I stepped into the role with some opposition still simmering. I was underprepared. I knew the game. I did not fully know the job. Bill steadied me. He answered the questions I was embarrassed to ask publicly. He sent quick emails when something needed doing and made sure it got done, usually by doing it himself. He helped me understand not just the rules and the history but the spirit the league was built on. He was in his seventies and had no obligation to do any of it.

I have had mentors in my life, but they tend to show up in professional settings with formal titles attached. Bill was nothing like that. He was the league dad, not managing me, not reporting to me, just showing up, knowing more than I did, and making sure I did not embarrass myself or the kids in my care. When something needed doing, and I did not know how, he already had the answer. When the pressure of that first year threatened to get ahead of me, he had a way of making the next right step obvious without making me feel small for not seeing it. I thought about my own father often during those months. The steadiness was the same.

This spring, I have been doing Bill's work. Some of it I knew he did. More of it I am discovering only now. The program book. The website. The follow-up calls. The things that hold together when someone tends them and fall apart the moment they stop. It has not been easy, and there are moments when I reach for the phone to call him, only to catch myself.

My son Ted was a freshman at Crescenta Valley High School last year. Bill knew what my commitment to the league presidency was costing me. He encouraged me to get to Ted's games, and when I could not, he understood, but he also made clear he thought I was missing something I could not get back. After Bill died, I felt the need to fill the gaps he left behind, and they were considerable. I missed almost all of Ted's freshman season. This past year, with Ted a sophomore, I made a conscious decision to pull back and let other parents and families carry the league forward. I saw more games. I am glad I did. Bill would have told me to do it sooner.

He used to keep score at games long after his sons were finished playing. He would sit in the stands with his scorecard and his pencil and follow the game the way a person follows something they love, closely and without agenda. I sat next to him a few times in my first year on the board, and those were the best conversations I had that season. We talked about the kids on the field and about the kids who had played years before. He remembered them all. Not the statistics. The kids.

Bill gave his time to something long after anyone expected him to. He made himself useful without being asked. He understood that the details — the Rally Tally, the program book, the long list of kids who never missed a year — were how you showed people they mattered. This community was shaped by him, and the debt does not diminish with time.

I miss him every week.