By Lincoln Anderson
After two years as the veritable Bud Selig of the Greenwich Village Little League, Tom Ellett will be stepping down.
Ellett, who is New York University’s assistant vice president of student affairs, said he’s immensely enjoyed running the league for a couple of years. But now that his kids are “aging out” of the league, he said, it makes sense to hand over the reins.
During his tenure, Ellett implemented some changes that have improved the league.
For example, he instituted a managers review at the end of each season. The reviews are used to weed out those managers who are “head cases.”
As Ellett put it, “It’s about the managers’ tone and attitude toward the kids.” The few managers who do turn out to be problems, he said, are those that promote “winning at all cost.”
“This is a recreational league,” Ellett stressed. “These are 10- and 11-year-olds. They’re not the Mets.”
Only about one or two managers per year are told they are not welcome back for the next season.
“You know, there’s 1 percent of bad parents and 0 percent of bad kids,” Ellett noted.
In addition, Ellett put into place the practice of continuous batting order, meaning that everyone on the team gets to hit throughout the game. League rules mandate that players get to play at least three innings, but that used to mean possibly just one at-bat per game. Now players can count on up to three at-bats, even if they don’t play the whole game in the field.
Ellett’s wife, Gladys, will be hanging up her cleats, too. Gladys started the G.V.L.L. Opening Day festivities, now a tradition of six years running.
Tom said it’s tough to move on from the league, which is like a big family.
“We were talking about it last night with some parents,” he said last week. “It’s hard to leave. It’s a wonderful community we have here.”
The new G.V.L.L. president will be Rich Caccappolo, who runs Creative Commerce in Soho.
