Mourning the loss of Little League chatter

School is out, summer is here and somewhere nearby, there's a Dairy Queen just waiting to make you a Blizzard.

So c'mon, let's look ALIVE out there!

Hey batter, batter, batter! Hey batter, batter, batter! Swing, batter!

David Eckstein says he used to use chatter all the time, even in Triple-A ball. (AP)

It's been hours since you were forced to sit up straight in Mrs. Freeman's class. Mrs. Opferman hasn't scolded you in days. Mean old Sister Noelita has put her ruler away for the summer, and we've got baseball games to play.

So c'mon, let's hear some chatter!

Pitcher's got a rubber arm! Pitcher's got a rubber arm!

Remember those days? The days before everybody had uniforms, when you simply played shortstop wearing torn blue jeans and a chocolate-stained face? And your team considered itself lucky if the coach could scrounge up a sponsor to at least pop for matching T-shirts? Back then, your glove probably spent most of its time hanging from your bicycle handlebar, and your lungs probably ached from so much chatter.

You know, the good, old-fashioned chatter that made the other guy feel as if he was standing stark naked on some Roman Colisseum mound surrounded by 100,000 screaming lunatics and 50,000 rabid lions.

The kind that, sadly, seems to have gone the way of the '74 AMC Gremlin and John Lennon.

"I don't think they do it as much," said Lance Van Auken, director of communications for Little League Baseball, Inc. "Maybe it's one of those things that's gone by the boards.

"I'm trying to remember the last Little League World Series team that did it in unison."

I called Van Auken this week because, while reminiscing with some major leaguers at the ballpark recently about the days of chatter and cartoons, I heard a disturbing rumor.

A friend of mine coaches a Little League team, and not only did he say nobody chatters anymore, it was his understanding that it is against Little League's sportsmanship rules.

Now I can appreciate sportsmanship as much as the next guy, but let me tell you something. If today's pervasive political correctness has suffocated society so thoroughly as to turn "Hey batter, batter" into a cause for those who are afraid that little Johnny is going to suffer permanent emotional damage, then it might be time to check out right now.

Thankfully, Van Auken quickly dispelled that rumor.

"No, there's no truth to that," Van Auken said. "Managers and coaches still encourage it. We teach our umpires to make sure that it's not directed at a person's individual characteristics -- in other words, directed at the way somebody looks."

I can buy that. "Hey fat batter, fat batter, fat batter, swing!" isn't cool. Besides, it's unwieldy, in chatter form.

I know there are thousands of youth leagues across the country who don't fall under the Little League umbrella, and goodness knows how many different rules there are covering sportsmanship, playing time and postgame orange slices. So I conducted a highly unscientific poll, checking with various friends who either coach or have kids playing, and they all reported no rules against chatter -- but not much interest from the kids in chattering, either.

Seems major leaguers aren't the only ones who have clammed up over the years. Seems somewhere along the way, as we've become more and more sophisticated ourselves, that sophistication also has begun gripping kids at younger and younger ages.

"Ooooh, I've gotta go back to probably 8 or 9," Anaheim shortstop David Eckstein said, reminiscing about the last time he chattered. "I did used to talk all the time, even up to Triple-A -- stuff like, 'C'mon, let's go!'"

But even having graduated from "Hey batter, batter!" to a more mature "C'mon, let's go!", Eckstein eventually let it go.

"You get people looking at you stupid, like 'What are you doing?'" Eckstein said.

Nobody, of course, expects chatter from big leaguers. At least, not unless the time is right.

"Unless we were mocking Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Baltimore veteran Jeff Conine said. "That might have happened during spring training.

"But even now in Little League, it might not be as prevalent as back when I played. Things have changed."

And you know what?

Though we eventually grow blasé about most things, the years chipping away at our enthusiasm and the bills forcing us to keep our seriousness, there are a lot of us out there who miss those days of chatter and Kool-Aid.

"Absolutely," Conine said, enthusiasm mounting. "Snack tickets after the game, parents yelling and screaming, pool parties. There's something kind of lost when you're on TV everyday.

"It's still fun, though. The game doesn't change. That's the beautiful thing about it. Little League baseball is the same as big league baseball. It's just a smaller field."

I forgot to ask Van Auken about whether another favorite old bit of chatter might be frowned on by Little League, a bit of chatter we once used in Michigan that loosely went to the tune of "Camptown Races":

"Who's that clown on pitcher's mound? Bozo! Bozo!

I didn't figure there was any sense pushing it. Besides, I have a feeling that one might be outlawed under the "personal characteristics" rule.