Mary Ciacci caps Hawaii Little League career with visit to Williamsport

Mary Ciacci had seen a lot in nearly six decades volunteering with Little League baseball.

But nothing quite like this.

In one of her final duties as Honolulu’s district administrator, Ciacci sat among 27,000 fans in Lamade Stadium in Williamsport, Pa., savoring the Honolulu team’s triumphant finish on an unforgettable journey to the Little League World Series championship.

As retirement gifts go, this one’s awfully tough to beat.

Ciacci’s connection with Little League began when a neighbor asked if she’d fill in as a scorekeeper for a game in Waimanalo. She soon became a fixture in East Oahu baseball, performing for some 53 years the behind-the-scenes tasks to help the leagues in her district provide opportunities for kids to play the game.

But she’d never made the trip to Williamsport until this summer, when Honolulu closed out a win over South Korea to claim Hawaii’s third LLWS title.

“It’s unreal,” Ciacci said of her first trip to Williamsport. “You can see it on TV but it’s a whole new ballgame when you get there. … I’m retiring at the end of the season and it’s just a beautiful way to go out.”

“It was so satisfying to me to see that these kids did a good job. You could see the parents, oh my gosh, if I’m feeling great they must be feeling better.”

And to think, Ciacci, 85, had planned to call it a career a year earlier.

After initially helping out as a scorekeeper, Ciacci continued to work with youth baseball in Waimanalo, eventually rising to league president before taking on the responsibilities of district administrator in 1965.

“Your kids get in it, then you don’t leave and you help out then you get a good bunch of people together and it was fun. It was really fun,” said Ciacci, who previously worked as a clerk typist at Punahou School, her alma mater, and Windward Community College. “Now it’s big business.”

Back when she started, the clerical work could be done on “two pieces of paper.” As Little League grew, so did the paperwork in tracking age-group and residency requirements, making sure the rules are followed, she said. “If they need anything, I’m there for them. And in case I needed something, I know who to call.”

After passing the five-decade mark, Ciacci was ready to hand over the task of overseeing District 6 (Makapuu to Aiea). That is until longtime coach Gerald Oda gave her a call.

“He asked me last year, ‘oh come on, stay on one more year,’” Ciacci said, “and I said, ‘Gerald, I can’t. It’s time to move on.’”

Over Ciacci’s tenure, District 6 had celebrated Aiea’s back-to-back Junior League World Series (ages 12-14) titles in 2000 and ’01 and had attended the Big League World Series (ages 15-18) three times.

Ciacci had attended the Little League (ages 10-12) West regional in San Bernardino, Calif., and Oda thought he had a team that could give Ciacci another trip to the mainland.

“So it was that much more gratifying that when we won states,” Oda said. “We told her thank you for staying on, now we get to go back to California.”

But where the district’s previous state champions had their paths end in San Bernardino, this year’s team extended the trip by sweeping through the regional to Little League’s crowning event, claiming the U.S. and world championships.

“(Oda) and I knew maybe we’d go to (the West regional), but didn’t realize we would go all the way,” Ciacci said.

For that, she was thankful to Oda for talking her out of retiring a year earlier.

“It was really gratifying to see these kids walk around with their shirts and everybody wanted them to sign their hat and trade pins, and they were just in love with the West team,” she said.