The Backyard Batting Cage

This Sunday, just as he has for several years, Mike Tafelski expects to have find moments of "pure joy" at a local baseball field.

But it won't come from Tafelski driving a pitch over the trees in a local softball league or from watching the Lancaster Barnstormers wrap up their first series of the season with a "W."

It will come from seeing a young player's "face light up when the ball hits the bat," as he puts it, "and to see them out there for the sheer joy of playing baseball."

Tafelski, of Manheim Township, is commissioner of the Challenger Little League of Lancaster County, which gives some 175 youngsters with special needs the chance to play ball.

The 2011 season, the league's 22nd, begins Sunday with a series of games at Strasburg's Jaycee Park.

And it's baseball as it should be, Tafelski notes — no steroids and no big contracts, just the joy of kids playing the summer game.

There's no fee to play in the Challenger League, there are no practices, and no scores are kept.

But the league does something more important than naming a champion, Tafelski notes: "It gives everybody a chance to play, and it gives everybody a chance to be a part of a team."

The 12-team league, which will rotate games among several local fields across nine Sundays this spring and summer, offers special-needs children age 5 to 18 "the opportunity to enjoy baseball regardless of the challenges they face," a league description states.

Some of the players, when they hit a ball, need to be pushed in their wheelchair to first base.

One youngster told Tafelski she wants to wink at the pitcher, just like a player in the classic baseball movie "Field of Dreams."

The league offers "an extremely safe environment, where winning is least important and where making every player feel like a winner is most important," its description adds.

Tafelski, 45, is an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department in Philadelphia during the week. Then, on Sundays, he gets to see "the excitement the players get when they stop a ground ball hit to them, or when they get a hit."

"Major Leaguers get excited when they get a hit, too," he said, "and it's the same for these kids."

Tafelski is the third person to serve as commissioner of the league, which was started in the late 1980s in the county's southern end "by people who thought it was important for special-needs children to have an opportunity to play baseball," he said.

Other fields for the league this year include Akron's Roland Park, Paradise Park and Willow Street's Garrett Park.

The league also will hold its annual fundraiser, a benefit golf tournament, on Saturday, June 3, at Tanglewood Manor Golf Club in Quarryville.

The tourney provides the main financial support for the league. Its rain date is July 22.

Born in the Detroit area, Tafelski moved to Lancaster County as a child and grew up here, graduating from Lancaster Catholic High School in 1984.

He played football as a walk-on at Notre Dame, graduating in spring 1988 before his Fighting Irish teammates won the national championship that fall.

Tafelski's younger daughter, Elizabeth, 17, has multiple medical issues and developmental delays.

When Tafelski and his wife, Terry, first found out about the Challenger League, "we were excited that she (Elizabeth) could play since she has an older sister (Kate, 19, a student at Loyola University in Maryland) who played sports, and Elizabeth just enjoyed going out and playing baseball."

Registration ended in late March for this season, but before it did, some 50 new youngsters signed up, "and to hear the excitement in the parents' voices, knowing there was something out there for their youngsters, where they can play, is really rewarding," Tafelski said.

"It's kids of all shapes and sizes, with all backgrounds, all on the same team."

For information on the league, Tafelski can be reached at 682-0938. For details on the golf tournament, e-mail 2010Challenger@comcast.net.

doconnor@lnpnews.com

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