But as the crowd — demonstration? religious rite? — grew closer, I saw all the kids. And then I realized it was the town’s Little League parade.

In my hometown of Edwardsville, Ill., the Little League parade was one of the big events of the year. At least it seemed so to me when I was 9 years old. But we really did parade down Main Street for a mile and a half to the main Little League diamond, and it was a larger parade than Albany’s — one of the years I participated there were 60 teams, ranging in age from 8 to 15, with even the youngest players suited in full wool flannel uniforms. The day was made extra-special because it was that morning that the adults passed out the caps — because they were afraid that if they passed them out in advance, along with the uniforms, the kids would lose them and not look sharp for the parade.

The Albany Little League parade was smaller, and showed rather less emphasis on looking sharp, I must say; uniforms were more informal, and in Edwardsville the idea that your team would actually shuffle along such that it would mix with the other teams would have been unthinkable. But Albany’s parade had its charms, chief of which were the girls’ teams with names like the Atomic Sweeties, the Racoons, the Purple Panthers, and the Mighty Molars — the last sponsored, no doubt, by a dentist.