Little Big Men

On August 28, 1982, Cody Webster and a small group of schoolyard friends from Kirkland, Wash., sat anxiously in a dugout waiting to take the field for the championship game of the Little League World Series. Adults in the stands and watching from home saw a much broader field of play. The memories of American hostages and a crippling oil crisis were still fresh; and the new President was recovering from an assassination attempt even while confronting new threats from the Soviet Union.