In this August 1992 photo, future Major Leaguer Richie Sexson, second row far right, poses for the camera with, among others, the Berlin family of Jamestown. Submitted photo

EDITOR’S NOTE: Portions of the following article appeared in The Post-Journal in May 2015. With the Babe Ruth 16-18 World Series returning to Jamestown from Aug. 4-11, it was deemed appropriate to run it again as the local committee seeks additional host families.

Richie Sexson hit 306 home runs during his 12-year Major League baseball career that included stops in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Seattle, Arizona and New York.

But long before he was pulverizing baseballs over walls in the big leagues — his longest blast at Chase Field, home of the Diamondbacks, was reportedly measured at an I-can’t-believe-what-I-just-saw 503 feet — he was a first baseman for a Babe Ruth League team from Vancouver, Washington.

In 1992, Sexson and his teammates won the Babe Ruth 16-18 World Series, which was played at the ballpark then known as College Stadium in Jamestown. In attendance one August afternoon a generation ago was Doug Berlin and his wife Maureen. Although host parents for another team in the tournament, the Berlins had become friendly with the Vancouver team because their backyard neighbor on Jamestown’s northside was hosting a couple of its players, one of which was Sexson.

A Long Island native, Doug introduced the kids from the Pacific Northwest to stickball, a street game related to baseball, whose equipment consists of a broom handle and a tennis ball. However, Sexson, one of the best players of his age in the country, didn’t exactly take to a new form of America’s Pastime.

In fact, he failed miserably.

“Richie came (to Jamestown) as a stud and was crushing the ball the first few games (of the World Series),” Berlin recalled last week. “Then (while playing stickball) I struck him out 10 or 12 times in a row,”

The futility with a broom handle on Price Street, unfortunately, had turned into frustration with an aluminum bat at the plate at College Stadium.

“He went into a slump,” Berlin said.

It became so bad, according to Berlin, that in the tournament’s semifinal game, Vancouver’s opponent intentionally walked the batter ahead of Sexson with first base open and the winning run on base.

“I was panicking,” said Berlin, believing that the stickball experience had ruined Sexson’s confidence at the plate. “He had gone from a star to potentially becoming a goat.”

But with the game hanging in the balance, the teenager ripped a ball into the gap, the winning run scored and Vancouver would ultimately go on to win the championship. Years later, Berlin and his sons, Matt and Mickey, watched Sexson play a minor league doubleheader when the latter was a member of the Triple A Buffalo Bisons.

“He pinch-hit a home run in the seventh inning for the game-winner and the next game he got a few hits and another home run, and he was off to the races. He was called up to (the Cleveland Indians) a couple months later.”

The interesting backstory to the Berlins’ visit to Buffalo that day was that Sexson told them he still was the proud owner of that stickball bat that Doug had given him during the Babe Ruth World Series and that he played with his Bisons’ teammates all the time in the clubhouse.

In other words, the memory created during Sexson’s visit to Jamestown had endured. And, simply put, the baseball prodigy was passing on that Babe Ruth World Series memory to his teammates.

“Whether they go on to be a doctors, lawyers or mailmen,” Berlin said, “they’re never going to forget the one or two weeks they spent (in Jamestown).”

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The greater Jamestown community has a chance to make more baseball memories like those of the Berlins this summer when it holds the Babe Ruth 16-18 World Series. The memories aren’t necessarily going to be from what happens on the field, but, most likely, they’ll come from the camaraderie that is established off it.

Berlin, who was a host parent multiple times through the years, sees no downside to the experience, regardless of its name. He recalled the World Series years ago when he and his wife invited the players and their families from an Indiana team over for a barbecue. The picnic just happened to be the same day as the birthday of Erin Berlin, the oldest of Doug and Maureen’s three children. The guests from the Hoosier State had such a good time and forged such a unique bond with the Berlins that they left Erin, then a pre-teen, with a sizeable cash gift for her special day.

“When Kathy McMaster (from the Jamestown Babe Ruth World Series Committee) called me (earlier this spring) and explained it to me,” Berlin said, “I just assumed everybody would want to do it. I don’t understand how anyone who likes baseball wouldn’t want to.”

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According to Dictionary.com, “host,” is defined as “a person who receives or entertains guests at home or elsewhere.”

For the Berlins, however, it didn’t matter if the kids who stayed in the Jamestown area for a week did so at their home or not. Heck, Sexson didn’t, but the future Major Leaguer felt right at home anyway, and a friendship was born.

Even if he couldn’t hit Berlin’s wicked curveball?

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For more information about the host family program, contact Kathy McMaster at 488-0928 or visit the Jamestown Babe Ruth World Series website (www.jamestownworldseries.org).