NEW YORK—As mayor of the nation’s largest city, Bill de Blasio has become accustomed to making tough decisions and moving on.
But there’s one decision he made a decade ago that he can’t get out of his mind: As a Little League manager, he kept a tiring 8-year-old pitcher in the late innings of a crucial playoff game.
“He didn’t want to come out and I didn’t want to let the father down and I didn’t want to let the kid down,” de Blasio said. “So, I decided in that case to give the kid one more chance. And he was disastrous.”
“That was one of the reasons we did not win that playoff game,” he said. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
In an interview with The Associated Press this week, de Blasio talked about his love of baseball, his three years coaching his son’s Little League team, and how he often draws upon that experience in managing a city of 8 million people.
“It was a real leadership and management lesson that I still think about,” he said. “Trying to get a bunch of 8-year-olds to do something is an amazing challenge.”
For de Blasio, a Democrat who took office in January, baseball is his great pastime. Even in a hectic week directing the city’s handling of an Ebola diagnosis, he’s sneaked peeks at the Kansas City Royals-San Francisco Giants World Series games.
“I love the game really, really deeply,” he said.
De Blasio was a city councilman a decade ago when, after first helping out with his daughter Chiara’s team, he became co-coach of his son Dante’s squad.
