Craig Stinson has his Little League memories, but wants daughter Hailee to create her own

PORTSMOUTH — Hailee Stinson can tell when her father gets nervous.

She knows the telltale signs. Sometimes she’ll be at shortstop and glance over in the dugout and see him hunched over with his head down, or sometimes she’ll see the sweat on his head while she’s standing on first base and he’s standing next to her in the coach's box.

Nervous dads at Little League softball games aren’t uncommon — but this case is a little different.

If there’s a parent who knows the pressure of playing in big-time Little League games, it’s Craig Stinson. He was the star catcher for the 1996 Cranston Western baseball team that stole the state’s heart, then the country’s, with a run to the Little League World Series Championship game.

Now he’s seeing games from a different viewpoint. On Tuesday, he was in the dugout at Davidson Field in Portsmouth as an assistant coach, watching as Hailee and her teammates took down Tiverton, 12-0, to win the 2024 Little League Softball Rhode Island State Championship, keeping their own summer of fun going with a trip to the 2024 Little League Softball New England Regional Tournament.

“It’s definitely more nerve-racking coaching than playing, because when you’re playing, I didn’t even feel anything,” Craig Stinson said. “When you’re standing over there and it’s a close game, now I know how my parents felt when they were my age.”

If you’re of a certain age, are from Rhode Island and have a mild interest in baseball, you’ve heard of Craig Stinson.

He and his teammates went viral before viral was a thing. It was pre-cell phone, pre-social media, but everyone in Rhode Island knew about Stinson and the Cranston Western Little League team in 1996.

Winning the state tournament will get you a quick highlight on TV and somewhere in the sports section of the newspaper. Win regionals? Maybe you’re in the A-block on TV and on the front page of the sports section.

Cranston Western went beyond that and found itself as the lead story on the 6 and 11 p.m. TV news as well as front-page newspaper coverage in Rhode Island and beyond.

With Stinson behind the plate and tearing the cover off the ball, the boys from Cranston Western went on a run. On his 13th birthday, Stinson homered in a victory over Florida that sent the team to the Little League World Series championship game, where he again homered in an eventual 13-3 loss to Taiwan.

The team didn’t know how big it was. The kids were just playing baseball, trying to soak up every minute of summer and attempting to delay their inevitable start to the school year.

“We didn’t know it was such a big deal until we got home and we went on every news channel and TV show and those 12,000 people that showed up to greet us at Cranston Stadium,” Stinson said. “We just didn’t know. We were 12, 13 years old.”

Stinson went on to become an All-State catcher at Hendricken, earning Gatorade Player of the Year honors in 2002. He played at Texas A&M and was selected in the 12th round of the Major League Baseball Draft by the Washington Nationals before injuries derailed his playing career.

Despite the success, he’s still remembered, at least locally, for what he did in summer 1996.

“Every now and then, if I don’t see somebody for a long time, so and so may introduce me to somebody and say my name, they’ll say, ‘Oh, the Cranston Little League kid,’ ” Stinson said. “That’s still me, 20 something years later.”

Hailee has heard the stories. Not so much from her dad but from people who tell her about her father and what kind of ballplayer he was.

“I think he likes it,” Hailee said with a smirk. “A lot.”

“That time has passed,” Craig Stinson said. “I’m worried about being a parent, being a dad, being a husband. Things have changed.”

Soccer was Hailee’s sport of choice before her father softly nudged her toward softball. It was a good decision.

You can see Hailee’s potential. She’s tall, athletic and has a cannon for an arm. It’s similar to her father’s skill set at the same age, except her position of choice is shortstop. Her movement in the infield is impeccable, her swing is smooth and, on Tuesday, she hardly looked concerned about playing in the biggest game of her young career.

“It really just felt like a normal game — every game,” said Hailee, who went 1-for-2, scored three runs and had an RBI in the win. “There was no pressure. We played free and had fun.”

Fun is a message Stinson preaches to his daughter and her teammates. If he utters a word, it can only be heard in the dugout, and when it comes time to instruct Hailee, he takes a step back and lets head coach Lalo Marcano or assistant John Graziano handle it.

“We have other coaches to coach my daughter. I coach the rest of the team,” Stinson said. “I say some things, but it’s different coaching your own daughter. Sometimes she listens to me, sometimes she doesn’t.”

“I try to ignore him,” Hailee said. “I don’t really, like, ignore him — but I’ll look at the other coaches more.”

Tuesday’s win sends Cranston Western to Bristol, Connecticut, for the regional tournament. They’ll arrive on Saturday and are scheduled to play their first game at 8 p.m. on Sunday against the Connecticut entry in a game that will be streamed live on ESPN+.

“It’s going to be intense,” Hailee said. “Definitely, we have to put our A-game on and try to win it.”

The last time Craig Stinson was in Bristol, he hit a three-run homer in the seventh inning that gave Cranston Western a 4-1 win over Franklin, Pennsylvania, sending the team to the Little League World Series.

On Sunday, that same field will undergo a face lift, losing the mound and infield grass in a transition into a softball diamond.

That means Hailee Stinson will play at the same field on which her father homered.

“It’s very weird, definitely,” Hailee said. “It’s definitely strange thinking that, 1996, and I’m playing on the same field he was.”

“It’s like déjà vu. I guess when we get to Bristol, I’ll see the same plaque on the wall from when we went there in 1996,” Craig Stinson said. “I didn’t even know that it’s played at the same complex, the same field as we did.

“It’s going to be a lot of memories going back there. Obviously, I haven’t been back to that place since we left.”

Reliving old memories isn’t what has Stinson excited about returning to Bristol. It's seeing his daughter have the opportunity to create her own.

“He just says, 'Have fun,' ” Hailee said. “That’s what he does.”

“It’s just enjoy the experience now, just soak everything up,” Craig said. “They don’t really know what they’re doing right now. They’re just playing softball.”

That was the idea in 1996. It ended up being so much more.

“I remember [Cranston Western head coach] Mike Varrato, to this day, on our first day of practice, I remember we were sitting up in the bleachers up in western Cranston and he said our goal was to make it to the Little League World Series,” Craig said. “I’m like, 'Yeah, OK, like everybody else.' ”

Stinson paused for a second — and glanced at Hailee and her teammates as they recorded a social-media fundraising video to help offset the costs of their road trips — before he finished his thought.

“You’re so young, you don’t really know what you’re doing," he said, "but as you get older, that’s when you figure out what you did.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Craig Stinson has his Little League memories, but wants daughter Hailee to create her own