MOUNT VERNON — When the Mount Vernon Babe Ruth League baseball team leaves later this week for its national championships in Quincy, Mass., it will be icing on the cake three years in the making.

The parents of many of the players got together three summers ago after the Little League season and put the team together.

Their kids had just won the District 11 Tournament and gone to state, but there the season ended.

The parents thought they had a pretty good group, one with potential, and asked themselves what was the biggest obstacle to success.

It was them.

Not these particular parents, but parents in general. Parents who wanted their kids to play more and who argued with other parents.

They decided that none of the parents should be the head coach.

“We wanted someone we could give 100 percent control to in between the lines,” parent Tim FitzGerald said. “As parents, we would take care of everything else.”

At the same time, Adam McAbee had become disillusioned with coaching the sport after 10 years. He still loved baseball, but dealing with parents and their demands was taking the joy out of it. A Bellingham electrician who had always been around the game, McAbee had taken the summer of 2005 off out of frustration.

“It was because of the parents,” McAbee said about his hiatus. “When (the Mount Vernon parents) came to me, it was one of those things where it was, ‘OK, you say you have a good parent group, but I’ll have to see.’ But I wanted to get back into coaching.”

In three years, McAbee said, the parents have kept their word. The coach has been in charge of all decisions made between the baselines. For him, it’s been as close to a dream job as any volunteer position can be.

“It makes my job a lot easier,” McAbee said. “I just have to focus on the kids and the game, not ‘Why is my kid not playing?’

“We play who we think is the best player, and no one questions that at all. It makes it really nice, to know that when I make a decision or a call, I’m backed 100 percent. They might quesiton it and talk to me after the game, and I’ll explain myself. I have no problem doing that. But it’s never, ‘My kid should be playing second (base)’ or ‘My kid should be playing short(stop)’ because I have no ties to the team.”

“He’s fair with everybody,” player Adolph Rivas said. “He sees stuff that maybe dads can’t see.”

The group has stayed essentially the same over three years. Those joining the team, both parents and players, had to sign on to the team’s philosophy.

“The thing with this group is it’s like one big family,” McAbee said. “We all go out to dinner after the games and everybody’s always hanging out together, staying in the same hotel. There’s never an issue. Like any family, we have our scuffs and people get upset, but it’s never something major.”

The parents have gotten to watch their kids not only have success on the field, but to mature as well. McAbee runs a tight ship, one with a lengthy set of rules, one that includes getting to practice 15 minutes early and no swearing. Fans are unlikely to see a Mount Vernon player throw his equipment in frustration.

“He’s made the boys better men and better players,” FitzGerald said.

“I kind of coach the old way,” McAbee admitted. “Respect the game and the game’s going to respect you.”

The first season, as 12-year-olds in Cal Ripken competition, the team finished fifth in the state.

Last year, with almost all of the same kids but now playing on a full-sized field for Babe Ruth, Mount Vernon won the state tournament and finished fifth at regionals.

This year the Bulldogs built on that success, winning state and regional titles to qualify for the trip to the Babe Ruth League World Series.

The national tournament will almost certainly be the last hurrah for this team. The two players who are going to be high school sophomores already opted to stick with this squad rather than play with Mount Vernon’s junior American Legion squad, but next summer some or all are likely to join that program.

McAbee said he doesn’t plan to coach next season, as the commitment for 50 games this summer has added up to a lot of time away from his family.

“It’s been great. I told the kids I want to go out on top and I want to go out winning. They really answered that,” McAbee said. “It’s going to be hard for me to walk away from the game, even though I know I’ll be coaching my son and doing that, but I’ve really grown attached to this group, being with them for so long. I look at them like my own sons right now, and care a lot about them.

“I think that’s why we do so well. Everybody cares so much about the guy standing right next to him.”

Eric Francis can be reached at 360-416-2131 or by e-mail at