ABOUT THIS TIME in 1953, the Korean War had just ended, Ike's presidency was a few months old, Joseph Stalin had been dead a few weeks, and movie fans could go to Main Street in Ellicott City and watch Jane Russell and Victor Mature in The Las Vegas Story.
It was 50 years ago, and that June, a diversion that would turn into a Howard County sports institution was starting on U.S. 40, on a field that is now a strip shopping center, St. John's Plaza.
That was the first season for the Ellicott City Little League, which evolved into today's Howard County Youth Program. The championship Phillies that summer included a boy, 12, who achieved something none of the thousands of subsequent HCYP players for the five decades since has matched.
He was Cecil Perkins, and true to the aspiration printed below his photograph in Howard High's 1959 yearbook, the year he graduated, he became a big-league baseball player. But if you're new to Howard County in, say, the past 30 years, you probably have never heard of him unless you're really, truly immersed in baseball trivia.
Perkins was a New York Yankee - still is, deep in his heart. But the right-handed pitcher's career with the Ralph Houk-era Yanks totaled five innings in two games, one a start against Jim Kaat in Minneapolis, the other in relief against the Orioles at Memorial Stadium.
Called up from the Yankees' Triple-A club in Syracuse, N.Y., in July 1967, Perkins was one of 15 pitchers that year's Yankees tried. It wasn't one of the great New York teams. A light-hitting squad, those Yanks finished ninth with an aging roster that included Whitey Ford (his last season), Jim Bouton, Elston Howard and Mickey Mantle.
In his five innings, Perkins yielded six hits and five earned runs, walked two and struck out one. Career ERA: 9.00; won-lost record, 0-1. American League pitchers batted in those days, and Perkins made the most of his one official at-bat, driving in a run on a fielder's choice.
Since 1968, Perkins has lived in Martinsburg, W.Va., where he owns a business that paints stripes on parking lots, highways, airports and other commercial facilities. A sister lives in Baltimore, and two aunts are Howard County residents.
Perkins, inducted into Howard High School's Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, is one of three Howard County sons ever to play major-league baseball. The other two were Elkridge's late Jack Merson and Columbia's Jim Traber.
Merson was a third baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1951 and 1952 and, briefly, with the Boston Red Sox in 1953. Traber, who hit 27 homers for the Orioles from 1984 to 1989, is a broadcaster in Phoenix for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Perkins, sent back to Syracuse, when the Yankees traded for Baltimore's Steve Barber, said Houk told him he'd have a shot at returning for the 1968 season.
But a biceps-tendon problem in his throwing arm - probably fixable by surgery today but not then - flared in the minors and then forced him home early from winter ball in Puerto Rico. After struggling another year in the minors, he left the game.
"I was the hardest thrower the Yankees had," Perkins recalled matter-of-factly. "They didn't have radar guns then, but I know I was in the 90-mph area. But it wasn't meant to be."
His professional career was spent mostly in bus stops such as Harden, Ky., Idaho Falls, Idaho, Greensboro and Shelby, N.C., Columbus, Ohio, and Syracuse. In 1964, he had surgery on his throwing elbow, apparently unrelated to his career-ending miseries.
Perkins retains some good memories, of course. One was winning a Puerto Rican season-opener for Ponce against a San Juan lineup that included the Cincinnati Reds' Johnny Bench, Tony Gonzalez and Tony Perez, as well as Orlando Cepeda - four formidable batters, for sure.
Another, he said, remains a Carolina League record - striking out 10 batters in a game's first three innings (his catcher muffed one strikeout, and the batter got on base) in Greensboro.
He's not much of a baseball fan now, Perkins said, believing the quality of big-league baseball is diluted with too many teams and that most players make way too much money for the skill they show.
"Money didn't matter that much when I played," he said. "Everyone just liked playing the game. I remember a clubhouse boy reminding Mantle to take home his paychecks; he used to let them collect in his locker."
What pleases him now are the two or three inquiries a month that still arrive from collectors seeking autographs from everyone who was ever a Yankee.
"I always send them one," he said. "And I don't charge, the way some players today do."
In 1995, his old injury became so painful that Perkins had his right shoulder rebuilt surgically.
"Not much of the rotator cuff was left," he said. "I still can't lift more than 10 pounds above my head with that arm."
A couple of years before that operation, Perkins recalled, a doctor told him, "You don't have a pitcher's arm because of the way it's built. That's why you have this problem. ... I never went into the details about it with him."
Call the writer at 410-332-6525 or send e-mail to lowell.sunderland@baltsun.com.