Little League baseball – It promotes loyalty, character and courage, three words Al Haynes has lived by. Haynes has been volunteering for over four decades.
“I've never been paid a penny for little league,” Haynes said.
He started umpiring and announcing games in 1970.
"I just did the first game and I was hooked, been doing it ever since," Haynes said.
Haynes doesn't call balls and strikes anymore, but he keeps plenty busy at the scorer’s table making the little leaguers feel like big leaguers.
"It's always exciting to see the kids run out,” Haynes said.
Haynes has called thousands of games over the years.
"It's what I do,” he said. “It's my hobby. I don't hunt, fish, I don't golf."
He loves being part of a team. Haynes said it takes one unit to make a game go smoothly. The same can be said for both dugouts.
"If done properly, it teaches kids about working together as a team and that’s the whole theme of my life,” Haynes said.
In 1989, Haynes was a long ways away from this the league field in Auburn, but he was working with a team, a different one, that wasn't worried about winning. They were more concerned with saving lives.
Haynes, was also Captain Al Haynes, a pilot of 35 years for United Airlines.
"I enjoyed it, I loved flying,” Haynes said. “What I miss most about flying now is the people you work with."
And it's those people who showed remarkable airmanship on July 19, 1989. Their DC-10 suffered damage to its center engine causing all three of its hydraulic control systems to fail. The odds were against Captain Al and his crew.
But Haynes and his crew beat the odds.
"By varying the thrust on those two engines, we could skid the airplane one way or the other,” Haynes said. “And if you thrust both throttles up at same time, the increase in thrust would pitch the nose up and if you closed both throttles it would pitch the nose down."
After nearly 45 minutes it looked like the crew would be able to land flight 232, but then the right wing clipped the ground and it crash landed. 111 people were killed, but a remarkable 185 lives were saved on that day.
"We put our best resources and knowledge together and did what we thought was best,” Haynes said.
Haynes and his crew became instant heroes. In 1992 Charlton Heston even played Captain Haynes in a movie.
"I kidded him about one thing; when the engine blew, the first thing [Charlton] did was loosen his tie and I said, no, no, no, we didn't do that," Haynes said.
He laughs, but admits a day doesn't go by where he doesn't think about flight 232. Haynes never uses the words "I did it," and shies away from hero talk.
"To me it was my job,” Haynes said. “I didn't do my job, because my job was to go from point A to point B safely and I didn't do it, so I have guilt about that and of course guilt of survival is a big thing."
Haynes credits luck, communication, preparation, execution and cooperation as the reasons for survival.
Those are the five words he preaches to a younger generation on the ball field, along with one more.
"Have fun. Enjoy yourself," Haynes said.
Something he’s been doing with little league for half of his life.
At the age of 84, most of these kids only know Haynes as the old announcer. And you get the feeling he's just fine with that. A happy, humble hero who continues to enjoy life, one at-bat at a time.
