A 1947 vintage touring bus rolled into Birmingham Tuesday evening for the latest stop of a 14-game, 23-day, 20-city, 4,500-mile venture across America for the Anderson Monarchs youth baseball team.
For seven team members from Philadelphia, the trip is a continuation of their journey to the 2014 Little League World Series.

Mo’ne-FINAL from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

“For them, nothing’s really changed,” said Alex Rice, last year’s head coach of the Taney Little League team and an assistant this year with the Anderson squad. “They’re together and it’s taken them all year to really absorb the impact that they had.”

Team member Carter Davis said continuing the journey of last year is absolutely incredible. “These are some of my favorite people,” he said, “and to share this opportunity with them again is amazing.”

The journey for one team member has gone beyond the baseball diamond. Mo’ne Davis has risen to a level of fame where it seems everybody knows her name.

Front of Mo’ne Davis baseball card

“Mo’ne is a whole different story,” Rice said. “She went from a skinny little kid who we all knew for years to a national celebrity.”

Steve Bandura is head coach of the Anderson squad that downed Birmingham’s Willie Mays RBI team 18-1 in five innings at Rickwood Field on Wednesday, Davis’ birthday. She was the starting pitcher, getting four strikeouts and walking three in two innings pitched. At bat, she was 2 for 3 with a double. Bandura said he’s been telling people about her for three years but nobody cared to listen.

“Then she gets on national TV and does what she did and now everybody wants a piece of her.”

What the girl with waist-long braids and hazel eyes did in the summer of 2014 is become the first African-American girl to win a Little League World Series game and the first girl to pitch a shutout in Little League World Series history.

“It’s not really what she did on the baseball field. It’s what she represents,” Bandura said. “She’s shattering stereotypes. It’s been great.”

Mo’ne takes her practice cuts.

Davis was tabbed Sports Illustrated Kids’ 2014 SportsKid of the Year and she beat out Serena Williams, the No. 1 women’s tennis player in the world, for the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year.

Even more amazing, she was named one of the 100 women to change the world by Time magazine. That list included Oprah Winfrey, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa and Cleopatra.

“You wouldn’t think a 13-year-old would be able to change the world,” Davis said. “Now that that’s happened, it’s given kids the opportunity to do whatever they want.”

Mark Williams, Davis’ stepfather, has known her since she was 5. He always had confidence in what she could and would do.
“It was the attention that caught us off guard,” he said. “She’s still the same child at home. She’s still the same to us after everything. She likes to hang out with the rest of her teammates more than anything.”

Young fans clamoring for Davis’ baseball cards.

Davis has become accustomed to strangers calling her name and people approaching for autographs from her and pictures with her. The 5-foot-5 right-hander politely hands them her Topps baseball card and an Anderson team wristband.

The rising high school freshman said she speaks more properly than she did before. “Everything else is still the same.”

Her message to teens and young girls is to be themselves. “You just want to keep the same friends you had before, trust the adults and follow your dreams.”

Davis has a varied playlist on her cellphone but she can’t listen to any of those tunes on this trip. The current journey is minus cellphones, iPads and other gizmos, as Anderson coaches want their players to get the feel of the barnstorming tours of Negro League baseball teams from generations ago.

The journey has been an education for Davis and her mates.

“This year with Ferguson and Baltimore and everything going on in the country, I felt like it was time for them to learn more about civil rights and the civil rights movement,” Bandura said. “If you don’t understand the past, there’s no way you can understand what’s going on in Ferguson and Baltimore. You just can’t have an educated opinion about what fuels those fires.”