How Nolensville coach built Little League World Series power — with dad's ashes in the dirt
SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Every honest candlemaker has scars on his hands.
One pitch into his first Little League World Series as Nolensville's manager, the candlemaker clenched his left hand, the one that bears burn blemishes on its palm, and walked to the mound.
He was keeping a promise. He had a scar on his heart.
Before he called timeout, that candlemaker named Randy Huth pulled a small cylinder from his pocket, pried the cork cap free and tapped the glass. His team gathered around him. He took a knee, opened his left hand and freed his father's ashes into the August 2021 air and on to the dirt of the mound at Howard J. Lamade Stadium, the mecca of youth baseball.
"I looked at the boys. I was tearing up. I was like, 'He would have loved you guys, man,' " Huth said earlier this week while his team practiced in the background three days before its first game at this year's World Series.
He walked back to the dugout bawling that Aug. 19 afternoon, straight into a hug with his best friend and fellow coach Chris Mercado.
"That's all I remember," Huth said, adding that he'd told only his players and coaches of his plan.
History will show his team lost 1-0 that day to Ohio. Huth, the first U.S. manager to lead the same program to South Williamsport three years in a row, won that day in a way he never could have imagined.
Like father, like son
Spreading his father's ashes on the mound at Lamade Stadium has become an annual tradition, one that will carry on this year. Same with the team's players touching the black Nolensville All-Star hat packed with Little League pins, the one that belonged to Jim Huth.
Like he did in 2021 and 2022, when his team finished fourth, Randy Huth will call timeout after the first pitch of his team's first game Friday (2 p.m., ESPN) against Smithfield, Rhode Island. He'll empty his father's ashes into his left hand, walk to the mound, gather his team and let the ashes fly.
Jim Huth was a Little League coach for 45 years for St. Bethlehem Little League in Clarksville, where he has a field named after him. Where he'd coached his son Randy, and so many other kids, for so many years. Where he served as president of the league.
Jim died of complications from diabetes on Aug. 31, 2018, two weeks after his son's Nolensville team lost in the Southeast Region tournament. He was a K-Mart manager by day for 32 years. He was Randy Huth's hero all the time. He was just 65 years old.
"He said, 'My only wish is that I want my ashes spread in Williamsport,' " Huth said.
Now he's part of the field forever.
'I almost quit' baseball
Randy Huth sold the five bars he owned after his father died. He went all-in on his candlemaking business. Without his dad around, he struggled with baseball. He'd played the sport as a kid and in college at Volunteer State. He'd coached the sport alongside his dad. He'd played for a TSSAA state championship with Northeast in 1997.
He was sure he was done after more than 20 years as a coach.
"I almost quit," he said.
Huth, who began managing Nolensville in 2017, had just guided the team to a state championship. He thought he'd done "everything I wanted to do."
Then Nolensville Little League president David Jones called. He offered Huth a chance to work on the league's fields, said he knew Huth wasn't up for coaching anymore.
"He knows what he's doing," Huth said.
Jones' not-so-subtle intentions weren't clear to Huth until later, when Jones suggested he manage the team again.
"I was like, 'I don't know if I can do it,' " Huth said. "I started working on fields. I would go out there at midnight when there's nobody around, and line them and cut the edges perfectly."
And spend time with his father.
"It was a closeness," he said.
Just him and Jim on a baseball field. Father and son under a sunny summer sky again, only this time it was under the moon, sometimes till two in the morning.
"It felt like he was there," Huth said.
It felt like the place Huth needed to be. It's a place Huth continues to be. To this day, Huth still spends many midnights under the moon with his father, taking care of those fields.
"I feel like that's the only time he's with me, you know?" Huth said.
Before the 2019 season began, Huth gave into Jones and returned to the dugout.
One man's trash ...
Huth, 44, spends a lot of time in the gray, 2,000-square-foot wooden barn that sits on his two acres of property in Fairview. His mother, Terri, lives in an apartment in the house.
He spends many a day there crafting candles out of liquor bottles that come in scents such as vanilla bourbon and tobacco whiskey moonshine. Huth had been a glass cutter, which morphed into him becoming a candlemaker.
"It's actually called a chandler," he said. "If someone ever tells you they make candy or candles, their hands will be burned."
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He offered his own palms, which were the same color as raw hamburger patties, as examples.
He was inspired by all the beautiful bottles he would see during his bar days.
"That's the only thing I could think of, that so much work went into making it beautiful, just to be thrown in the trash," he said.
So he'd sometimes pick those bottles from the garbage. He taught himself how to manipulate glass, how to cut it. He made candles, candy dishes and lamps. He has more than 10,000 bottles in his shop. He said he sells his candles to people all over the world.
Attention to detail
Nolensville's players practice lining up for the national anthem. They rehearse celebrations, tackling the last hitter of every practice. They go over how to high-five each other. They take pregame infield practice before games without a ball, instead performing a five-person play to perfection, with a coach standing at home pretending to hit ground balls and players in the field pretending to field them and throw them.
"I never want them to have a situation in the game we haven't gone over," he said. "The way we high-five, we go low, high, low high."
Every time the same. The team faces the flag a certain way during the anthem — their feet in a V, one hand by their side and the other on their chest.
"I want the other team to look across and be like, 'Whoa,' " Huth said. "That's why we take phantom infield."
There's another reason for that. By not taking actual ground balls, Nolensville's players are guaranteed to make zero errors. As a result, a mistake before a game doesn't lean into the game itself. His team made only a couple of errors during Southeast Region play.
"He thinks outside the box," said Mercado, who managed the previous iteration of Nolensville Little League — South Nashville Little League — to the Series in 2013 and 2014. "He's smart. He makes things happen, makes it fun for everybody. Even how he packages his candles is special. It looks so professional. It comes out of a trash can and he makes it look like gold."
"His ability to connect with the team, no matter what your background is," said Ty McKenzie, whose son with the same name plays on the team. "The ability to be direct with the players. It's not a lot of fluff."
It is a lot of fun.
"Sometimes he can be really funny," said Stella Weaver, the first girl in the history of the program. "Sometimes he can pick on you and it's still a joke and you're like, 'Is he serious?' "
'Part of the family'
Huth struck out his best friend, Mercado, the only time he faced him. Huth was a left-handed pitcher for Volunteer State and Mercado was playing for Trevecca.
"He needs to stop bragging about that," Mercado said.
The pair met while they were teenagers playing travel baseball together. Mercado became close with the Huths.
"They take you in. They just make you feel like you're part of the family," he said. "That's how Randy deals with these kids."
And that outside-to-box thing Mercado mentioned?
When he owned bars, Huth once jumped out of an airplane — as in skydived, as part of a promotion for Red Bull. His jump made the cut in a television commercial. He called it "scariest thing I've ever done."
While the Little League World Series won't go down as the first World Series for Huth — he also played in the Junior College World Series for Volunteer State — it will go down as the most special.
Special because he doesn't have any biological children, though he has two stepdaughters.
Special because he's experiencing it with his best friend at his side.
"You never hear anybody say, 'I want to win the Little League World Series in Williamsport,' " he said. "They say, 'I want to get there.' "
Sure, Randy Huth would love to win, or be managing his team on the final day of the Series.
"They get to experience the same exact thing as whoever wins does," he said of his team. "They get the same gear, the same uniforms, play on the same field."
And Huth gets to grant his father's wish once more.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nolensville coach built Little League World Series power with dad's ashes
