Associated Press Lloyd McClendon, left, pitched for Gary, Ind., against Chin-mu Hsu of Taiwan in the 1971 Little League World Series championship game. Click photo for larger image.

Sometimes, more often than you would expect, in fact, Lloyd McClendon can get through August without thinking about it, without having his crowded consciousness carry him anywhere close to that little Shangri-la 33 summers ago.

He's busy, for one thing. His mind is way inside baseball at its most demanding level, and there's something else.

"I'm old," he said.

The manager of the Pirates is only 45. It's just that this topic can make him feel like the oldest Little Leaguer on the planet. Even as Little League Baseball approaches its youthfully manic August climax, especially in an era when ESPN has unconscionably converted a largely innocent process into just another brand-laced TV show, the story line that was Williamsport 1971 remains the entire event's dramatic baseline.

"I'm sure the crowd understood what was happening," McClendon said, "but I didn't. I was just having fun. I know it's a big deal now because people still talk about it 30-some years later."

In three games at Williamsport in the 1971 Little League World Series, long before the world even knew what it meant, McClendon was Barry Bonds.

"I was walked intentionally 10 times," he said.

I thought it was five.

"Well," he said slyly, "the legend grows."

And why would anyone intentionally walk a skinny 12-year-old five, six, seven, 10 times in three games? Because with the five pitches Lloyd McClendon got to take a rip at he homered five times. That's 5 for 5 with five homers on five swings.

"Two against Kentucky, two against Madrid, Spain, and one against Taiwan in the championship game," he remembered. "In the press conference before the championship game, the Taiwan coach said that he would not walk me. He said, 'We will lose face at home.' He said he'd rather lose than walk me."

So on the first pitch thrown him in the first inning, McClendon crushed a three-run homer to give Gary, Ind., a 3-0 lead. That's when the Taiwan coach changed his mind. The kid who would within days be known as "Legendary Lloyd" in Indiana got walked the next four times up. Taiwan clawed back and scratched out a win in extra innings.

The throbbing backdrop was straight from an epic novel. Forty-five thousand global citizens watching what McClendon remembers the local newspaper calling "the first all-Negro team to play in Williamsport, Pa." against the established kings of the international game, as admired and feared as they were suspected of corruption. A chunk of the crowd chanting "USA! USA!" And another chunk waving the Taiwanese flag, cheering.

"There was fighting," McClendon said. "We were scared stiff."

But the most vivid image in his fading memory is not of rounding the bases or of the chanting or the fighting or even of saying to his coach, "Why aren't they pitching to me? Why can't I bat?" It's of being on deck in the extra innings of that title game.

"There were runners on first and second and two out," he said, his eyes narrowing. "There was a 3-2 pitch to the batter, and the umpire called a ball a strike. He made a mistake and the inning was over. Had the kid in front of me walked, they'd have had to pitch to me because the game would have been over if they'd walked me."

Had they been forced to pitch to him, McClendon might have ended the Little League World Series with a grand slam. But then, how much more legendary could he have been?

What is so extraordinary about it has to do with the physical politics of 10- to 12-year-olds on Little League's shrunken diamond. They don't call it Little League for nothing. Some players, particularly pitchers, mature more quickly and turn up in dimensions that can be intimidating to the smaller hitters. On top of that, with the mound only 46 feet from the plate, the notion of facing the top 12-year-old pitchers in the world is not much less than frightening, to say nothing of the occasional pitcher who's closer to 15.

"In the championship game, the pitcher for Taiwan struck out 22," McClendon said, "and he was big. He had a high leg kick like Juan Marichal. He was throwing hard."

But it didn't matter. Taiwan, Spain, Kentucky, big kid, small kid, fastball, breaking ball, goofball -- when Mac took his whack, he hit the crap out of it. And though he wouldn't make it to the big leagues until he was 28 and would never play in 100 games in any season, when championships were on the line he was a very tough out. In three National League Championship Series, one with the Cubs and two with Jim Leyland's Pirates, he was as accomplished a hitter as just about any. In 22 playoff at-bats, he walked six times, stroked seven singles, two doubles and a homer and hit .625.

If you think about it, from the day he walked into the manager's office in 2001, Lloyd McClendon has been a dogged presence with a lot at stake. And nothing and no one around him, from the top of the organization to bottom -- big failures, small failures, prospects, suspects, projects, rejects -- has been able to demonstrate that he's unworthy. In a very tough situation, he's still a very tough out.