When recalling highlights of the 1956 baseball season, some fans might best remember Mickey Mantle winning the Triple Crown and his Yankees beating the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.

Not Lynn Harris.

For Harris, 1956 is best remembered as the year Little League Baseball officially arrived in Chickasha. Fifty-four years later, Chickasha Little League is still going strong – and so is the Harris family.

Earlier this year, Nic Harris signed up to play this season. He is the great-grandson of Lynn Harris and the fourth generation of the Harris family to play Little League here.

The spring and summer tradition will enter its 54th year in Chickasha this April – and players have one more chance to register for 2010 Little League action. The final signup session will last from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Mollett-Hunter, Fifth Street and Minnesota Avenue.

Every players receives playing time in each game, and all games are played at the Chickasha Sports Complex.

Back in 1956, when Lynn Harris first graced a local Little League field, there was no 15-field sports complex dotting the landscape on Grand Avenue just off of I-44. Girls didn't play and T-ball didn't exist for the youngest of players.

But there was, and always has been, the Harris family. Lynn Harris was a coach during that inaugural season of ’56, and later served a number of years as league president. His son, Mike Harris, played Little League and later became a coach himself. Mike’s sons, Shane and Luke also played baseball here.

So it was no surprise when Luke’s 9-year-old son Nic showed up recently at a Little League signup day, accompanied by a coaching staff consisting of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

Lynn Harris, now 90, remembers that first season of Chickasha Little League. In fact, he remembers that first game. The Yankees beat the Cardinals, 11-3.

Harris is proud of what he and hundreds of other volunteers helped to establish and maintain for the youth of this community, including the developing of the playing fields at Borden Park, complete with fences, dugouts, lights, bleachers and concession area. That was the home of Little League for half a century, until moving the city’s new sports complex in 2007.

These days, Harris says he wants to stress the basics on which the league was founded. To not only teach hitting, fielding and base running, but also sportsmanship.

“The league and the coaches need to keep in mind that winning isn’t the most important thing,” Harris said. “We have to remain committed to the original principles of character and good citizenship.”