will debut LIVING ON: The Michael Cammarata Story on Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET, a 30-minute E60 documentary about the only player whose number has been retired at the Little League World Series. The film will stream afterward on the App and follows four live LLWS games earlier that day.
That timing puts Michael Cammarata back in view during the event that made his number 11 part of Little League World Series history. He was the starting right fielder for the Staten Island team that reached the U.S. championship game in 1991, a run that helped make his name familiar long before he became a firefighter in New York City.
Jeremy Schaap tells the story of Cammarata's life and legacy, with the film bringing in the voices of Jason Marquis, Mike Wissel, Steve Keener, Patrick Wilson and Frank Campagna. Marquis, a 15-year MLB veteran, is among the friends and teammates reflecting on a player who left youth baseball behind but never left the game's memory.
Cammarata was 22 when he died in the Sept. 11 attacks as one of 343 firefighters killed that day and among nearly 3,000 people lost overall. That is the hard edge to the story: a boy from Staten Island whose baseball number was retired for what he meant as a young player, and a man remembered in New York City for the line of duty in which he died.
The documentary's placement is no accident. It arrives during the annual Little League World Series and weeks before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the contrast between the child on the field and the firefighter at the end of the line is impossible to miss. will re-air the episode on Saturday at noon, and a shorter version will run as a SportsCenter SC Featured segment on Sunday in the 8 a.m. hour.
For Little League International, Cammarata's number 11 occupies a unique place because no other player at the Little League World Series has received that honor. The documentary does not just revisit why he mattered once; it reminds viewers why he still does, and why his story is still being placed at the center of the tournament's biggest week.
