Your job, if you decide to accept it, is to figure out the third and final tragedy of this tale. And do it before you finish reading.

My fourth season in Dunkirk Little League baseball as an 11-year-old in 1962 was, I admit it, underwhelming.

I was the best player on the USW-CIO team in the National Division of Dunkirk Little League. That’s not saying much because we were among the worst teams in the city. We won two games that season.

The main reason we were so bad is because we were almost entirely first-year players.

Bill Hammond

Our previous season we started seven 12-year-olds, the absolute most allowed by Little League rules at the time. Five of those players hit over-the-fence home runs that season, a remarkable achievement.

I played an undistinguished second base that summer as a 10-year-old.

Our other returning starter should have been catcher Bobby Polvino, an outstanding generational athlete in the making who tragically died in the city Halloween parade of 1961.

I was picked to the division’s 1962 all-star team and dutifully attended all the practices on the Woodrow Avenue field.

My family pumped me for details after each practice. I had few.

My all-star coaches decided to keep everyone in the dark as to playing status — starting nine or five-player bench. Not knowing where we stood made us all practice harder, in theory.

Our first game was in Westfield where team standout Dan Alessi pitched a masterful 4-0 no-hit victory. It was his fourth no-hitter of a memorable summer. He was that good. Really.

Me? I was doubly surprised to hit cleanup as an 11-year-old behind my up-the-street neighbor Alessi and play right field for the first time ever, even in practice.

Fortunately, no balls were hit my way and I contributed to the offense with a single and double.

We advanced to a Friday night meeting with the host Jamestown Internationals. The county’s largest city had three all-star teams in the district single-elimination tourney.

I was driven to the game in a car with a backseat full of all-stars. My dad got home from work at five and they — my mother, brother and two sisters — would see me at the 6 p.m. start.

It rained HARD all the way to the game. It didn’t look good. But somehow the worst of the rain spared us and the game started on time.

The team and I expected another 4th Street Gang member, Jim McGraw, would be our starting pitcher. He threw hard and was a relentless competitor. He was clearly the second-best pitcher on our roster.

The coaches had other ideas, starting their regular season team’s ace. He was a lefty who found success pitching around the opposition’s best players.

This worked well for him in Dunkirk, but not in all-star competition. He surrendered a single, home run, double and another home run to the first four batters. Depressing.

In all, he gave up eight runs in the first inning. McGraw came on in relief and gave up little the rest of the way, but we were eliminated from further play in the tourney.

I led off the second inning after that eights-run disaster. I hit the first pitch far beyond the left-field fence. I clearly remember some fan in the back of a truck leaping up to try and catch it, but it was beyond his reach. It was my first career home run.

Teammate Bill Wojcinski added his first career home run later in the game. We later celebrated with burgers, fries and shakes on our way home.

The loss was Tragedy No. 1. Why I was still traveling with my fellow all-stars was Tragedy No. 2.

My parents decided there was no way we could play in that rainstorm, so they turned around and went back to Dunkirk and their weekly American Legion Post 62 fish fry I was fond of inhaling.

I hit my first home run and my entire family missed it. Major disappointment.

So, have you figured out Tragedy No. 3 yet? Need a clue?

I was a practicing Catholic those days. Dad graduated from a seminary. I was a freakin’ altar boy.

Eating that burger by mistake on a Friday was a major religious Bozo no-no. Or, in this case Tragedy No. 3.

I don’t know if breaking the meat abstinence law/rule/beatitude/commandment on a Friday was a venial (minor) or mortal (big-time) sin, but trust me, I paid dearly for that darn tasty indiscretion.

It started with lectures that night from both parents and continued early Saturday with confession, and of course, my prayer-heavy penance.

My Grandma Rose Schrantz even offered her two cents on the topic. I think she used the word “heathen.” Or maybe it was “pagan babies,” I’m really not sure. Tragic.

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LAST WEEK’S mystery Little Leaguer was correctly identified as Charles “Chuck” Dudek, unsurprisingly by his younger brother, Mike Dudek. There were several other good guesses.

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DO YOU have a favorite memory of your time in Little League? Drop me a line or send a photo to mandpp@hotmail.com.

Bill Hammond is a former EVENING OBSERVER Sports Editor.