WEST JORDAN — Eight-year-old Carter Taylor is holding his breath, watching the pitcher in front of him wind up. He twists the baseball bat in his hands, tightening his already white-knuckled grip. His eyes are narrowed. His freckled nose is scrunched.

"You got it, Carter," yells his mother from the sideline.

Ball connects with bat and the little boy is off — almost. It takes a second for Carter, who has congenital muscular dystrophy, to settle himself back into his power wheelchair and rev up the motor. A couple of friends harass him for congratulations as he zips, grinning, to first base.

"High fives, little man!" shouts one.

"Go, Carter, go!" says another, jumping up and down, punching his fist in the air.

This fall, Carter, along with some 80 other mentally or physically disabled children, took his first swing at baseball as part of Salt Lake County's first adaptive youth baseball league. Half a community, including an entire traditional Little League team, showed up Saturday at the Gene Fullmer Recreation Center in West Jordan to watch the little boy battle out his last game of the season.

Carter is something of a baseball icon in his Murray neighborhood, where he's not likely to be caught without his blue mitt, tossing a baseball tethered to his fragile little wrist from hand to hand. But until last month, Carter had never stepped up to the plate.

"He was never strong enough to keep up with the other boys," said his mother, Jesica Taylor. Both of Carter's legs are in casts.

So Carter played mascot for his brother's traditional Little League team, the Utah Horns, instead. He dressed in full uniform and never missed a game — even if it meant traveling out of state. He collected baseball cards and kept careful tabs on his favorite team: the Boston Red Sox.

"Carter's in all of our pictures," said Lonny Mannikko, assistant coach of the Utah Horns. "He's as much a part of the team as anyone."

It's hard to tell who was more excited about Carter's debut on the field — Carter or his friends, the Utah Horns.

Carter just smiles shyly when asked what he thinks about finally playing — rather than just watching — his favorite sport. He presses his worn blue mitt to his cheek and says, "I don't know. It's just fun."

The Utah Horns, however, were openly enthusiastic as they pushed wheelchairs for Carter and his teammates around the bases.

"It's pretty cool that the kids get to play a team sport like this," said Trace Palmer, a 10-year-old Utah Horns player. "If I couldn't play baseball, I'd probably be sad."

The $600,000 rubber softball field, required for players in wheelchairs to maneuver the bases safely, was funded by the West Jordan Rotary Club. It was completed just in time for the 2009 season.

The county calls the little handful of teams, a franchise of a national program started in Georgia in 1998, the Miracle League.

The name seems appropriate to Barbara Mannikko, who, as grandmother of two of the Utah Horns' players, kept tabs on the game from behind the backstop.

For years, she's watched Carter on the sidelines of her grandson's games as he would lovingly finger a baseball.

"I think it's the most wonderful thing I've ever seen," she said. "When they opened this field, I thought heaven has answered some prayers there."

e-mail: estuart@desnews.com