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Babe Ruth, American Legion and other youth league Updates

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Continuing my coverage this year of youth baseball.  We covered the local High School tournaments and Little League tournaments so far.  We talked about all the local area draft prospects ahead of the draft.   I have a draft post covering the multitude of College Wood Bat leagues, but since those leagues are almost over I may just save it for next year.  Now lets try to bridge the gap between little league and high school.

The youth landscape in baseball has changed a ton since I was a kid in Northern Virginia.  It used to be simple:

  • you’d play Little League until  you were 12
  • then you’d play Babe Ruth til you were 15
  • then if you were good enough you’d play HS ball in the spring and you’d play American Legion in the summers.  But you could always play “Senior” Babe Ruth from the time you were 16-18.
  • and that was it.  If you weren’t playing some other sport there was always “fall ball” at each age level, but the above were the leagues that “counted.”

Now a days, I’m not even sure what is going on with youth baseball.  We all know about the wide growth of travel baseball, which has essentially destroyed Babe Ruth at its older levels (thanks to the siphoning off of any one talented enough to pitch).  But now apparently there’s a whole slew of leagues i’m not familiar with:

  • “Major60” and “Major70” distinctions for 11 and 12 year olds
  • Modifications to the classic “little league” rules to try to capture those kids they’re losing to travel teams
  • Pony League baseball (more prevalent in southern virginia; is there even a northern virginia league?)
  • Cal Ripken youth leagues, which I guess is a division of Babe Ruth for youngsters
  • Travel teams; do they even have “leagues?”  Or do they just go to tournaments?

Back in the day, when Babe Ruth had no competition for the youngest teens, winning the 13-year old and/or the 13-15 year old Babe Ruth tournaments still meant something.  Likewise, American Legion was essentially a hand-picked/all-star team of your hometown high schools.  Now, I’m not so sure.  How is American Legion faring, considering that big-time travel teams now have all the major prep prospects out there?   As far back as 2005, there were stories in the Washington Post about how Legion ball was badly suffering.  It seems to me now that Legion ball is struggling just like senior Babe Ruth ball.

That being said, I did go looking for district and state results for the leagues I grew up knowing.  We reveiwed Little League’s local and state tournaments, so here’s the subsequent state results for Babe Ruth and other amateur youth leagues:

American Legion’s district tournaments are complete; the state tournament kicks off on 7/28/14 from the great Fireman’s Field in Purcellville.  Your 8 teams in the Virginia American Legion state tournament are from Roanoke #3, hosts Leesburg #34, Stafford #290, Williamsburg #39, Albemarle #74, West End (Richmond) #361, Big Island (outside of Lynchburg) #217 and lastly my “home post” of 180, Vienna.  Editor Update: Here’s the tourney results: Vienna Post 180 went two and out, losing to Albemarle and then Williamsburg (by forfeit of all things) to end their involvement in the tournament.   Albemarle breezed through the state tournament, winning 4 straight to win the State title.  Big Island fought through the loser’s bracket to

Cal Ripken Leagues (not to be confused with the Cal Ripken Collegiate league, nor “Ripken Baseball,” a for-profit academy run by the Ripken brothers) have all finished their state tourneys as well, and most of those state champs are already deep into their regional tournaments.

I have no information on Pony League baseball, other than what’s on their incredibly confusing website.  Pony baseball has more divisions than … well something with a lot of divisions.  My pun-making ability failed me here.


I have no idea if there’s even organized leagues for these multitude of travel teams.  I know there’s an official Northern Virginia Travel League, but nowhere on this site can i find something like a “schedule” or “standings.”  Do these teams just exist to go play weekend tournaments?   The locally based EvoShield Canes “schedule” is just a list of tournaments they’re playing in.   So what do these teams do the rest of the time?  Don’t they play regular games?

I dunno.  My kid is too young to force me to know all these things yet.  Hell, he may not even play baseball.  Are there readers out there who can fill me in?  Is it even worth tracking these all-star results anymore, thanks to the complete dilution of talent?

Feedback welcome/encouraged.

Written by Todd Boss

July 29th, 2014 at 1:55 pm

Posted in Local Baseball

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