Each time the calendar turns to March, local ballplayers start to feel the buzz.
The third month on the calendar means baseball season, and the opportunity for hundreds of kids in Culver City to take over the diamonds at Bill Botts Field.
However, as the 2010 season beckons, there is an extra charge in the air. The reason is simple: unity.
For the first time in more than 50 years, Culver City’s youth baseball players all find themselves playing under the same umbrella thanks to the offseason merger of Culver City Little League, Culver City National Little League and the Culver City Babe Ruth Baseball League.
Opening ceremonies for the newly constituted Culver City Little League will take place beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 6, weather permitting, and even though rain may be in the forecast, it certainly won’t dampen the outlook about this new chapter in the city’s youth baseball evolution.
“I’m completely excited. The board is excited. They can’t wait until Opening Day,” said George Aceves, who will serve as the inaugural board president of the league after filling the same role for Culver City National Little League the past four seasons. “It’s 55 teams we’re going to have out there. We can’t wait.
“People have been waiting for this day. There’s been a lot of hard work that’s gone into this. It’s history after 50-plus years of having three leagues out there.”
The seed for a possible merger was first planted three years ago, when Little League Baseball, the sport’s international governing body, changed its strict boundary regulations, allowing local leagues to draw from population areas of up to 40,000 people rather than the previous cutoff of 20,000. The former regulation had split Culver City’s pool of players in two, with an east-west dividing line along Overland Avenue.
Meanwhile, discussions were also taking place to bring the Babe Ruth program — which caters to older players ages 13 to 15 — into the Little League fold.
The end result, as agreed to by the various parties late last year, was the merger of all three programs into one unit, with the Culver City Little League (ages 12 and under), Junior League (ages 13-14) and Senior League (ages 14-16) now the singular home for more than 600 participants this spring.
“It just came down to a decision we felt was better for all the kids, all the children in Culver City,” said Shannon Bradley, who shifted into her role as the new league’s vice president after being previously elected as the president of the Babe Ruth league. “Coming together allows us to pool all our efforts together in one place.”
Gone is the competition between the former three leagues for sponsorship dollars in the community, and also taken out of the equation is the need to provide different services in triplicate. Both Aceves and Bradley pointed to big monetary savings in areas such as insurance now that everything is under one banner.
That, in turn, has allowed the league to funnel money back into the program in areas such as instructional clinics for players and coaches.
“Now that we’ve consolidated and saved money in some areas, we were able to give back to the kids,” Bradley said. “That directly benefits the kids.”
Not to mention the fact that classmates can now gather around the lunch table at school on any given day this spring and talk about the latest ballgame, no longer divided by that imaginary line that has split the city in two for so long.
“It’s nice to be able to let all the kids in the community play ball with all of their friends,” Bradley said.
