uppose, a year ago, you were a hard-core baseball player turning 13 and graduating from the Majors division of the Menlo-Atherton Little League or the Alpine/West Little League. You could continue Little League in the Junior/Senior division, but the competitive level of play, in part due to a rule that everyone play at least three innings per game, grated at you a little bit.
That was the situation facing Charles Tips' 13-year old son Zack last year. The only recourse for Tips and his son was to enter the Palo Alto Babe Ruth League -- where competition is stiffer and there is no minimum-play rule. Several other alumni of both the M-A and Alpine leagues were considering this. It got to the point where there were so many non-Palo Alto participants, the league president told Tips they should go start their own team.
So Tips did just that. And now, a few months later, the new Menlo Park Babe Ruth League -- for players 13-15 who live in Atherton, Menlo Park, Portola Valley and Woodside -- has completed its first season, and players are preparing to enter the post-season all-star competitions.
Getting a new league off the ground is no easy task.
"One of the issues with youth baseball," says Tips, the league president, "is that the quality of the league depends on the quality of the coaching.
"In the first place, you have to find guys who really know baseball. Two, can communicate to young players, and have the patience not to scream at them and instead make it a good experience for them. And three, are willing to donate something like 800 hours a year. That's hard to find, and the program depends on that. So you always have programs going flat."
For this reason, Tips spent a great deal of time lining up potential coaches (many of whom had sons participating) and then sent out 230 mailings to various players in the area regarding tryouts. Forty-seven ultimately showed up for two weekends of tryouts.
"Apparently there was a lot of pent-up demand," said Tips, who also is the manager of his son's team, Anderson Honda. "We had no idea there was going to be three teams' worth of kids."
Tips' low expectations should not come as a surprise. In recent years, a variety of others sports have been competing for kids in middle and elementary schools. Besides the old standby -- soccer -- basketball, hockey, and even extreme sports are becoming alternatives to heading out on the diamond for many local kids.
Competing with such sports, which typically compensate coaches for their time and offer kids slick uniforms and opportunities to travel, baseball can get lost in the shuffle.
Enter Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
The 1998 Major League baseball season was one for the ages, featuring the epic home-run chase between McGwire and Sosa and the record-setting exploits of the New York Yankees. National interest in baseball, which had been fairly stagnant in the aftermath of the 1994 players' strike, enjoyed a renaissance, bringing people to the ballparks in droves and dominating the headlines across the country.
Youth baseball was in a position to benefit from the buzz surrounding the majors, as kids all over America eagerly signed up to become the next McGwire or Sosa.
"Within our district, there's a sense among all the managers in all the leagues that there's a lot more kids interested in baseball," says Tips. "Whether it's due to something with the Major Leagues, I don't know, but there just seems to be a resurgence of interest in baseball."
Whether kids in Menlo Park Babe Ruth become the next big basher in the majors, building better ballplayers is the core principle the new league is based on. Tips says Babe Ruth is a "developmental" league, focusing on improving the skill level of its players and preparing them for future baseball competition.
"We try to get the kids to build on past successes," says Ed Mitchell, coach of the Starmaker Sports team. "The goal is to teach the game from the fundamentals. We build on the positives, and try to be as positive as we can. My personal Number One rule is this: It has to be fun. We make it fun, and try to increase their appetite for baseball."
Tips and company did have other organizations available to associate with -- Pony/Colt, for instance -- but ultimately went with Babe Ruth because of the league's approach to baseball. Babe Ruth teams do not have to play every player on the roster in a given game, and use the same game rules that high schools and colleges, such as Stanford, follow.
"When the Babe Ruth opportunity came up, we decided to raise the bar," says Mitchell. "We saw the Senior league (Little League's comparable age group) as a mix of serious players and kids using it as a rec league. We want to challenge the kids, and prepare them to play at the highest levels in high school and college."
In Menlo Park, however, challenging the kids could potentially come at the expense of the two local Little Leagues, Menlo-Atherton and Alpine/West Menlo. Babe Ruth draws players from the same pool as the two Little Leagues' Junior/Senior level of play. Tips, for one, believes the Little Leagues will be fine.
"We feel that we can coexist with Little League -- we all came out of Alpine, and we know what they've done for the community," he says. "It's in our best interest for them to continue to exist. We want a model that gives this community the most opportunities for kids to play baseball."
The kids making up the Menlo Park Babe Ruth League certainly made the most of their opportunities this season. In competition against other nearby Babe Ruth teams, the three squads fared exceptionally well, going a combined 19-2 against seven Belmont teams and 10-8 against six Palo Alto teams. Tips points out that his own team also did not shy away from using the 13 year-olds on its roster, letting them hit in key situations and pitching well in the clutch -- indicating a bright future in the years ahead.
All the pieces are in place for long-term success: dedicated coaches, a winning reputation, excellent fund-raising (the league raised $14,000, $10,000 more than its target), and a general will to make the league into a large part of the surrounding community.
"The level of competition is being raised, and we're catching up to Southern California, Texas, and Florida," says Mitchell.
"I see the building of a baseball hotbed."
