Middle Baseball League was founded in 1951 by William "Bill" Ellis Sr. in Santa Maria, Ca.
The Middle Baseball League program operated only in the town of Santa Maria through 1952, but the following year added the small city of Guadalupe, nine miles away,
Goleta (near Santa Barbara), and Glendale. From Glendale where *two leagues of
seven teams each operated in their first season, 1953, word of this program surrounded the city of Los Angeles, and Middle Baseball Leagues formed in such places aside from Glendale, as South Pasadena, East Los Angeles, Downey, Hawthorne, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach,
Venice, and East
San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley of California, and Douglas, Wyoming.
*Glendale Valley & Glendale National
Thousands of innings of ball have been played by boys of all sizes within the age group of 13, 14 and 15
years; those who fell into the gap between Little League ball & American Legion.
It is important to note that some of those boys went on the play in Major League
Baseball.
The diamond for these boys was larger than the little league diamond and smaller than the regulation baseball diamond. The figures placed on scratch paper in Ellis' office in 1951 were: 75 ft. between the rear
point of home plate to the far side of first & third bases, and 53 feet between
the rear point of the plate to the front side of the pitcher's rubber. It was
275 feet from home plate to the center field fence. Those measurements remained throughout the Middle Baseball League
program. The program never reached it's potential because of a lack in financial aid, however, at the time
this informational booklet was published (1961/62), over 3,000 boys had played in the Leagues.
Middle Baseball League
|
Middle Baseball League
|
|
View my Guestbook
Free Guestbooks by Bravenet.com
©Copyright Betty Allen
2009