Four years ago, Plant City Little League’s spring girls registration numbers were closer to 1,000 than 100. These days, the crowds in Mike Sansone Park are noticeably thinner.
New PCLL president Ben Smith’s first order of business is to get participation up, and it’s not hard to see why. On the girls side, the league has lost nearly 200 spring players and over 100 fall players since 2011, and things don’t look to be getting better on the surface.
This trend isn’t exclusive to the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World, as Little League softball and baseball numbers across the country have been dropping each year. But it’s a reliable enough sample size that it’s safe to pose a tough question: Is Little League dying?
“A lot of parks are dropping out of Little League and going over to Babe Ruth or Cal Ripken programs,” Smith says. “Four parks in our general area, over the last three years.”
North Brandon, Peterson Park and Auburndale have left the organization, and Smith says that South Brandon could be the next team out the door. While Smith says that Plant City has “no interest” in breaking off anytime soon, a large enough drop in participation would certainly warrant changes to be made.
Several factors appear to be killing Little League, and a look into the state of the Plant City area’s baseball scene can explain why — at least, on a local level.
BASEBALL
Baseball’s problem stems directly from Little League’s competition. That doesn’t mean the local travel ball teams — Smith, himself, is also involved with one — but the organizations that are set up to compete with Little League on a larger scale.
The name that comes up most often is Cal Ripken. Founded by the “Iron Man” himself, Cal Ripken Baseball is an alternative to Little League that offers a playing experience closer to travel ball than Little League. Its basepaths are wider, the distance from the mound to the batter’s box is greater and teams have greater control over what they can do in tournament play. (Specifically, getting more chances than in Little League’s single-elimination system.)
Smith, however, believes that the Cal Ripken experience isn’t as far ahead of Little League as some people think.
“There’s things about Cal Ripken that I think are good, such as leading off — it’s more aligned with real baseball and making progress towards the future,” Smith says. “But, at the same time, Little League has been around so long, and the structure is so good, you’d think that people would be more into that. You always hear big-leaguers talking about how they played in Little League. A lot of kids do go on to play in the pros.”
Yet, Little League numbers are in decline.
The one area where things seem to be going well, though, is in the 50-70 baseball division that Little League created in recent years. Named for its basepath dimensions (50 feet from mound to home plate, 70 feet between bases), this division offers a similar experience to what one would get in Cal Ripken or other, similar leagues. It was created in 2012, with 447 teams in 162 leagues, and ballooned to 2,636 teams in 1,100 leagues in 2013.
It’s not that Little League isn’t attempting to adapt its rules and structure to match Cal Ripken’s — its just that the changes are coming slowly, because the organization is in no rush to implement them.
SOFTBALL
Softball’s problem is a little different.
In the girls’ case, participation numbers are in a much sharper decline than that of the boys. In Plant City, Smith says that travel ball has had the exact opposite effect on softball as baseball.
“With travel baseball, my experience is that most of the coaches encourage their kids to come out and play, to get more reps,” he says. “But in softball, I’ve spoken with quite a few coaches, and they discourage kids from participating in recreational softball. The only thing I can gather from it is they feel it won’t be beneficial.”
Smith’s daughter wants to play softball, and he’s experienced this in the roles of both league president and parent.
Here’s the problem: when PCLL doesn’t have enough girls sign up for softball, those who want to be involved in something within the league get funneled to baseball — with the boys. Many girls, including Smith’s daughter, aren’t too big on that.
“We tried baseball with her, and she just didn’t like it,” Smith says. “I think there’s a lot of girls that don’t get to play softball, and they don’t want to play with the boys too.”
In that case, the only way to play softball is to join a travel team.
While baseball and softball each have their own set of problems to deal with, there’s more to the decline of Little League than that.
OTHER AREAS
Smith believes that other areas which are hurting PCLL, and likely other leagues around the country, is a lack of word-of-mouth support. He says that he’s spoken with people who had no idea that there was softball offered in the area and were taking their kids to areas such as Lakeland to play.
But there’s something else affecting PCLL that is unique to Plant City.
Last year, the Plant City Colts organization decided to branch out from football and start a baseball program. At $50 per player, the program was more affordable than PCLL and catered to players who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford the cost to play at Mike Sansone Park. But the Colts had trouble getting players to sign up, and that led to financial problems. The financial problems led to the league shutting down, but attempts by former PCLL president Cory Kirkland to bring Colts players into PCLL were, as Smith puts it, “shot down.”
The current PCLL president hopes that at least some of those players will take a chance with his league this season, now that the Colts are out of the picture.
“I would really like to see some of those kids play with us,” Smith says. “There’s got to be some really good athletes out there that we’re not getting. Maybe they just need the opportunity to find out how good they are at baseball.”
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
Getting participation to where Smith and PCLL would like it to be will not be an overnight process, and they know this. But the league hasn’t survived for over 50 years in Plant City for nothing, and it believes that it could realistically grow its numbers sooner than later.
One of the points that Smith wants to hammer home is that, while the $165 playing fee is steeper than what the Colts were offering (which includes the mandatory, $30 city fee), Little League programs are not allowed to turn children away because they are unable to pay.
This isn’t to say that PCLL, or any Little League around the country, could support itself while allowing a lot of kids to play at no cost. The money will have to make its way to PCLL somehow, as it has to keep up on its many operating costs to keep from going under.
But Smith says that the league does offer scholarships, and would be willing to host fundraisers, in the event that some families have real trouble paying and need the help.
“I just want people to know that we’re there, and we just really want to get as many kids involved in baseball and softball as we can,” Smith says.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.