Mount Vernon News

MOUNT VERNON — When the Mount Vernon Baseball Association takes the field in a few weeks, it will be an additional 100 members strong. A merger between the MVBA and the Knox County Babe Ruth League in mid-December has created a 600-plus member organization with one common goal – to provide opportunities for children to play baseball.

“We are currently 600 kids strong between all of the different teams, which are very good numbers compared to the size of the town we are,” said MVBA president Ryan Pentz.

Pentz was ecstatic about the opportunities when he sat down for an interview. He explained the MVBA’s desire to add older leagues and the situation the KCBRL found itself.

“They approached us and we sat down to discuss the concerns they had,” said Pentz. “This is something that Little League has always wanted to see happen anyway. It made sense to us to have all of the baseball under one organization. It was good timing for the most part. We would have liked to have done this last October, but it was at least done before the season started.

“It started off as just some side discussions between me and some of the Babe Ruth organization members,” Pentz added. “We came to the decision that it was for the best. They had some concerns and we had some concerns of our own, but we were able to work those out. They were very minimal. Everybody agreed and we brought it together. The entire organization now has a board of 16 people. It used to be 10 on the Little League side and five or six on the Babe Ruth side. No one lost any positions and we didn’t take any of the sponsorships away.”

The addition of Babe Ruth should, hopefully accordingly to Pentz, strengthen the existing leagues. The MVBA should also be able to strengthen the Babe Ruth offerings.

“Basically, Babe Ruth now is just a division of the Mount Vernon Baseball Association,” said Pentz. “We have the Senior Division, the Junior Division, the Minor League Division and the T-Ball Division. Now we can offer Babe Ruth as another division. Nothing is going to change rule-wise. There may be some minor changes like there are every year, but there are no major changes. It will still be sanctioned through the Cal Ripken Babe Ruth Association and Little League is still sanctioned through Little League Incorporated. It is not like the charters are changing. Everything is staying the same. We are just reorganizing how we are doing things at the local level. We are trying to add more structure to it.”

While on paper it may sound simple, the merger was more complicated than originally thought. The leagues each have their own sponsors, making the financial aspect an important thing to consider. It also enabled both leagues to save on operational costs.

“Babe Ruth was solid financially, but they needed some help on the organization side and we could provide that,” Pentz said. “They wanted to buy more bulk, but they weren’t able to because they were only 100 kids on eight teams. Now, they are a part of a league with 48 teams. ... We found an opportunity to cut costs and that was a big reason of this. We were able to cut costs and show one face in the community. We are one organization striving for the same reason — to provide baseball for the youth.

“We didn’t have and dual sponsors, which is one area where we were lucky,” Pentz said. “We noticed that we were both hitting up the same people up twice for money, which I didn’t think was fair. We needed to look out farther beyond what we were and not hit the same businesses constantly. In this day and time, the money is not there and that was one of the big issues that brought this about — financial. Combined, we can buy our baseballs cheaper, our food is cheaper, our field supplies are cheaper. We are buying in bulk, making things cheaper and hopefully, in the long run, make it cheaper on the parents and the community.”

While not an issue not currently an issue, saving money is always an area Pentz would like to increase. It only makes the future of the organization stronger.

“A lot of youth organizations are suffering because they don’t have the finances to operate,” said Pentz. “We have been fortunate enough that it has not hit us yet. The community of Mount Vernon has been so supportive of youth sports that we haven’t been hit like that and, hopefully, we never are. We are nonprofit, but we still need money to operate. We might bring $70,000 in, but that money goes right back out in expenses each season. People see our budget and wonder why they have to pay, but they don’t understand everything we have to buy to make this work.”

One future project Pentz would like to see for the MVBA as a whole is the acquisition of land to build a baseball complex for all ages. A unique organization, the MVBA has no true place to call home. With the value of land continuing to rise, it is a matter of survival in Pentz’s eyes.

“The MVBA is a private, non-profit organization. We operate on city parks, but we are not a city organization. A lot of communities are completely opposite. The Park and Recs committee offers the sports at city parks, but we are the opposite. The city allows us to use their facilities. What that means is that we guaranteed nothing every year. We are not guaranteed any park. For example, I requested Phillips Parks through July 31 of this year, but the city rejected that and said we had to be done by the beginning of July. We have to have our season done by July 5. The city is not using the park after that date, but the Classic Committee, which is another private, non-profit organization, had put in a bid for Phillips Park on those dates. A lot of people don’t understand that the Classic operates within itself. It has nothing to do with our organization.”

The operating agreement with the city has provided many opportunities over the years, but it is not a permanent solution.

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful because the city does provide the land we play on,” Pentz said. “If it weren’t for that, our organization wouldn’t be here today. We would love to have our own complex. It is something we are striving to do, but that is another issue.

“People think that we can stay on the fields as long as we want and do what we want, but those aren’t our fields. We are guaranteed nothing. We are guaranteed no financial backing from the city. They will supply is field paint and the mow the fields once a week. Outside of that, if we want to go above and beyond, we have to pay for it. We redid the announcer’s booth at Phillips Park and we paid for that. We were going to invest $4,500 into Phillips Park this year and the city owns it. The board has since rejected that because the city owns it. We were going to do some upgrades and try to bring the district tournament for Little League to Mount Vernon, which would have been a neat thing to do. That didn’t happen because we had to be off the fields by July 5. The league board decided it wasn’t worth spending the $4,500 to do these upgrades and bring the district tournament when we are not seeing the benefits.”

The merger of the two organizations should also help strengthen the teams on the fields.

“We want the kids to see that when they are five-years-old they are part of something. Right now, the numbers drop dramatically from 12-years-old to 13. The numbers drop off the bottom. I think the reason for that is the kids are playing on these little fields and they look across town at the Babe Ruth field and see big kids playing a different game. Those kids are leading off, picking people off and it is a long throw from home plate to second base. Those kids are scared because they are not exposed to it. By joining together, they will now be exposed more. This will help them see that it is just another step.”

As the season closes in, there is much work to be done. It will be the leg work that makes the merger a success.

“There are still a lot of bumps in the road,” said Pentz. “This won’t be a completely smooth transition, but, in the end, this will be a good thing. We’re going to try and make it as smooth as possible, but there are going to be bumps this year. This is a learning process. We need people to be patient. It may not work exactly like we hope, but if you look back at when the three Little Leagues merged, we had some bumps. We were able to overcome them the following year, though. We are trying to jell together and are working together toward our common goal.”