ANTIOCH — A three-year-old youth baseball and softball organization is taking over a dilapidated sports complex that was formerly the home of Antioch Babe Ruth Baseball, which is disbanding after 63 years of operations.
The new operators, L4 Baseball & Softball, plan to renovate the complex’s six fields by grading and leveling the surfaces and installing new grass and artificial turf on the diamonds, according to Tony DeRusso, executive vice president of L4 that was founded in Brentwood in 2013.
L4 is also repairing sprinklers, removing weeds, filling gopher holes, repairing fences, removing garbage and debris, and pressure washing and painting buildings at the complex, near the corner of Auto Center Drive and West 10th Street.
It signed a one-year lease with the landowner, Pittsburg-based Dow Chemical Co., on Jan. 12, but DeRusso said L4 is looking to utilize and maintain the complex “on a long-term basis.”
“We’re bringing new life to a facility that has a history of success,” he said.
L4 serves East Contra Costa boys and girls between 9 and 15 years old from Pittsburg east to Discovery Bay. The name comes from the expression “For the Love of the Game,” DeRusso said.
It plans to apply for a new Babe Ruth League charter after the renovation is complete.
“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” DeRusso said. “We need to have a facility to be able to host a Babe Ruth division.”
With its own home fields, L4 will be able to have in-house leagues, meaning that teams within the organization will play each other, along with “travel teams” that play in tournaments in other cities.
“We have a travel-only structure right now,” he said.
Babe Ruth baseball, for boys ages 13 to 19, in composed of in-house leagues and league winners go on to compete in regional- and national-level playoffs.
Antioch Babe Ruth did not have the money to make the fields playable and is choosing to disband in part because it lost its nonprofit status in 2010 for failing to file income taxes for three consecutive years, league President Ed Daviess said.
“When you donate money it is your responsibility to make sure that you are donating to a legitimate nonprofit,” Daviess said. “We lost a lot of sponsors and that was a huge financial hit.”
The league produced a number of players who went on to college baseball careers, as well as a handful of major leaguers, including Antioch High product Aaron Miles, who had a nine-year career with five major league teams from 2003 to 2011.
Miles, now a Brentwood resident, hit .317 in 134 games with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2008 and was a member of the Cardinals’ World Series championship team in 2006.
“There are all the trophies and countless stories of the positive impact on so many people in the community,” DeRusso said.
