Time to look into Little League Finances

Spring is upon us and sure enough kids will emerge from homes with excitement and energy. They have been cooped up for months just waiting for the weather to change. Oh sure they were out in the snow and cold, whacking around hockey balls and building snow forts for snow ball fights, but they all look forward to the little league baseball, football and lacrosse seasons that are about to begin. I’m sure that Carnegie Scranton, Lake Shore and Hamburg Little leagues have already distributed their fliers in the schools and had sign up at the mall. That usually happens in February.

I have always wondered where all the money goes that these leagues get. Now I’m in a position to start asking questions and get serious answers from town officials who have been historically tight lipped about this stuff. I’ve already had some brief conversations with Supervisor Walters and I’m planning a sit down with the rest of the Town Council members as soon as possible.

What I’m interested in knowing is what these clubs do with all the money they take in? Think about this for a moment. A typical little league charges about $75/per kid to play baseball. What do the leagues spend the money on? Well they spend about $15/per kid for a team t-shirt and ball cap. They splurge for about 10 baseballs per team and they buy a few new baseball batting helmets each year. However, my experience coaching in these little leagues has shown me they spend very little on anything else.

What you say? Well don’t they have to pay for time on the ball diamonds? Actually, no they don’t! The Town of Hamburg has historically leased all the towns ball diamonds out to the clubs for a single dollar a season. that’s right folks, one dollar! Well that wouldn’t be so bad but the rest of the town gets screwed because of it. Let me explain.

Say you have a kid who likes to play ball but he doesn’t play on a team for whatever reason. Your kid gets all the neighborhood kids together to go have a game down at the local ball diamond after school and dinner. it’s about 6pm and they just get started when a CSRA or HLL coach shows up with equipment for his team. He is always there first if he is a good coach but he sees that a bunch of kids are on the diamond he needs for practice or a game. What does he do?

Well of course he tells the kids to leave and most of the time they do. Hell, no kid really wants to get in trouble over a ball game right? This time, however, the house next to the diamond has the ol’ man sitting outside in a lawn chair enjoying watching his kid and his friends have fun. So when the coach tells the kids to leave, the neighborhood dad comes over and tells the coach to leave. This gets the coach pretty mad and neither one are going to give in.

Now folks, I’ve actually watched this happen. The coach then calls the league manager and ultimately the Town Police are called. When the cops show up, the coach gets the ball diamond and the kids and the neighborhood dad get kicked off the very ball field they have payed taxes on for years. Why did that happen? Because past Town Council members (DEMOCRATS) always catered to little leagues and their families over residents who pay for the Ball parks in their own neighborhood.

Yes, their are a lot of kids from the town who play in these leagues but there are lot who don’t. As a matter of fact, up to 50% of the kids enrolled in leagues from Hamburg aren’t even from Hamburg. How do I know? Well I coached for a couple years when my kids were younger and enjoyed the sport. I also know just how little money the leagues spend on the kids so where all that money went had always bothered me.

So if any of the loyal readers can explain to us what happens to the thousands of dollars that get taken in every year by these little leagues I’m sure we would all be very interested. I know I watched Joan Kesner stand up on the podium at CSRA, for several years in a row, to kick off the season and I know a lot of these league officials have donated a lot of cash to the Democratic campaigns each year. So I wonder if these campaign donations were a sort of payoff to keep the towns noses out of little league finances?

lets think about how much money we’re talking about. During the last year that I participated in coaching with CSRA, they had just about 780 kids registered to play baseball and softball. They charged about $75  a kid but they did allow the kids to sell candy in advance to pay up to half the registration fee’s. So let’s round down to 750 kids and figure out how much money that is. OK, the total comes to $56, 250.  WOW!  Now what do they spend money on? Well as I said, $15 per kid for a shirt and cap, that’s  $11,250. Oh yea lets not forget the single buck they give the town and I’m told they actually pay for fuel and some other small items at the CSRA main field off College Dr. So let’s say $3,000 more and I think that’s being generous.

What about insurance? CSRA doesn’t allow any kid to participate unless his parents have insurance for them. So they don’t carry insurance as far as I know but we can say $2,000 a season just in case they have to carry some liability insurance. So the best I can figure right now is they take in $56,250 in registration fee’s and send out $16,251 for a net profit of $39,999!

Where does all the rest of that money go? Well we can be even more generous and say they spend $5,000 a year for new equipment but they certainly make at least that kind of money up at the snack shack on the main ball field. So that’s a wash.  Where does all the rest of the money go to that allows these people to throw town residents off the very ball diamonds they pay for? I don’t know just yet but I’m pushing for an audit of every little league account. For those of you who don’t know, the town can audit any little league account if they have reason to believe something fishy is happening. I think it’s time to take a look, don’t you?