Tri-Village Little League turns 70

Baseball League introduces Cal Ripken in 2024, renovates and alters field

GLENMONT —Tri-Village Baseball celebrates 70 years of memories shared by generations who have played on its small ballparks, one of which is named in honor of a longtime coach undergoing alterations to usher in a new format of youth baseball next month.

Tri-Village Baseball is introducing Cal Ripken Baseball to its Major Field-named after former coach Ade Arnold-this year. Tri-Village Baseball President Sarah Matrose said the adjustment to a 50-foot/70-foot format aims to provide a smoother transition for players moving to larger fields in school ball or Babe Ruth baseball.

“Cal Ripken [Baseball] offers a little bit of a better transition when you’re 12 and age out of the program,” Matrose said. “When you move to the school ball field or the bigger Babe Ruth field, it doesn’t seem like it’s such a big stretch for these kids.”

With the new pairing to Cal Ripken Baseball, Matrose said players who previously aged out will get another chance to play, fostering a seamless transition to Babe Ruth baseball. The league’s All-Star season will now be played within the Cal Ripken Baseball League, offering more opportunities for advancement and competition.

The revised look comes just as the youth baseball organization celebrates a milestone. Tri-Village Little League, Inc. was formed in 1954. The newly formed league would purchase the expansive Glenmont property from Harold Magee for $2,000 the following year.

Like the notches on a door jamb, three fields once measured a distinct line of succession. From north to south,there was the Minor Field that hosted the lower ranks, including t-ball; the Major Field, where the oldest little leagues held prominence; and the larger, more intimidating Babe Ruth field.

“Tri-Village Little League grew rapidly from the small entity it was at first,” Steve Rice recalled. His father, Robert Sr., was the league’s first vice president and subsequent president. Magee Park consisted of only one diamond, accompanied by a covered grandstand and a concession stand behind home plate. His older brother, Robert Jr., played for one of the four original teams. Steve, and his older brother Phil, later joined once they both reached 10 years old. Once Steve became a father, he coached his four kids there, too.

“We Rices are truly a multi-generational family of Tri-Village Little Leaguers,” Steve said.

Mark Guarino’s family moved into town from Michigan in the spring when he was 12. Another kid’s broken leg helped open a spot for him on Ade Arnold’s team. He struggled to find a hit, he said. The school nurse had told him he needed glasses. “The day I came to practice with the glasses, I was spraying the ball all over the place,” he said. After the season, he continued to participate, making a few dollars as a teenage umpire. “Most” of the managers treated him fairly, but the parents “sometimes were brutal,” he said.

“There was this one guy, I don’t remember who it was, who sat in a lawn chair along the first base side,” said Guarino. “He started screaming at me.” The issue escalated, and the young Guarino threw the adult spectator out of the game. One of the league’s directors had to arrive and escort the parent away from the field. “He threw the lawn chair out into the field. … Like Bobby Knight.”

All Go, No Quit

“I couldn’t spend enough time at that park,” Brenda Leto said. “Three meals a day from the concession stand it seemed on weekends. Even when I was too old to play there I turned to umpiring for Mr. [Jim] Dillon for a few years.”

Leto was among the first girls to play at Magee Park. She was a few years removed from Jill Kaplowitz’s pioneering season in 1978. The Bicentennial History Committee cited a scrapbook when it credited her for breaking the gender barrier. They noted in “Bethlehem Revisited: A Bicentennial Story 1793-1993” how she insisted on playing with the boys. And there was nothing to stop her. The Little League charter allowed girls to play in 1974, following a series of lawsuits led by a Hoboken, New Jersey youth who wanted to play, too.

She hit .333 in her first season on the Major Field, followed by a .563 campaign in 1979.

“Girls never get the attention like boys do,” said Nancy Getz, a former little league mom. Her daughter Carrie once smacked three home runs in a season, two of them in one game. After she reached 12, Carrie had to decide between Babe Ruth and softball. She chose softball. She later went on to rank nationally among Division I collegiate hitters while playing outfield for Siena College.

“Playing mostly with the boys growing up made me work all that much harder to be able to keep up,” Leto said. She was later named the top female athlete in her graduating class at Bethlehem Central High School. Today, she oversees dietary purchasing for local nursing homes after earning a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and her master’s in healthcare administration.

“Work ethic and ‘all go, no quit’ is how I still function in everything today,” she said.

Pure contact

Tri-Village alumnus Christopher Hill recently found a memory as he went through his childhood belongings. Lost in the collection of team pictures and trophies was a baseball signed by his coach, Ade Arnold.

“I’d been struggling and he came over to my house one day and helped my Dad hang a ball from a tree limb in our backyard,” Hill said. The coach stayed to teach him how to make “pure contact” by making the ball swing around the tree limb and not bounce. He hit two singles and a double in the next game. “He came back to my house and woke me up camping in the neighbor’s yard to give me the ball the next day.”

From his first year with the league in 1954 to when he retired in 1988, Adrian “Ade” Arnold could be found at the ballpark. Former players from that era speak his name with reverence, describing a love for the game and a devotion to the kids. It was his scrapbook that captured Kaplowitz’s accomplishments among many others.

“[He was] passionate about baseball, as evidenced by how much time and energy he committed to kids over the years,” Quatraro stated in a text, hours after his Kansas City Royals decimated the Houston Astros. Bobby Witt, the team’s 24-year-old shortstop, crushed two home runs in the victory.

The long ball was something Quataro was known for before he was drafted out of Old Dominion by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1996. After his playing career ended in 2003, he continued his life in baseball as a coach. In 2022, the Royals named him their manager. Arnold is one of the coaches he credits for helping him pursue his career.

“[He] really influenced me with his knowledge of hitting and ability to teach things simply,” Quatraro said. “I still use drills he taught me when I was a hitting coach.”

Tri-Village today

Tri-Village now caters to more than 450 ballplayers, Matrose said, including a Challenger Division that allows children with mental and physical challenges to play the game.

Saturday was the league’s Opening Day, preceded by a clean-up day involving 60 volunteers tasked with painting and grooming the grounds for the kids to play.

“There were a lot of youth families that haven’t even played a game yet, and they wanted to come and they wanted to be a part of it,” Matrose said. “Everybody loved being a part of the field, which is great and we wanna continue to offer people a chance to be more of a part of Magee.”

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