Local Baseball Teams Butt Heads with Little League Over Field Use

John Harashinski and Chris Padilla walked into a meeting with the Barnegat Little League board of directors and township officials Monday feeling hopeful, but left defeated.

The two Barnegat residents, coaches of local year-old travel baseball teams, wanted the township to resolve a dispute between the Little League and their teams over who gets to use the township-owned fields on Barnegat Boulevard North – and who doesn't.

They weren't happy with the resolution: the league has the last say, and they say only their players can use the fields. 

"They want to make it as difficult as possible," Harashinski said.

The Little League board recently decided to allow only registered, active league participants to play on the fields it leases and maintains. Padilla, Harashinski and many of their players’ families cried foul, and called on the township to help them reach a compromise. But Harashinski said when the parties got together this week, township officials immediately said they were there simply to moderate.

“Right away they said, ‘We’re not here to make a decision,’” Harashinski said, “and at that point the wind just went out of my sails. The answer is either join us, or you can’t have the field.”

Now, the question of where the kids will play is up in the air, just as training should be starting. The township has pledged to help them find an alternative, possibly in neighboring Ocean Township, but the coaches are frustrated. In their eyes, the issue is simple. The fields are publicly owned. They just want a place for their kids to play.

It’s not that straightforward, said Nick Lucas, president of Barnegat Little League. The league is 30 years into an exclusive 50-year lease of the fields, he said. While the lease dictates the league pay rent of only $1 per year, according to a copy of the original agreement, Lucas said that in recent years, the league has spent what amounts to $20,000 annually on maintenance and upkeep of the complex. 

Padilla and Harashinski said they have offered to pay $200 per team per season to the league to help defray the costs of things like grass seed and wear and tear on fields and equipment. Local travel soccer teams have worked out similar agreements for field use, they said. 

But Lucas said it’s not about the money. The league wants to stop giving a leg up to groups it sees as competition, he said.

“Barnegat Little League’s mission is to provide Little League baseball to the community,” Lucas said. “There are more and more children that are signing up for other baseball teams instead of Little League,” he said, and the league is suffering financially as a result.

Lucas said the travel teams offer a select group of kids baseball, but no place to play it, while his league has worked hard for years to give any all kids with an interest in the game fields and instruction. Two local travel teams have agreed to meet the 100-percent enrollment mandate, he said.

But the Little League board doesn’t want to keep underwriting groups that are using its resources and taking its talent ­– and revenue source ­– at the same time.

That line frustrates Padilla, Harashinski and the parents of their team members, many of whom have been Little League families for years, and continue to be.

Debbie Ritner said her son Max, 12, joined his travel team because he wanted something extra.

“When the [Little League] season is over, he’s not done,” she said. He and his teammates just love baseball, and travel ball gives them the chance for more play. 

“They live for the game,” she said. “They don’t understand why politics has to come into it.”

Eddy Rogan, 13, echoed the words of many of his teammates when he described what he likes about playing with Padilla’s Barnegat Bulldogs travel team.

“It’s more competitive,” he said. “Little League is basically for fun. Travel ball takes you to a whole new level.”

Harashinski said that while a more competitive game does draw many players to travel leagues, the characterization of the teams as highly exclusive organizations that shut kids out is unfair. Anybody can start an independent team, he said, and he wouldn’t classify his own, the Barnegat Bombers, as “elite.”

“It’s just another avenue for these kids to play ball,” he said, especially for the kids at the older end of the Little League’s spectrum.

The Little League board’s objections come down to control, Harashinski said. “They can’t control the [travel] league, the players or the coaches,” he said, and their solution is to do what they can to block the newcomers.

Padilla said they tried to negotiate some kind of compromise. Eight of his players are still Little League members, and while that’s not the full enrollment the league is looking for, it’s something, he said.

“Their mind is 100 percent made up,” Padilla said. “Any kid that steps on that field has to be signed up. It’s absurd. I told them eight kids still want to play. Doesn’t it make more sense to have eight than none?”

While they said left Monday’s meeting with the Little League board feeling defeated, Padilla and Harashinski said township officials had promised to work to find them another place to play – on school fields, maybe, or the 11th Street rec fields in Ocean Township.

Having to go outside their own town to play ball isn’t Padilla’s first choice, but he said he’d take that over nothing. He just hopes his teams finds a home soon.

“Time is precious,” Padilla said. “This is the time these kids should be getting ready.”