AAABA Memories

From August 11-17, 2008, Johnstown, Pennsylvania will once again be host of the AAABA National Tournament. Considered one of the best amateur tournaments in the nation, plenty of scouts will be on hand to see the players age 20 and under from 16 cities from New Orleans to New York City. From 1978 to 1990 I served as tournament statistician and head scorer.

In 1946, Johnstown was selected as the first host for a new amateur baseball tournament. Glenn Martin of Baltimore, founder of the aviation company which would later become Lockheed Martin, headed a group called the All-American Amateur Baseball Association. The goal of the AAABA was to provide summer baseball leagues for youths in the junior division, and adults in the senior division, and for a tournament to crown the national champion. In 1947, the tournament rotated to Washington, D.C. but didn’t draw anywhere near the support that it did the previous year in Johnstown. Faced with the prospect of shutting down, the AAABA went back to Johnstown in 1948, where it has remained ever since. When Martin passed away in 1955 he left $100,000 to provide for the operation of the tournament.

The Point Stadium, originally a minor league park built in 1926 and rebuilt in 2006, is the center of activity for the tournament. The host Johnstown team plays every night at the stadium, before up to 10,000 people, until eliminated. The stadium was also the host for the 1983 World Friendship games.

The AAABA has affiliate leagues in about 25 cities, with regional tournaments narrowing the field to 15 which travel to Johnstown, which as host gets an automatic berth as the 16th team. Games start on the second Monday of August, in a double loss elimination which lasts until Saturday or Sunday to crown a champion. The “Big Four” of Baltimore, Washington, Detroit and New Orleans have combined to win (the majority of the) championships, with Baltimore having won the last four years in a row. Other regular contestants include New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Youngstown, Lansing, Altoona and Schenectady.

Recruitment rules, which are set by each local league and set how many players can compete for available roster spots, have the most effect on determining how elite a local league can become. Before the NCAA banned the practice a few years ago, several universities kept their underclassmen together over the summer by placing them together on teams in AAABA leagues, such as Michigan and Michigan State in the Detroit league. The Clark Griffith League in Washington, D.C. (where I worked in the late ’80s) allowed each team three players from outside the “local area” of D.C., Maryland and Virginia, which made it possible for several of the teams to bring in top college players from around the country. In comparison, the Junior League in Johnstown did not allow any players from more than 25 miles away, and only three per team who formerly player American Legion ball. This prevented Johnstown from being anything more than a recreational league (after all, they let me play). Despite concessions from the AAABA (always being in the lower bracket, playing all their games at the Point Stadium) Johnstown frequently went two and out until recruitment was liberalized in the 1990s. Over the last ten years Johnstown has been capable of regularly defeating the lower bracket teams and advancing to the finals, where they play competitively against the traditional powerhouse teams.

My first memories of the tournament include standing in a crowd at the Johnstown High field, at age 12, to see Pete Vuckovich pitch for the home team. As well as being the most dominant pitcher in our league in 15 years, Vuckovich also played shortstop and led the league in batting average, home runs and RBIs at age 18 and 19. Despite being teammates with another future major leaguer, Gene Pentz, the Johnstown team did not have depth and was soon eliminated.

Each year, several players come to play in Johnstown who would eventually go on to play in the major leagues. Al Kaline of the Detroit AAABA was the first alumni to become elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Joe and Frank Torre both played for Brooklyn. Reggie Jackson, who was the first black player in the Baltimore AAABA league, was later also elected to the Hall. When Jackson came to Johnstown, his team suffered one of their rare 0-2 performances, eliminated by pitcher Denny Lingenfelter of Altoona. Nearly 20 years later, the night Jackson hit his 500th major league homer, Lingenfelter was pitching in the playoffs of the Altoona Senior League.

In 1978, I became the tournament statistician. Spending every game in the Point Stadium press box, I got to meet many of the scouts and statisticians who came to town, including Ronald McDonald of New Orleans, Morris Moorawnick of Detroit and Joe Branzell of Washington, D.C. I also got to attend the player registrations and meet many of them as I checked over the rosters and name pronunciations. There was the one year with me, Ruben Amaro Jr, half a dozen tournament princesses and a case of beer…

That first year the biggest name player was Orel Hershiser of Detroit. In 1981 Chris Sabo of Detroit broke his collar bone sliding into second, while Brooklyn had Shawon Dunston playing 3B. Who was their SS? Jim Leyritz went 13 for 21 to win a batting title, and hit three homers out of the Point Stadium in one game. Jim Abbott threw a two-hitter and struck out 16 to eliminate Johnstown. John Smoltz homered as a 15-year-old third baseman. Denny Neagle and Todd Jones were teammates on Baltimore. With all the big name college players, a team might feel they are getting a break facing a high school pitcher. Not necessarily so, as when in 2000 Johnstown was handed its two losses by Baltimore’s Gavin Floyd and Washington’s Joe Saunders, both of whom went on to be first-round picks.

Having married and taken a job in northern Virginia, after 1990 I had to finally give up the job I loved. In 2004 we moved back to Johnstown, but it always feels strange to be sitting in the bleachers instead of the press box. Now, I look to raise awareness of the AAABA in the online community as a place where you can spend a day to a week each summer to watch some of the best amateur baseball players in the country, and perhaps a few future major leaguers.