Who Invented T-Ball? "I won't be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat." ‒‒ Babe Ruth On May 6, 2001, the Capitol City League Rockies and the Satchel Paige League Memphis Red Sox from the Washington, D.C. area took the field to play each other in a t‒ball game. What made this t‒ball game different from any other game was the fact that it took place on the White House South Lawn.

President George W. Bush launched this t‒ball game on the South Lawn to promote health and fitness for young people and show appreciation for the game of baseball. This is probably my favorite activity produced by the US Government. No debate, no filibustering, no veto, or override. Just t‒ball baseball right where presidents strolled around contemplating the decisions that would change the world. When I pass an empty baseball field in my car on a beautiful day, I always think to myself, what a waste.

A beautiful field, empty with no one on it. Now we have a tradition every year on the White House lawn. You don’t have to be a Democrat, Republican, or Independent to see that this is a bipartisan issue, and a good one at that. How did the game of t‒ball arrive from obscurity to the White House lawn? Well, the origin of t‒ball has few different stories. One theory has the great owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, as the creator of the actual model the batting tee is made from.

Branch Rickey, who was always thinking ahead for his team and the sport of baseball helped create the minor league system and had a hand in creating the batting helmet. Supposedly he introduced a flexible batting tee that came from the radiator hose of a car motor. It was said that Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, and other Dodgers honed their skills on this man‒made batting tee. This may have been the original model for others who claimed to have invented and organized the game of t‒ball.

The actual organizing of t‒ball as an activity has been claimed by numerous people and locations around the country. The city of Warner Robins, Georgia was one of the first, if not the first to have an organized t‒ball league. Claude Lewis, director of the Warner Robins (Ga.) Recreation Department, formed a t‒ball league in March 1958. In case you have any inquiries about exactly where and the best way to work with praca anglia Betoniarz, you can call us from the web page. According to an interview he gave, about 100 parents came to Claude demanding some kind of baseball activity for the younger kids. Claude maintains he set up the rules and helped spread the game of t‒ball around the world, even flying over to England and Israel to introduce the game to other countries, and teaching them how to play t‒ball.

I had the good fortune of speaking to Claude’s daughter on the phone, who fields these calls for her elderly dad. Marie was nice enough to spend time going through how Claude Lewis got involved with t‒ball. Interestingly, Claude’s high school baseball coach in the mid to late 1940s had his team hit balls off wood planks on the school’s bleachers.