Newport Beach Little League to disband

Newport Beach Little League plans to disband after its fall season at the behest of some parents who have grown increasingly frustrated with Little League rules.

The group, which serves families on the east side of Newport Beach, including Corona del Mar, Newport Coast and the Port Streets, intends to end its charter with Little League, a nonprofit that arranges youth baseball and softball leagues around the world, and register through a separate nonprofit as a PONY Baseball league.

The league’s board will vote in November on ending its Little League charter and transitioning to PONY as the Newport Beach Baseball Association.

Newport Beach Little League President Matt Healy said the planned transition would be seamless for families.

“To most people, it’s going to just be youth baseball — same fields, same kids, just hopefully more fun,” he said.

At a meeting attended by about 115 parents in early September, the majority of those who voted on the issue favored the transition. However, Tamara Alexander, administrator for Little League District 55, said that with roughly 1,300 parents involved in the league and only about 45 people voting, she has difficulty believing the majority of all the parents favor the change.

District 55 governs nine leagues in Orange County, including Newport Beach.

For years, Newport parents have expressed concerns about Little League rules, including the method for dividing teams into age groups, and how athletes are moved between teams if another team loses a player to injury. Such rules, parents say, result in kids not being able to play with their friends, which is a big draw of youth sports, Healy said.

Frustration came to a head in March 2014, when the Western Regional headquarters suspended the Newport Beach league’s charter because its board had more managers and coaches than the rules allowed.

The suspension, based on the recommendation of District 55, benched about 700 players for five days and angered parents, officials said.

Alexander said the suspension was necessary to reduce the number of coaches and managers on the board.

“When the ratio is off, you create a program that exists for the benefit of the managers and coaches and not for the benefit of the children,” she said.

After the suspension was lifted, some parents suggested transitioning to a PONY league, which has more flexible rules. Some families simply left for other leagues, Healy said.

“There’s less bureaucracy involved with PONY,” he said. “We’re keeping a lot of the stuff we like about Little League and getting rid of the stuff that parents don’t like.”

Some Little Leagues around Orange County have disappeared in recent years in the face of a dwindling number of athletes. In 2014, Robinwood Little League in Huntington Beach and Westminster Little League merged, creating the Huntington West league. In 2012, Saddleback Little League became part of Lake Forest Little League.

Alexander claimed that unlike Little League, which prides itself on providing leadership for children, PONY Baseball is all about winning.

“With PONY, you can create your own team of whoever you want from whatever city you want or you can bring an intact team into the program,” she said. “What that does is create super teams that compete against drafted teams made up of the leftover players. They end up annihilating them in play. It’s a humiliating process.”

Healy said it’s not his league’s intention to create “super teams.”

“We want to keep our numbers the same and have all the same kids,” he said. “We just want kids to play by baseball rules and not by Little League rules.”