Expensive travel teams and other sports are squeezing neighborhood baseball in Pittsburgh

Stephen Terrell Jr. winds up to pitch for the Eastside Little League baseball team during the Bob O’Connor Memorial Tournament against Squirrel Hill at Lederman Field in Frick Park on Wednesday, June 17, 2026 in Squirrel Hill. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

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For Ken Hodges, one of the biggest obstacles to getting Braddock kids to play summer baseball is football. The ever-widening football calendar now features practice and flag football games during the spring and summer.

“Kids have got to determine whether they’re going to go to their flag football game or to their baseball game,” Hodges said.

“Football will always win.”

Baseball is still known as the national pastime. But as the nation marks a landmark 250th birthday, its classic game is a withered version of itself in some corners of Pittsburgh.

Youth participation nationwide has rebounded somewhat from a 2015 low point, according to MLB, but the landscape is different. Neighborhood-based, recreational leagues are thinner, replaced sometimes by more competitive and expensive options.

Interviews with youth baseball leaders in communities including Braddock, Greenfield, Squirrel Hill, the South Side and Swissvale show how that shift is playing out locally: Some neighborhood leagues have shrunk or disappeared, while others are growing by keeping costs low, relying on volunteers or absorbing players from communities that can no longer field teams of their own.

Lyle Schimizzi, 10, practices alongside Coach Danny Schimizzi at Lederman Field in Frick Park ahead of the Bob O’Connor Memorial Tournament on June 17, in Squirrel Hill. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

Hodges has run Braddock/North Braddock Little League baseball for the past 24 years. He said when he started, back when his son was a 10-year-old player, the group had five in-house teams for each age bracket. Local kids could play against local kids, with no need to travel across the county.

Now there are only enough interested kids for one team per age bracket. He spoke to a reporter just before one of his teams (filled mostly by 12-year-olds) faced off against a competitor from McKeesport.

Quotation

Ever since the Pirates team declined, it brought the interest in baseball down.

– Dane Welsh, South Side Athletic Association president/coach

Though known these days as a football hotbed, Southwestern Pennsylvania has a rich baseball history. The Pittsburgh Pirates, founded in 1882, are one of the oldest Major League teams still located in its original city. Five World Series titles (including three before the Steelers rose to prominence) led to generations of local youth interest in the game. The city holds a storied place in Black baseball history as the former home to two Negro League teams — a legacy that some local coaches say is becoming more distant as fewer Black children play the game.

But baseball’s cultural dominance cooled nationwide over the last third of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st as other sports have grown. That may have been magnified in Pittsburgh, as the Steelers kept winning and gaining popularity, while the Pirates’ fortunes sank.

“Ever since the Pirates team declined, it brought the interest in baseball down,” said Dane Welsh, president and coach at the South Side Athletic Association.

The Pirates have not won their division since 1992 and have qualified for the playoffs just three times since then. Randy Frankel, who recently retired after running Squirrel Hill Baseball for decades, said the organization enjoyed an uptick in participation when the Pirates posted winning records in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

“Imagine if we had a LeBron James but a baseball player, or a Mario Lemieux, think about the interest in the sport then,” Welsh said.

Consolidation shrinks some neighborhood clubs

“Participation is up for us but overall in the city it’s down,” said Tad Conlin, who took over for Frankel to lead Squirrel Hill. He said a number of neighborhood programs are folding altogether and sending the remaining kids to programs like Squirrel Hill, Greenfield or 14th Ward Youth Baseball.

Frankel also pointed to the explosion in expensive, time-consuming “travel” teams, aimed at families who want their kids to play at a higher level than recreational neighborhood leagues can offer. One travel team, based in western Allegheny County, boasts on its website of alumni that have played in the Major Leagues and tells parents their children will receive the same methods the program has used “to create the area’s best baseball players.” Such organizations typically don’t list their fees publicly but estimates on various youth baseball-focused websites suggest it costs several thousand dollars for one child to play.

Thatcher Voltz, 10, and Calvin Swagler, 10, practice at Lederman Field in Frick Park ahead of the Bob O’Connor Memorial Tournament on June 17, in Squirrel Hill. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

Frankel said there are more than 100 travel teams in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

“There’s not as much neighborhood, grassroots baseball,” Frankel said.

Michael Terlecki, who runs Greenfield’s neighborhood league, said participation is up since he took over five years ago, with more than 375 kids involved.

He attributed the success partly to affordability. Families pay an average of $50 per child. He said the organization can pull off lower prices than other neighborhood leagues by requiring parents to take turns staffing the concession stand at the ballfield.

Fitzpatrick Conlin, 10, walks through the dugout at Lederman Field in Frick Park during the Bob O’Connor Memorial Tournament. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

“That little pop stand funds this whole program,” Terlecki said. And “you can get a piece of pizza, fries and a pop for five bucks. Families really love that.”

Neighborhood leagues offer a sense of community that can’t be replaced by travel or prep teams, Conlin said.

“People want the community that we offer, and the continuity,” he said. “They can play with the same people for 10 years.”

Conlin’s son, 10-year-old Fitz, said he likes playing on the Squirrel Hill team because it lets him play with his school classmates during the summer.

Braddock hanging on

Two standouts on Braddock’s 12-year-old team, Kane Mykel Williams and Dion Cocharan, said they play multiple sports but baseball is their favorite. Williams, who plays baseball, football and track, said he prefers baseball because it’s something he could play competitively in high school and college.

Cocharan, who has played baseball since he was 5 and also plays football and basketball, said he sticks with baseball because of the coaches at the Braddock league.

“My coaches, they make me come back every year. They make me feel good inside,” Cocharan said.

A close call at home plate between a baserunner from Braddock’s Little League baseball team and McKeesport’s catcher during a quarterfinals game on June 24, in Braddock. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

While there are far fewer kids stepping to the plate than when Hodges started coaching, he said he thinks the program will persist in the Mon Valley.

“We’re putting our kids in the best position in school and in the community,” Hodges said. “Next year will be our 75th anniversary. This has been relevant to our community and to Woodland Hills [School District] for a very long time.”

Declining Black youth participation

Youth programs in Braddock, Swissvale and other Pittsburgh communities are cutting against a decadeslong decline in baseball participation among Black children.

That decline reached all steps on baseball’s ladder. Major League Baseball, 20% of whose players were African American in the 1970s, recently touted a slight resurgence in African American representation — to 6.8%. (Neither statistic includes Black players who came to MLB from other countries.) The decline came as youth clubs like Hodges’, which primarily serve Black children, shriveled in numbers.

Members of the Braddock Little League baseball team sit in the dugout for a quarterfinals game against McKeesport on June 24, in Braddock. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

John Wilson, leader of Swissvale’s youth baseball program, said he took it upon himself to maintain opportunities for Black children to play.

“Pittsburgh having had two Negro League baseball teams, for it to be not even a thing anymore in our community, for football to be before baseball kind of didn’t make sense to me,” Wilson said. “As I started to coach more, I started to see less and less Black kids playing baseball.”

Wilson said his drive to promote baseball in the Black community comes partly from his family. He said his grandfather played for the Homestead Grays and his aunt was married to Pirates legend Willie Stargell.

Jalil Copeland stands at home plate as his Eastside Little League teammates watch on during the Bob O’Connor Memorial Tournament against Squirrel Hill at Lederman Field in Frick Park on June 17, in Squirrel Hill. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

He said he worked for the Pirates RBI league — part of a national program whose name stands for Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities. The league gives programs resources and a structure to play games against each other rather than playing intra-neighborhood schedules, which in many cases are no longer possible with the lower number of players.

“RBI took a lot of the communities that the suburbs wouldn’t take,” Wilson said.

Members of the McKeesport Little League baseball team get together for a hands in during their quarterfinals game against Braddock’s Little League baseball team on June 24, in Braddock. (Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)

Charlie Wolfson is the local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at [email protected].

This story was fact-checked by Ada Perlman.

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