05/07/2026
Support Colonies local baseball league by signing the petition at the bottom of this post ✨🖤
Caution...long important read ahead, by popular demand, this should explain our struggles
Hope you stay for the entire read.
Ok, so I’ve been getting a lot of questions regarding our outreach and search for a new home for Colonie Prep & Travel Baseball, so I want to explain the situation as clearly as I can.
About four years ago, this started with just 11 or 12 players in a travel rec division in ENYTB. Every year we added another team. Today we are at 4+ teams, and this summer we will likely have 55–60 players involved in the program between spring, summer, and fall baseball.
We could honestly have even more players and should have an internal program, but that’s another conversation.
Our program is a true volunteer-run program. No paid coaches. Just parents and volunteers trying to create a supportive place for kids to continue playing baseball.
The issue is field access.
Colonie Babe Ruth currently controls two village fields. Those fields are rented by men’s league, Perfect Game tournaments, and for profit organizations. There are use arrangements involving All-Star Academy that benefit only a small portion of teams not the prep teams.
Meanwhile, our players currently pay about $175 per player BEFORE uniforms, baseballs, and umpires — simply for access to the field.
Volunteers such as myself, Coach Fink,
maintain Kuhn Field. We mow, drag, line fields, maintain the clubhouse, bathrooms, concessions, and handle the day-to-day upkeep because we care about the kids and the program.
To keep the math simple:
40 players x $175 = $7,000.
Men’s league pays somewhere around $90 per game.
That means I would need roughly 77 home games just to equal what men’s league pays — and that’s BEFORE considering all the volunteer maintenance work we provide for free.
Right now, between 5 teams, I currently have 29 home games scheduled through end of summer Maybe by the end of summer and fall we reach 60 total games across the entire year if we’re lucky.
So yes, maybe eventually we will come close to what men’s league pays.
But not before dedicating countless volunteer hours maintaining the field while still struggling to secure practice time for our teams.
The frustrating part is this:
I could fill one field every single day with Colonie youth baseball — practices, games, workouts, clinics, whatever was needed. The demand is absolutely there.
A few weeks ago, a parent arranged a meeting with the mayor for me. Honestly, it felt like we were finally making progress. He seemed to be concern regarding outside for-profit use of village fields and
Whether agreements involving Perfect Game tournaments, men’s league, and other organizations aligned with the village lease.
Then things went quiet.
When I followed up, I was ultimately told to work things out with the league, which unfortunately put me right back where I started. I formally requested documentation regarding agreements allowing outside for-profit entities to use these village fields and was told those agreements do not exist.
My request has always been simple.
I asked for scheduling control over ONE field — Kuhn Field. The less desirable field. The field I have spent the last four years helping maintain.
Not both fields.
Not exclusive control of the entire league
Just one field.
The petition that was only shared privately with families, received over 100 signatures in just 36 hours.
Why?
Because families understand what this is really about.
This is about prioritizing local youth baseball.
If given that opportunity, Kuhn Field would be filled with Colonie youth teams and kids from around the Capital District looking for a supportive environment to play the sport they love — not adult men’s leagues, not massive national tournaments that play 12 games in a weekend and leave the field destroyed, and not programs where families are paying thousands upon thousands of dollars to participate.
Families simply want local kids to have access to a local field.
As for our search for a new home — yes, it is still ongoing. We have found some very good options at a fraction of what we currently pay.
But honestly, I’m still holding out hope that someone realizes what is being lost here before it’s too late.
If you’d like to read the petition or show support, feel free to reach out.
https://forms.gle/nMLbnnbgzR8nWows8
