Welcome to Delco Baseball Now’s summer baseball coverage!

We have been trying to think of the best way to approach our coverage this summer because there is so much going on across all levels whether that be Little League, Cal Ripken, Legion, Delco League, etc.

We ultimately landed on just giving the people what they truly want, and that is simply “the news” in a timely and efficient manner. You can find this information on our social medias as well, which would be @delcobaseball on Instagram and Twitter/X and just Delco Baseball Now on Facebook.

It makes more sense to us to just put everything all in one place instead of 10+ mini articles, so with that being said, let’s get into the most important news in local baseball today.

Also, make sure to subscribe FOR FREE to get this newsletter emailed to you every day. We’ll do everything we can to make it worth your while and keep you as up to date as possible.

Little League District 19 Tournament

You could make an argument that the District 19 Little League Tournaments are the most popular event in Delco Baseball throughout the entire season. The future stars of Delco High School baseball are all on the same field and as we saw in 2023, a trip to Williamsport is certainly possible for teams at the 12U level. Let’s take a look at the action from last night as the 10U and 12U levels began last night and the 11U tournament is a bit further along.

Note: We are still working on tracking down rosters for all of these teams. GameChanger will have a player listed with a first name and last initial, so for now we are just holding off using player names until we have better updates.

Edit: We have been told that the NELL vs MTLL 12U game is being moved to NELL at 6:00 Tuesday night, and the Media vs RALL 12’s game is now scheduled for 8:00 at Aston-Middletown not 6:00.

Delco League

If you haven’t been following along much with The Delco League, now is a good time to start. The regular season ends in about two weeks and the playoffs are set to be very exciting. The Delco League is the oldest semi-professional baseball league in the country, having started in 1908.

The league contains some of the best high school, college, and postgrad players in the area. The league has certainly gotten younger over the last few years, but it’s cool to see different eras of players playing against each other. In some cases, like Ridley’s Tom Carey, you are seeing a high school varsity head coach stepping into the box against pitchers he coached against during the high school season.

It’s really unlike anything else.

Wayne is the traditional powerhouse of the league, with a league-best 19 titles. They won in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. After over 30 years of disappointment, Upper Darby is close to securing a dynasty of their own with titles in 2021 and 2024. Both these teams are pretty much locked into a first round bye.

Let’s check in on last night’s action.

Beep Baseball:

I know what you are all thinking: what in the world is Beep Baseball?

Beep Baseball is a way for those who are blind or visually impaired to play competitive baseball. Every player wears blindfolds to level the playing field. The pitcher is a coach for the hitting team and he is trying to get his players to hit the ball by telling them when to swing, and when a player hits the ball, they run down the line to a football tackling dummy that is beeping.

While that happens, the defense, also blindfolded, has to listen to the beeping ball and get possession of it before the runner can hit the tackling dummy. It’s unbelievable how talented these men and women are. They let me try on the blindfold and it probably took me 10-15 swings to even make contact.

Delco has it’s own team called the Philadelphia Fire that plays their games at Norwood Park, and they host an annual tournament ahead of the World Series:

Cal Ripken:

I want to start off with a huge thank you to all of our audience who has reached out with information about the Cal Ripken world the last week or two. As a Media Little League guy, I only really know about how the Little League world operates and that system. Cal Ripken does not make it quite as easy to find information, but we are all on track now and it appears it is the right time for that.

While Little League only has their district tournament from ages 10-12, Cal Ripken starts that at 8. There will be a state tournament for all five levels starting on Friday, and we have a ton of Delco reps in each bracket.

Each tournament consists of a pool play first round where if you have a good enough record you advance to the playoff part. Click here to see the full list of state tournament brackets.

The coolest part here is that out of five state tournaments, Delco is hosting two of them. BYC will have the eight-year-old tournament with Aston Valley getting the ten-year-olds.

Legion:

It warms my heart to see legion making a bit of a comeback.

Travel ball has certainly taken over in that age demographic, and understandably so with a big focus on getting recruited to play in college. I always loved legion because you get to play with your high school buddies in a bit of a less intense atmosphere, that is until the playoffs come around.

We are working on tracking down more information about the lower age groups, but we can tell you about what is going on at the senior legion level thanks to some guys DMing us to let us know.

It certainly appears like we have three teams ready to make some deep playoff runs here.

Phillies:

I really got my start in sports media doing Phillies content, and with the way they are playing it feels right to give them just a bit of love in this newsletter as well.

Zack Wheeler deserves all the accolades he can get.

The Phillies just crossed the 50 win mark as they sit at 50-35, two games above the Mets. They certainly have some flaws including the bullpen, center/left field, and offensive inconsistency. With that being said, they have a top three rotation in the game, a really strong top of the order, and a core that has a lot of experience playing together.

You can be frustrated at times, but when you are, remember what we had to endure from 1994-2007 and 2012-2021 for some perspective.

Conclusion:

I feel like I’m in fourth grade again labeling this section “conclusion” but I didn’t know what else to put. I hope you enjoyed following along with this because this is how we plan to continue covering summer ball. We of course will have other individual game recaps for championships and things like that where you can see some quotes from interviews and whatnot, but we wanted to have one place where you can have everything together.