GREENVILLE—The Greenville Citizens Baseball League (GCBL) held 2024 Opening Day ceremonies Saturday morning. A large crowd attended to start the youth baseball season, with My County Link’s Gaylen Blosser throwing out the first pitch.
“We have kids who have never played baseball before at 10 years old, so we’re getting kids who haven’t had this experience at all, and they are enjoying it,” said GCBL Commissioner Brent Short. That is what we want. We want them to have fun and learn some skills, and hopefully, they continue on, but if they don’t, they remember this as a good time.”
GCBL is a community organization promoting youth baseball opportunities for payers from three to junior high.
The success of GCBL is due to the support of many volunteers, who dedicate countless hours to the development and organization of its programs, maintenance and upkeep of the Sater Park facility as wll as coaching, running the concession stands and providing support of GCBL teams, players and families.
“Without the sponsors and families that help us this doesn’t happen,” Short stated. “We make some money on our flower sales, but much of that goes to uniforms and other things. Without that, we don’t have these fields looking as nice as they do, and we don’t have the equipment and everything we need.”
Longtime GCBL supporter Mike Jones and his sons made the opening day games possible before an afternoon downpour ended play.
“Mike and several of his sons spent the last two days out here helping us prepare the fields and multiple days the last few weeks,” noted Short. “The Ventrac they use smooths out the diamonds.”
With opening day complete, Commissioner Short is pleased with the program and ready to play ball.
“Get it out of the way for the kids, get the anxiety and nervousness out of the way playing on a new team, and Monday, start full throttle.” Short said, “My favorite time of year—it’s baseball season.”
