Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League Announces New Team

Cal Ripken baseball continues to expand across the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

The Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League has announced that the D.C. Grays will be the 10th team to join the summer wood-bat, college-level baseball team, according to the league's executive director, Patrick Malone.

"We are very proud to welcome the D.C. Grays to our league," Robert Douglas, Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League commissioner, said in a press release. "We look forward to having the Grays build a strong reputation as ambassadors to both youth baseball and the African-American community throughout the District."

The team will play at Gallaudet University's Hoy Field, which will feature field turf, stadium seating and eventually lighting, concession stands, and a press box. The university seeks to make its first-class facilities available to the Grays and the wider D.C. community through a youth outreach program that will feature free baseball camps and clinics for local kids.

The name chosen for team is no accident as it is meant to evoke the Homestead Grays' history–the Negro League champion team that played in Washington, D.C., in the 1930s and 1940s. Because of the civil rights importance behind the Grays, the team will work to make sure star African American players are on the roster.

The Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League, founded in 2005, is made up of teams from the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metropolitan region and features amateur players from colleges and universities around the country.

“We want the Grays to be a magnet that will attract kids from all over the city with fun, affordable, family-friendly baseball,” Michael Barbera, the president and chairman of D.C. Grays Baseball, said in a press release.

Barbera is a partner with the Washington, D.C. lobbying firm American Continental Group and a board member of the College Baseball Hall of Fame. He was captain of the baseball team at Williams College.

Antonio Scott will be the general manager of the Grays.  Scott, a former baseball player for Howard University, will be responsible for all baseball operations, including assembling the Grays roster and hiring the coaching staff.

Scott was also the general manager of the old D.C. Grays, a summer wood-bat team that played in the now-defunct Clark Griffith Collegiate Baseball League.