Sporting

     Fans entering Rebel Park pay their $5.00 admission price to a volunteer who mans the ticket “booth,” which is nothing more than a folding table set up in the driveway entrance to the park. Several people quickly make their way to the General Lee concession stand behind home plate, where the “best fried onions in the league” are heaped onto cheeseburgers or hot dogs. Lynne Alger, a volunteer, runs the concession and the Rebel Yell Souvenir Store. Her husband, Bruce Alger, is New Market’s general manager—it’s another volunteer position. His duties include everything from organizing the team’s corps of volunteers (called the Shenandoah Grandstand Manager’s Club) to manning the public address system. For the 1,700 or so folks in New Market, GM Alger says, every Rebel game is “an event."

      Inside the park, there is an incongruous sight. The players are out on the field, as one might expect—but instead of stretching or taking batting practice, they are lining the base paths, raking the mound and dragging the infield. This is low-budget baseball and a far cry from the life of a major league ballplayer, which is something most of these young men aspire to be. Indeed, most of the players, after the game, will go to sleep in the homes of host families with whom they live during the summer.

      The Valley Baseball League, people in the valley say, is baseball as it ought to be—simple and honest and largely free of the trappings of commercialism that have come to define professional sports in America. The amateur VBL has been in existence in some form since 1923, and it has been an officially sanctioned summer league for the last 46 years. There are 11 teams in the league—in the towns of Fauquier, Haymarket, Winchester, Front Royal, Luray, Woodstock, Harrisonburg, Waynesboro, Staunton and Covington, in addition to New Market. The crowds are small—Staunton drew the biggest opening-night crowd in the league, with about 1,000 paying fans—and some of the teams play on high school fields. Most of the teams are privately owned, but certainly nobody is in it for the money. For these places, Valley League baseball is the only quality sports action in town—and so, from late May to late July, when the 44-game season ends, the locals cheer for their adopted hometown boys. As Dave Biery, president of the league, says, The games offer “great family entertainment at a very reasonable price.”