Youth baseball is on the upswing in Prince George.
The diamond dugouts are more crowded this season at Gyro Park, Volunteer Park, Rotary Park and the refurbished confines of Joe Martin Field and that thought puts a smile on the face of Brenda Astorino.
The president of the Prince George Youth Baseball Association can't pinpoint why more kids are playing ball this season but that is indeed the case.
From 370 last year, the league now has 434 registered players and the numbers are healthiest in the younger age divisions.
"Baseball is alive and well and it's growing," said Astorino.
"Our numbers are up so much this year and we're trying to figure out why and word of mouth has to be the biggest thing.
"From 370 last year to 434 is a huge jump. We're working really closely with the city, they've really come through for us and have been a really good partner with us."
The city league has 41 kids in blastball (four- and five-year-olds); 89 in coach/pitcher (six- and seven-year-olds); 84 tadpoles (eight- and nine-year-olds); 95 mosquitoes (10- and 11-year-olds); 70 peewees (12- and 13-year-olds); 40 bantams (13- and 14-year-olds) and 15 midgets (16- and 17-year-olds).
"Even our peewees are up at 70 and what that means is any time you're up over 65 you have to move up a level," said Astorino.
"Our numbers warrant triple-A, but what you have to understand is we don't even get on the fields until May and that makes it very hard for us to compete at the triple-A level.
"We had to apply to BC Baseball (for an exemption) and they will allow us to stay there (at double-A) for now, but they said they'll be watching us."
The three bantam teams each have several players who have never played baseball before this season.
Prince George won't be hosting any provincial tournaments this year.
The city was the site of the 2013 triple-A peewee provincial championship two seasons ago, but none of the local rep team coaches stepped forward this year to file a bid before the February deadline.
"Hopefully we're going to start thinking about that for next year," said Astorino, who also serves as the northern director for BC Baseball.
"We spent hours and hours at the end of last year fixing up Volunteer Park and it was ready. We talked about giving Joe Martin Field back to the city because it was in such ill-repair.
"As a group, we felt the history of Joe Martin was so huge with the Martin family and we couldn't do it. We needed to keep that park so we went to the city and asked for help and the city went in there and cleaned out all the dugouts and took all the garbage out of there. We got the field down and got the place painted in a work bee and it just looked amazing."
With just 15 players in the midget division, the players skilled enough to make the rep team will play together on a club in the Prince George Senior Baseball League. The midgets who need more seasoning will play in the bantam league.
The peewee- and bantam-aged rep team players will have to travel out of town to find competitive teams to play.
International baseball returns to Prince George at Citizen Field, Aug. 14-23, with the 2015 World Baseball Challenge and Astorino says youth players will get involved. At previous WBC tournament in 2009, 2011 and 2013, they served as bat boys, raked the infield and took on other volunteer duties that had them rubbing shoulders with some of the world's best amateur players.
"I'm sure they will have the kids out there again," said Astorino.
P.G. Youth Baseball is sponsoring a three-day coaching clinic this weekend at Volunteer Park, bringing in Charles Law of Baseball Canada to coach the coaches. As of Thursday, 10 coaches had signed up for the clinic.
