He Was the Father to a Good Idea : Babe Ruth Baseball Is Now Played and Enjoyed by Millions

It started when Gene Bonacci turned 13, too old for Little League.

The year was 1951 and the young man who lived in Hamilton Township, a suburb of Trenton, hoped to play more baseball. But there was nowhere to go.

So, his father, Marcius Bonacci, head of sales for a trucking company he and his five brothers had founded, came up with something he called Little Bigger League.

He organized a six-team league for boys 13 to 15 in the Trenton area.

Bonacci had contacts throughout the nation because of his work in the trucking business. He encouraged his far-flung friends to organize similar teams and leagues for youngsters in that age bracket.

Within a year Little Bigger League had 228 teams in 32 states.

He also had a new name for the program. He called it Babe Ruth Baseball, in honor of the great home run hitter.

Today, Babe Ruth Baseball boasts 18,000 teams, 3,300 leagues, more than half a million players and a million volunteers who make it work in the 50 states and British Columbia.

George Brett, Bret Saberhagen, Ron Cey, Nolan Ryan, Bobby Castillo, Steve Sax, Fred Lynn, Mike Scioscia and scores of other present and past major leaguers came up through Babe Ruth Baseball.

Marcius Bonacci died at 61 in 1965. His son Gene, now 46, lives in Titusville, N.J., and is vice president of another trucking company.

Bonacci’s widow, Mae, 75, lives a mile up the road from where George Washington crossed the Delaware River, at Washington’s Crossing, N.J. She goes to the Babe Ruth Baseball World Series every year and is always introduced as the first lady of Babe Ruth Baseball.

Headquarters for Babe Ruth Baseball remains here, where a 10-member paid professional staff headed by President Ron Tellefsen, 49, and Vice President-Commissioner Bill Rick, 39, hang their hats. Everyone else in the organization is a nonpaid volunteer.

Tellefsen, Rick, Rosemary Schoellkopf, secretary-treasurer; Nancy Faherty, public relations director, and the other members of the headquarters staff are busy now getting ready for the 1986 season.

New York has more Babe Ruth Baseball teams than any other state. Indiana is a close second and California is third.

For the first 15 years, Babe Ruth Baseball was limited to boys 13-15. In 1966, a senior Babe Ruth Division was started for boys 16-18. In 1974, a prep league for 13-year-olds was formed, and three years ago Babe Ruth Baseball instituted its Bambino (one of Babe Ruth’s nicknames) division for players 12 and under.

Babe Ruth Baseball has always been almost exclusively for boys, although various teams in recent years have had girl players. Only one girl ever made it to the World Series. That was Shawnee Topping, a first baseman from Salem, Ore., who played in the 13-year-old prep league World Series in 1980.

Babe Ruth Softball, for girls 6 through 18, made its debut in 1984. Last year, 12,000 girls played for 800 softball teams in leagues in nearly every state. There hasn’t yet been a World Series for girls’ softball, but there will be.

World Series are held for each of the four other divisions in a separate city for each division and in different cities every year.

“World Series games take place in August in smaller cities,” said Bill Rick. “If we went into a place like New York City nobody would know we were there.

“We look for a captive audience, smaller cities where we get total community involvement with the local media behind the World Series 100%.”

Last August, the Bambino World Series was held in Shelbyville, Ind.; the 13-year-old prep league was in Cranston, R.I.; the 13-15 World Series was in Jamestown, N.Y., and the 16-18 series was in Frederick, Md.

Babe Ruth Baseball World Series have been held in Stockton, Woodland and Brawley, Calif.

California teams winning World Series have been: Bambinos, Oakland, 1984; 13-15 division, El Segundo in 1964, ’69 and ‘74, San Carlos in 1961, and Culver City in 1983. In the 16-18 division, San Gabriel Valley won in 1970, ‘73, ‘76, ’77 and ‘79, and South Bay in 1978.

Roger Murray, 46, columnist and sports editor of the Pasadena Star News, managed San Gabriel Valley, this year’s 16-18 division runner-up team. Murray has been involved with Babe Ruth Baseball for seven years, having started when his son played.

“My son went off to college, but I stayed with it,” he said. “It’s a great program. One of the best rewards is to be associated with a team that makes it all the way to the World Series, as we did this year.”

His team, the Arcadia Reds, won league play. Then he managed the San Gabriel Valley all-star team to the regional title in Ogden, Utah. From there it was to Frederick, Md. At the regional final and during the World Series players stay with a host family, two or three players to each home.

“They see an entire different life style than what they’re accustomed to at home,” Murray said. “In Frederick, we were 40 miles from Gettysburg. We saw houses all over the place with plaques telling of great battles fought on the spot. The kids lived in farm houses. They were in awe. They will remember the experience the rest of their lives. Two of our players had never been on an airplane before.”