Running Out of Ballparks : Little League: With 672 players, the Moorpark youth program is exceeding the capacity of its diamonds.

Moorpark’s fast-growing Little League has just about run out of playing room.

The junior baseball program, the membership of which has jumped 25% in each of the last three seasons, had to turn away a dozen players this year due to a shortage of diamonds--and, says league President Joe Bravo, that’s just the start of the squeeze play.

“Next year, it looks like we’ll either have to turn down dozens of boys and girls who want to play ball, or we’ll have to split up and play our games in different parts of town,” Bravo said Saturday.

“A lot of parents would hate to see that happen. The logistics can be next to impossible for a family that has children playing in more than one location.”

Right now, there are 672 youngsters playing Little League ball in Moorpark. They range in age from 6- and 7-year-olds playing T-Ball, in which the batter hits the ball off a tee, to players as old as 15 in the senior-major division.

The problem, according to Bravo, whose association with Moorpark Little League goes back to 1960, when he was a 10-year-old player, is that the current total of 52 teams cannot be expanded at the league’s fields at Chaparral Middle School and across the street on the former site of Moorpark High School.

“We’re using those fields all day Saturday and every weekday from 5 p.m. until dark,” he said. “There’s no possible way we can get any more playing time on them.”

Saturday, Bravo and other league officials launched “Field of Dreams,” a drive to raise $50,000, which will help move them to a larger location. Among other things, they plan to sell sweat shirts and T-shirts bearing logos designed by Mike Bailey, a graphic artist whose son, Jackson, 6, is a member of the Indians, a T-Ball team.

Thus far, the players’ parents have received mixed signals from Moorpark officials and others in their efforts to line up a new site.

“We’ve tried to get the City Council to promise us some reserved time on the softball diamonds in a new 69-acre park that’s on the drawing boards,” said Gary Anfang, league board member and chief umpire. “Personally, I think the council is dragging its heals.”

Bernardo M. Perez, a councilman who became the city’s mayor Wednesday, said he backs the league’s request for using part of the new park, to be called Arroyo Vista Community Park. “I would favor letting them set up some fences during the season, so they could get more games in,” he said. The park’s first phase is expected to be completed in two to three years.

Perez said he sympathizes with the league leaders’ hopes to be allowed to lease part of a Southern California Edison Co. right of way adjoining the park. Combined with the park diamonds, this would give the league the 10 diamonds its board members believe it needs.

But Christina Bradley, Edison’s area manager for Moorpark and Simi Valley, said company policy wouldn’t permit allowing Little League to use the right of way.

“There are high-voltage lines over that area carrying 220,000 volts of power,” she said. “We wouldn’t allow what we call stationary use of the area. Don’t forget--people keep talking about the big quake.”

Bravo, however, noted that Edison has allowed Little Leaguers in Thousand Oaks to set up diamonds under similar power lines.

Bravo said one of his chief concerns is prompted by reports that Chaparral plans to increase the number of temporary classrooms that have already reduced the space available to the league. “We’ve heard they’re going to add to the blacktop. We’ve also heard they’re going to install a new track. If they did that, it would wipe us out completely.”

Mike Hopkins, Moorpark Unified School District building inspector, said no such expansion is planned at the school. In fact, he said, the district hopes to build a new middle school elsewhere in the city, which would relieve pressure on Chaparral.