Dear ALLBB community,

many thanks to all the volunteers who came out on Saturday to speak with the current board about the upcoming season. We now have enough coaches to get the season going!

Those who have registered will receive information about the player evaluation day, which will take place this Saturday, May 4th, at 10 am at the field, Sachtlebenstrasse 36, in Berlin Zehlendorf. If you have not registered, but are interested in joining: come out! — We can register you there as well.

The ALLBB Board

Dear Baseball Friends,

We are delighted that so many parents and children are interested and have contacted us in the ALL Baseball Fun League (ALLBB).

Unfortunately, as we have only received a few concrete registrations from players up till now, it remains very difficult for us to make plans the season. In addition, we are still missing the volunteers required to run a season.

Specifically, we are missing:

– Coaches and Assistant Coaches to look after the teams at their weekly training sessions and on game Saturdays.

– Umpires to manage games on game Saturdays.

– Volunteers to help set up and/or dismantle the field on game Saturdays.

– Volunteers to assist with catering on game Saturdays.

– Parents to serve on the ALLBB Board in order that baseball training and playing opportunities for our children can be provided in the future.

We can only provide and run a season (training sessions and game Saturdays) if you support us. Unfortunately, without your assistance there will be no season.

Please, contact us to provide us your support. Moreover, please, register your children now in order that we can proceed forward with the season planning.

In appreciation of your support,

The ALLBB Board

Dear Baseball Friends,

Breaking News: The four-year break due to the corona-virus pandemic and the redesign of our baseball fields in Sachtlebenstrasse are finally behind us: At last, another ALL Baseball Fun League (ALLBB) season can begin again. After the upcoming Easter break, we will be putting together teams and offering a new season of practices and games.

We welcome girls and boys aged 4 to 12 who want to become familiar with baseball as well as children already familiar with the game who simply wish to play baseball with others.

In various age categories – T-Ball (4-7 years), Minor League (8-10) and Major League (11-12 years) – we will offer weekly training sessions for ALLBB teams as well as games on selected Saturdays as listed below. On game Saturdays you definitely will not want to miss out on our savory BBQ snacks, refreshments and drinks.

Each registered player will receive a complete set of baseball attire consisting of baseball pants, socks and belt as well as an MLB team shirt together with a matching baseball cap. Bats and balls will be provided at practices and games. Players only need to take along a baseball glove and, if applicable, wear a cup / jockstrap.

You can find further information and the registration forms here.

If you have any questions about registration, please send an email to the following email address:
registrar@allbb.de

Planned Weekdays for Training

– Mondays between 15:30 and 18:00
– Tuesdays between 15:30 and 18:00
– Thursdays between 15:30 and 20:00

Which team will train on which day and at what time is to be determined together with the coaches.

Tryout Day

On April 13, we will hold a tryout with all registered players so that we can then assemble teams of equal strength.

Coaches & Umpires Meeting

On April 20, we will invite all coaches and umpires to a preliminary discussion of the season and the composition of the teams in the various age groups.

Planned Game Saturdays

– Saturday, 27 April 2024
– Saturday, 4 May 2024
– Saturday, 1 June 2024
– Saturday, 8 June 2024
– Saturday, 15 June 2024
– Saturday, 22 June 2024
– Saturday, 29 June 2024
– Saturday, 6 July 2024

Dear parents, to realise all these aims, we absolutely require your participation:

– as coaches responsible for the teams on training and game Saturdays
– as umpires responsible for umpiring games on Saturdays
– as volunteers to help us set up and dismantle the baseball fields on game Saturdays and to look after the snack bar and the BBQ grill
– as volunteers to support us on the ALLBB board in organizing and conducting the activities of the season

Without your help, we simply cannot plan and run a season. Therefore, please contact us via the following email address:

commissioner@allbb.de

We are looking forward to the new season with your children and you,

Your ALL Baseball Fun League Board

Beginning Thursday, 7 December at 17:30 – 19:00 Uhr, ALLBB will offer baseball training for kids age 4 and up at the JFKS gym. No equipment necessary, all are welcome, though please do let us know you / your child is coming at commissioner@allbb.de

The first training can be considered “Probetraining” and you can then decide whether to sign up for the activity in the winter. The focus will be on basic skills and fun (wiffle ball, throwing…)

See you there!

First, we want to say “Thank you“ to everyone who has already contacted the league expressing their  willingness to volunteer.

With this letter we want to call again for more volunteers and give you some more specific information regarding what work has to be conducted on every game day:

–      We plan on offering up to six pick-up games on Saturdays from April to July.

–  For those Saturdays we need a consistent set of volunteers that can be there on all game days for the following tasks:

o   At least 10 volunteers to set up the field in the morning (approximately 3 hours). There will be mainly manual labor involved in this role.

o   15 volunteers during the game day (hygiene regulations, bathroom duty since those are farther away from the field, team management, coaching, etc.)

o   At least 10 volunteers to take down the field in the evening (approximately 3 hours). There will be mainly manual labor involved in this role.

We are especially looking for those of you that can commit to being in these roles each of the six Saturdays in question. We are aware that this is a huge burden; however, we will need to depend on the continuity of certain people and tasks to make set up and take down work run smoothly and quickly.”

Thanks to all of you.  Have a great day!

Best,

Florian

We hope that you and your families are all well despite the ongoing Corona pandemic, which now for two seasons has prevented us from being able to host ALLBB games. Naturally, we all miss the “feel” of our Sachtlebenstraße ball park, miss our baseball community, the games, the joy of the kids, and the attractive smokey scent of the BBQ.

Again, this third season in the pandemic it will not be easy for the ALLBB to host children’s baseball games for the following two reasons:

1. The persistent Corona pandemic is making it difficult, if not nearly impossible, for us to plan ahead.
2. Our Sachtlebenstraße ball park – after numerous years of discussion and planning – is now in the process of being rebuilt and renovated by the district office of Steglitz-Zehlendorf. Clearly, this is fantastic news! However, it also means that this season we will not have our baseball fields available as usual. As a consequence, we will have to move to the soccer field on the other side of the former basketball area.

For these reasons we will unfortunately not be able to provide a normal “ALLBB season” in 2022 as we would otherwise do. Nevertheless, we want to offer the children “pick-up games” on hopefully six Saturdays in May/June.

To realize these baseball games for our kids WE WILL NEED A LOT OF HELP: YOUR HELP!

• First, the baseball field has to be completely set up and taken down on the soccer field every Saturday that we offer this service: We cannot leave everything standing there during the week. For this service we require a reliable team of at least 15 helpers who always show up on time on the Saturdays designated for the pick-up games.
• In addition, because of required Corona pandemic hygiene measures, we also need additional 10 to 15 volunteers throughout the day of the pick-up games.

Without your support, we will not be able to run baseball game days for the children.

Please consider helping out the Little League by assisting with field set-up and tear-down support and/or with hygienic support during the pick-up games. Please inform us of your support by 31.03.2022 in order that we can carry out further planning and preparation.

If you want to help out, please send us a message to commissioner@allbb.de

As some of our board members have left over the past two years or will be leaving after this season, we also invite you to become a member of the ALLBB Board. In order to continue to run the league and operate a baseball division within the SC-JFKS in the future we need new volunteers willing to get involved.

A final important note regarding dues: All players who wish to participate in the 2022 ALLBB season – despite the shortened season that has to be adapted to the circumstances of the ongoing pandemic – will be required to pay the full ALLBB dues. The last two years have extensively depleted the league’s treasury due our continual ongoing financial obligations, without any opportunity for generating new revenue. In addition, we will incur further high costs for materials required for setting up our replacement baseball field this season.

We would like to thank you all for your loyalty. We sincerely hope that you and other volunteers will come forward to enable us to provide the children with an exciting baseball season this year.

The Board of the ALLBB

Buck Chisolm

For many years Buck Chisolm was a tireless supporter of American Little League Baseball Berlin and served our baseball community in many different ways. From T-ball coach to Minor League coach, instead of coaching Major League he took on the role of Umpiring, where he felt and knew the league needed him most. On the ALLBB board he held the following positions at one point or another, equipment manager, Treasurer, and then Treasurer and Registrar simultaneously.  He orchestrated the traditional opening day ceremony, and always provided a helping hand wherever and whenever it was required.

To those of us on the board who on early Saturday mornings prepared the Sachtlebenstrasse fields for the day’s games, it will remain unforgettable how after cleaning the grill Buck then prepared breakfast for the volunteers:  with scrambled eggs and “homemade breakfast sausage”, the famous McChisolms.

The entire community has lost one of its kindest, most cheerful and supportive members. Buck will not be forgotten. We cherish his memory.

In this most difficult of times, our deepest sympathy and thoughts are with his family.

 

Photo credit: Niels Gongoll

We hope you spent some peaceful days with you loved ones over the holidays, and also had a productive and healthy start into the new year. The past year has been full of uncertainty, challenges and stress due to the Covid-19 pandemic and we hope you and your loved ones were able to navigate it all safely.

Unfortunately, the pandemic wreaked havoc on our ALLBB baseball plans for 2020. We cancelled our traditional ALLBB season between April to June and also were not able to offer a winter baseball practice this year. Moreover, we do not know what the new year will bring.

The new year has started with a new series of strict lockdowns for schools, restaurants, shops and most public life, which includes team sports. Though there may be light at the end of the tunnel with the beginning of the vaccination campaign, we do not know how quickly it will enable communal activities like sports and ALLBB to start up again. In a nutshell: we do not know if and when the 2021 ALLBB season can start.

The ALLBB board will begin preparing for a season shortly, reaching out to you – the broader baseball community – to find coaches, umpires and other volunteers to help prepare the season. So while we do not yet know if a season will take place, we do want to be prepared when it does.

We will keep you informed about any developments and hope you stay with us.

Best

Board of the ALLBB

 

 

In view of the corona pandemic we have now cancelled the ALLBB season 2020 with a heavy heart. We had hoped until the end that we would be able to start as planned.

Therefore we had planned, organized and prepared the season just as passionately as in the years before. Our sports facility in Sachtlebenstraße is also ready for the – now unfortunately missing – start. This is particularly painful because our Equipment Manager Gregg Norgren and Field Manager Thomas Love have invested an incredible amount of time, commitment and energy in the renovation of Sachtlebenstrasse over the past few months: The damage has been repaired, the baseball fields and the entire facility have been rebuilt, the dugouts have been given a new coat of paint and much, much more.

Many thanks to both of them! We don’t want to withhold this from all friends of ALLBB and Sachtlebenstraße and would like to share a few before-and-after pictures:

For over two months now we have been living in a parallel universe as the Coronavirus crisis continues to regulate much of our everyday lives. We, as the board of ALLBB, have also been dealing with this uncertainty, discussing how we could proceed on a weekly basis.

Our news is not good for baseball lovers: we are cancelling the 2020 ALLBB season.

Why have we done this? Over the past weeks, we have been reading everything we can from the Berlin Senate, especially its guidance for sports associations. Unfortunately, last week it issued a new directive that prohibits team and contact sports for at least the next three weeks, with a probability that this will be extended. Furthermore, our baseball facility at Sachtlebenstrasse is not on the list of facilities with any priority on opening thereafter. Rather than hoping that we might squeeze a precious weekend or two out of the season in late June, we have decided to cancel the season now in order to minimize expenses and be able to better prepare for next season.

What does this mean for you? Your membership fees for the ALLBB/Baseball-Division of the JFK-Sportclub, which you paid for 2020, will remain valid for your registration in 2021. If you have registered but have not yet paid your membership fee, you can still do so now and be listed as a member for 2021. Because we will be raising membership fees in the coming year, we encourage youto make use of this opportunity!

We will, of course, continue to inform you if and when new information becomes available. Please also keep an eye on our website, www.allbb.de for updates.

I would like to thank you again for your loyalty and patience, and would like to wish you and your families good health during these crazy times.

Stay healthy!

Sincerely,

Florian Schlehofer

the ALLBB Commissioner& the ALLBB Board