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By James R. Hartley
Originally known as the National Capital Junior League, the Clark C. Griffith Collegiate Baseball League currently consists of seven teams located in Maryland and Northern Virginia. The CGL was founded in 1945 and is one of the oldest and best organized amateur summer baseball leagues in the United States. The players are under 21 years old and come from across the country. Teams play a 40-game league schedule, which gives the college-age players an opportunity to showcase their talents and improve their skills with wooden bats. Thirty-four former Griffith League players have made it to the major leagues.
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In its infancy, the league was an 18-and-under-league, and its first games were held on area fields. In the late 1940s, the Ellipse, just behind the White House, became the league's first official home. Jack Pope, who pitched for the Silver Spring Elks in 1949 and in 1950, remembers crowds standing down each foul line to see league games.
Pope recalls: "People used to stop at the Ellipse on the way home from work and watch the games. The quality of play was quite good, and there were always really good crowds at those games." The 1947 league champion, Marx Jewelers, won the championship of the All-American Amateur Baseball Association (AAABA). During that first decade, the league received considerable support in the form of bats, balls and gloves from Washington Nationals' owner Clark C. Griffith. When Griffith died in 1955, the league was renamed the Clark C. Griffith Memorial Baseball League in his honor.
Throughout the 1950s and early1960s, the league was dominated by Washington Boys Club and Federal Storage teams coached by Joe Branzell. Branzell's teams won the Clark Griffith League Championship a record 12 consecutive years from 1951–1962 and captured the AAABA crown in 1956, 1960, and 1962. Federal Storage's games were occasionally broadcast from the Ellipse on Saturday mornings over WMAL-TV. This was the first and only time that amateur baseball in the District was televised live. Legendary Washington sportscaster Ray Michaels handled the play-by-play. Michaels was better known in later years to many football fans as the P.A. voice of the Washington Redskins at R.F.K. Stadium.
Those Federal Storage teams featured future major leaguers Craig Anderson (Cardinals and Mets), Steve Barber (Orioles and Yankees) and Tom Brown (Senators). When Branzell left coaching to become a scout for the Washington Senators, the team disbanded. |
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