New president knows his stuff

If you want to call Bill Kreider the “new guy,” you haven’t been paying attention.

True, Kreider is the “new” president of Spokane Valley Baseball, overseeing 58 youth baseball teams for boys and girls, ages 4 through 12 – from T-ball through midgets.

“Mike (Asan) retired after 24 years,” Kreider explained. “For the last 20 years, I was his right-hand man. So now I’m running things and my son, Chris, is my right-hand man. His wife is doing our computer stuff – the kind of stuff neither of us know how to do. Cory Aitken, who is a coach at West Valley, is helping us, too.”

Spokane Valley Baseball came into existence in 1954 – three years before the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. These days the group offers T-ball for kids between the ages of 4 and 6 years, coach-pitch (where as the name implies, the coach pitches to his or her own players) for 7- and 8-year olds, peewee for 9- and 10-year olds and midget leagues for 11- and 12-year olds.

The shift in leadership has been seamless.

“Our numbers are up this year,” Kreider said. “We have 75 more kids this year than last, and most of them are playing coach-pitch. I had four sets of jerseys for coach-pitch teams and needed to do a last-minute order because we have five new teams.

“Our board of directors has been getting younger as people leave and new ones come aboard. I think that has a lot to do with our numbers being up. I think you get new people on board, you start reaching new people you might not have reached before.”

Still, Kreider says, the numbers have been on a downward trend and points to the growth of American Legion baseball and the growing demands of other sports during the summer.

“We used to do leagues for older kids, but the legion programs have been expanding down and taking them over,” he said. “They took the 14-year-olds a few years ago and started with the 13-year-olds last year.

“And you have all kinds of sports doing summer leagues and, in a lot of them, they don’t like seeing their kids do other sports. I hear of coaches telling their kids that if they don’t play summer basketball, for example, they aren’t going to start when they get back for their regular league. And that’s too bad.”

Still, Kreider said, Spokane Valley Baseball fills its niche in the summer.

“We want to see kids play baseball,” he said. “That’s why the league got started and that’s why we’re in here every day eight months of the year. We scholarship kids if they can’t afford to pay the league fee. We don’t turn away anyone who wants to play baseball. We supply everything but the mitt – shirts, hats, pants, socks. And we even have a supply of mitts around here for kids who don’t have one.”

The only time they turn anyone away, Kreider said, is when they show up after the league has set its teams.

“Right now we only have three or four open slots because all of our teams are set,” he said. “We hold each team at 13 kids so that everyone gets the chance to play. Those are the rules. If a kid doesn’t start one game, he starts the next one. Every kid gets to play at least three innings of every game. No exceptions.

“But that means that now, we can’t go back and add players to teams that are already playing. It’s not fair to the kids who are already there who would have to give up playing time.”

The new regime has ushered in a few rule changes, however.

“We wanted to get back to playing more ‘real baseball.’ ” Kreider said. “A few years ago we let coaches go with continual batting orders so that everyone could hit. That kind of takes away from the way the game is played, so we cut that back this year.”

Still, much of Spokane Valley Baseball remains the same.

The league moved back home this year, returning to an earlier home by taking over the basement of Tom’s Barber Shop near Bowdish Road and Sprague Avenue – a longtime sponsor of teams in the league.

“That saves us a lot of money,” Kreider said. “It saves us the $4,000 to $5,000 a year we were paying in rent and Tom lets us in here for free.”

The league has enjoyed a long history of league sponsorship. Valley Electric has been around as long as Kreider remembers. So has the White Elephant.

“We have a lot of sponsors like Grocery Outlet,” Kreider said. “Mike Clancy has been a double sponsor as far back as I can remember. He sends us a check to sponsor two teams every year and his check always arrives the first part of March. And he always asks that we use his money to sponsor teams where money might be tight.

“Gibson’s Nursery on Pines and George Velis’ dentist office are the same way. Having sponsors like that is what keeps us going.”

That, of course, and an abiding love of the game of baseball.

“Bottom line, that’s what it’s all about,” Kreider said. “You can learn a lot about life from playing baseball.”