The Green Ridge Little League (the “League”) was established in 1951 to provide the children residing in the Green Ridge section of Scranton, PA with programs of baseball instruction and opportunities for organized baseball competition. It has done so on a continuous basis since then. Annually, the league serves about 200 boys and girls, ages 4 through 16, in a variety of baseball programs.
Initially, the League conducted its activities on a parcel of land at the end of North Washington Avenue, near the present location of Crowley Park. At that time, the Scranton Transit Company operated its system of electric streetcars, which traveled through the Green Ridge Neighborhood, up North Washington Avenue, to its terminus. There, the cars turned around and headed back downtown. The last trolley run occurred in 1954. In the following years, the City occupied the abandoned turnaround site and developed Crowley Park. The League, around this same time, worked with the City to develop two playing fields just downhill from Crowley Park, near Olyphant Avenue and Highnett Place.
On January 11, 1954, the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas accepted the League’s Articles of Incorporation and ordered its existence as the Green Ridge Little League Baseball Club of Scranton, Pennsylvania, a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation. Sixteen residents of the Green Ridge neighborhood were responsible for the League’s official incorporation. Among them were Thomas F. Kennedy and Chester C. Vola, for whom the Olyphant Avenue playing fields are named. Also among these organizers was Joseph R. Biden, father to a League player who would one day become Vice President of the United States of America. Vice President Biden was inducted into the Peter J. McGovern Little League Museum Hall of Excellence in 2009. He visited the field in 2012, meeting with several players and volunteers.
Presently, the League’s Olyphant Avenue property is the Robert P. Casey Baseball Complex. It is named to honor the memory of Mr. Casey, a Green Ridge resident who served as Pennsylvania’s Governor from 1987-1995. His son, Robert P. Casey, Jr., has served in the United States Senate since 2006. Senator Casey, a former League player, accompanied Vice President Biden during his 2012 visit.
The League has maintained the Kennedy/Vola fields and has made several improvements to the Robert P. Casey Baseball Complex. In the 1970s it constructed a field house building, which included ample space for a concession stand. During the 1990s, it installed lights at both fields, allowing for play to safely continue past dusk. In the 2000s, it improved its existing parking area and added an additional parking area. It also added a press box and storage area. In the past several years, the League had added several seating areas and two batting cages.
The League, which initially offered baseball programs for children age 12 and younger, now offers additional programs for teens, through age 16. These programs, known as the Teener Leagues, operate at a facility off of Amelia Avenue and Jadwin Street in the lower Green Ridge neighborhood. This facility, the Andrew J. Voinski Field, is also home to the Lackawanna College baseball team, which improved the property and maintains it under a lease agreement with the League.
The League is a charitable organization, exempt from federal income tax under IRS code section 501(c)3, having received its most recent tax status determination letter on August 14, 2014. As such, the League may receive tax-deductible contributions.
The League is a Chartered Member of Little League Baseball, Inc. and is part of Pennsylvania District 32.