From left: CC Sabathia, Bill Buckner, and Tug McGraw were all Major League Baseball stars from Vallejo.
Three Major League Baseball players hail from Vallejo — CC Sabathia, Bill Buckner, and Tug McGraw. They are three of the thousand that played American Legion baseball for the Mare Island Navy Yard Post 550 in Vallejo until 1996 when this local favorite stopped. Coincidentally, 1996 was when the Mare Island Naval Shipyard closed after 142 years of “building the best ships and fixing the rest.”
Now, thanks to a few committed individuals, the local American Legion baseball program is being re-born in 2022 and they hope to bring back another championship. The Post 550 team previously won the Northern California and placed second in the Department of California tournaments.
George Fuller, the Second Vice Commander of Mare Island Navy Yard Post 550 says that “the reason for bringing back American Legion Baseball to Vallejo are to help instill a sense of civic pride, offer young men another avenue in which to pursue baseball at a high level, and to hopefully reinvigorate service-related groups which call Vallejo home. Even though this is a team solely sponsored by American Legion Post 550, there will be positive effects on all the other veterans service organizations (VSO) within the Vallejo Veterans Building — which include The American Legion Manuel L. Quezon Post 603, Disabled American Veterans Ozie Boler Chapter 21, Filipino-American Retired United States Armed Forces Association, Fleet Reserve Association Branch 8, US Submarine Veterans Mare Island Base, and Veterans of Foreign Wars Carl H. Kreh Post 1123.”
With more local exposure to veterans, active military, and family members, Fuller hopes to reverse the downward trend in VSO memberships. Like national, the local VSOs have lost about 50% of their memberships since 1992 per the annual National Membership Record and https://www.legion.org/membership/standings
Fuller is also envisioning that this Post 550 baseball program will have a tremendous impact for the City of Vallejo – to include more tourism and increased civic pride. Also he hopes that this will be a catalyst to inspire the renaissance of Vallejo’s Little League programs which have dropped from three leagues and over 25 teams a few years ago to one before the pandemic to none today. The void has left local kids with only the option to join the cost-prohibitive traveling teams.
Fuller adds that Post 550 Baseball has settled on a cost of only $250 this year to play and their mantra is that no youth will ever be denied the ability to play due to an inability to pay.
Post 550 has plans to sponsor tournaments in Vallejo even though most teams will require food and hotel lodging. Using projections from other cities, the businesses within the city and the immediate area will benefit to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per annum just from these tournaments alone.
One of Post 550’s lofty goal is for 50% of the kids to eventually be drafted to a minor/major league baseball program or be offered scholarships to play ball at accredited universities.
Fuller adds that, “One thing that will always be Rule Number One with Post 550 baseball is the development of good ball players and more importantly the development of good young men.”
American Legion Baseball has more than 3,400 teams and nearly 55,000 youth participate in the program yearly from all 50 states and Canada. For more information on Post 550 baseball, please visit the National American Legion Baseball page and Vallejo Baseball Facebook page.
Author: Nestor Aliga
Nestor Aliga was born in the Philippines and migrated to Vallejo, CA in 1967. He was in the US Marine Corps from 1974 to 1976 then in the US Army from 1976 to 2008. He is a life-member of the Big-Three, www.CALEGION.org, www.VFWCA.org, and www.DAVCAL.org.