‘A League of Their Personal’ baseball park destroyed in hearth in California

There isn’t any crying in baseball — however tears have been possible shed after a historic ballpark went up in flames this week.

The Jay Littleton Ball Park in Ontario, Calif. — which served as a filming location for 1992’s A League of Their Personal — was destroyed in a fireplace that started Thursday night time, Ontario’s director of communications, Dan Bell, instructed Leisure Weekly.

“It is a horrible loss for our neighborhood,” Bell stated. “Everybody right here both performed or had family or youngsters who performed on that subject through the years. In its 87 years of existence, lots of people performed on that subject.”

The Ontario Hearth Division confirmed in a press launch to EW that the primary hearth engine responded to the scene round 11:30 p.m. native time on Thursday, earlier than the division dispatched a further seven engines and 4 vans. A complete of 51 responders confirmed up and contained the hearth after simply over an hour, discovering no victims and sustaining no accidents.

“When items arrived, they noticed totally engulfed grandstands of the ballpark,” Bell stated. “In order that they went into full assault mode and tried to place it out as shortly as doable, however being a wood construction of grandstands from 1937, it went up fairly shortly. So the tip result’s, sadly, a complete lack of the grandstand construction.”

Bell continued, “The grandstands are all gone, the dugouts are all gone, every part related to being a spectator at that subject is gone. The sector itself is undamaged, however any commentary space for a sport is destroyed.”

The fireplace’s trigger continues to be beneath investigation, the hearth division stated within the launch.

Jay Littleton Ball Park erected its grandstands in 1937, and minor league workforce the Ontario Orioles performed there throughout their one and solely season in 1947. Since then, the park has hosted a lot of Hollywood productions, together with 1948’s The Babe Ruth Story, 1988’s Eight Males Out, 1992’s A League of Their Personal and The Babe, the 1999 X-Recordsdata episode “The Unnatural,” and, most not too long ago, Amazon’s tv reboot of A League of Their Personal.

“It simply had that feel and look of a historic ballpark,” Bell stated.

Directed by Penny Marshall, the unique A League of Their Personal is the fictional historical past of the real-life All-American Women Skilled Baseball League, which launched throughout World Struggle II. The film starred Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Madonna, and Rosie O’Donnell as gamers on the Rockford Peaches, and Tom Hanks as their alcoholic supervisor.

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Aaron Matthiesen, the president of the Ontario Jap Little League, stated the park was the backdrop for maybe essentially the most memorable second within the unique A League of Their Personal. “The dugout right here on the third baseline is the place Tom Hanks had his iconic line: ‘There isn’t any crying in baseball!'” he instructed ABC 7.

Past its cinematic significance, Jay Littleton was a fixture of the Ontario neighborhood and nonetheless used for little league and highschool video games.

“We’ll have to take a look at what we’re gonna do sooner or later with that subject,” Bell instructed EW. “Being such a big a part of our metropolis’s historical past, we’ll have a look at how we transfer ahead with it.”