Greater Manassas Baseball League

GMBL is the premier recreational league for youth baseball and softball for Manassas, Bristow, Manassas Park, and Eastern Prince William County zip codes. They also serve Centreville and Clifton through the Cal Ripken divisions only. The facility is maintained by Manassas City who is slowly making vast improvements/​upgrades to the entire complex but the daily upkeep falls to the hard working and dedicated GMBL Board members, coaches and volunteers. The league hosts a Fall, more instructional season, and a competitive Spring season, both at reasonable costs, along with various workshops, clinics for players and camps throughout the year. GMBL provides a draft model to team development in order to equalize ability levels to promote competitive opportunities for all teams at all levels.
Your registration covers uniform (typically a shirt, hat), League and Player Insurance, Administrative fees (phone, website, Babe Ruth fees), Equipment (dependent on age group), Umpire fees (division dependent), and City of Manassas fees (user fee, lights, trash pickup, grass cutting, field and grounds maintenance. GMBL offers Blastball through Babe Ruth levels of ball with tournament level play available as well. Everyone gets to play (according to the rules). A player is not allowed to sit out more than one inning in a game and only two if all the other players have already sat out. Parents can be as involved as they want to be but not required to volunteer as required by other leagues. The GMBL concession stand is the center piece of the facility with a vast and well stocked menu of items at reasonable prices.
Our boys started at the TBall level at GMBL and the oldest is now in Babe Ruth. We have seen people temporarily leave GMBL to try other programs, but many return for various reasons. The GMBL Board is well organized, strong, hard-​working, communicative and dedicated to our community youth. We are extremely pleased with our experiences at GMBL.

Rec league baseball and softball played here.
They have pretty good facilities for a rec league here in PWC.
They have I believe 7 or 8 fields total. All the fields are in one complex and are owned by the league. Since this is all privately funded, the facilities are great considering on how expensive running a place as large as it is.
Prices are reasonable. Typically there are 10 – 12 game seasons with a tournament at the end of the season.
With any rec league parents should keep in mind some issues that will inevitably come up.
1. Rec league is open to everyone of all skill levels regardless.
2. There will always be 1 team that wins every game and 1 team that will lose every game, that’s just the way it is.
3. The coaches that may instruct your kids are volunteers, they are not paid to be there, they may or may not have a lot of baseball or softball skills. Chances are good that the league may have asked for volunteers to help or they may not be able to field a team or two which would mean 10 or 20 kids might not get to play. But in order to be a coach, the league does have a screening policy and does require them to take an online course to ensure they know the game plus how to instruct kids. It is also a good chance that the coach has spent a great deal of their own money in order to ensure the team has equipment to use during the season. Things like balls, batting tees, catcher gear, training aid, cones, pitching machines, etc are either not provided or may be provided but the wrong size like catcher gear. These volunteer coaches will also spend a lot of time planning practices, going to all the games and practices, going to meetings, attending fundraisers, working the snackbar, etc. So like them or not they are probably trying their best.
4. You can not really pick the team your kid gets on. They usually have a draft for new kids, teams that have been in place typically stay together. You can however prior to a season indicate who you don’t want to have coach your kid.
5. Everyone gets to play (according to the rules at least). A player is not allowed to sit out more than one inning in a game and only two if all the other players have already sat out. Some coaches will follow this rule and some wont.
6. There will be some parent of probably one of the better players on the team that thinks they should be the coach. Unfortunately they must have forgotten to sign up before the season started.
7. Some coaches that will be there are just plain not nice. It’s a fact winning or losing can bring out the worst in people.
8. Some of your kids teammates that will be there may or may not be nice either.
9. Umpires. The umpire may be another kid or might be an adult. They are human and are prone making errors. Some calls might go your teams way and some might not, it’s just a fact in sports at any level. Get over it quick, there’s a lot more games to be played.
10. What you can hope for is that regardless of the W’s or L’s in the scorebook at the end of the season your kid has developed life long friendships with some of their teammates. And hopefully your kid will learn life long lessons in sportsmanship and learning to treat others as they would want to be treated themselves.
These tips don’t just apply to this league, but nearly every rec league in the country.
My advice if you child is considering taking up the sport have them play a season, see how they like it. Also look around for skills camps at places like Snyders in Haymarket. If they are excelling, look around for something more competitive. If you do get on a team that you don’t like, don’t give up on the sport, don’t teach your kids to quit if something is difficult or someone is difficult to work with, let’s face it, as the kids get older there will be more and more times when they meet adversity.
And most importantly remember to have fun, so often do we forget that baseball and softball is supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be fun to play and fun to watch.