My son and daughter have been playing here for 4 years now and unfortunately my son had his worst season this year no thanks to Coach Mel and Coach Louise. They only played their "favorites " every game. When I approached the league about the issue their response was each player must bat twice and play infield one inning. Well that's all he did ALL YEAR. The leagues philosophy is a bunch of bull! If you instill confidence in a child they will thrive, they did not, unfortunately now my son has lasan appetite for the game due to some bad coaching and poor player management. read more

Just like the league down the road, all politics! Outsiders not welcome... Apparently when the President of the league reads the reviews here, posters beware, he may give you a call and drop F Bombs and other derogatory remarks on your voicemail. Real classy individual. Now that's obviously top notch representation from a league president. Attention PHBA drop your hillbilly president who takes butchering the English language to a new level. Also Mr. President please refrain from calling me and leaving filthy messages, save that talk for your board member buddies... read more

Going into our 2nd season with a nearby Little League I can say that, like PHBA, I find them much too competitive at an early age. What I miss most about PHBA is grouping the kids by age rather than having to try out each year (unless you are on the tournament teams). If you just go by tryouts you are effectively weeding out the lesser players when they find themselves playing with what they consider to be little kids by the time they reach upper elementary school. Sad for the kids. On the con side for PHBA, I think they could take a lesson from other leagues in having more kids doing the umping. It brings the level of sideline bull and parent/coach vs umpire confrontations down -- something I saw a lot of in PHBA and think is a terrible example for the kids. Also our new league doesn't go in for names on shirts, required team auction donations and formally organized coach gifts. We pay more up front in terms of funding, but I prefer knowing what I'm in for at the beginning. Neither of the leagues we've participated in did a good job with up front communication. You almost have to go thru a season to know the drill. PHBA never seems to post much info on their site until after the season is in swing..and they stink at return phone calls. We found the volunteer aspect to be pretty well organized though, and helping the league does give you a closer connection. read more

I've had four kids go through PHBA, from Instuctional(5-6) to Western(13-15) on both the girls and boys side of the league. My daughter has played in the Panther(Girls Travel Team) program for 3 years, and one of my boys played on the tournament team, and is now on the PH Hawks(Boys Travel Team). I realize that out of over 1,700 players in the league, there will always be a few people who have complaints. I think this site is set up to allow these opinions, good or bad. My opinion about this growing league, and the President who runs it is very positive. My Daughter has played for one of the many teams the president has managed, while also volunteering to umpire and run the big duty of maintaining all of the facilities, along with working with 15 or so Board memebers to make this league a nice place for kids to come, at all levels of talent, and play. All four of my kids that decided, on thier own, to play many years in this league have come away with positive comments about thier Managers, Coaches, and Teams. I Coached a team a couple summers ago without one of my kids on the team. One of the many reasons I volunteered to do this is because of the great friendships I have developed over the years with parents and players, and some of the nice people that run this league. My wife may have not been as thrilled as i was, spending time from the family to coach but she could see the joy and the positive demeanor this gave me to be involved in this league! As for the President and Head Commissioner, and all of the other men and women running this league, it is amazing to see how much of thier personal time they put into this league. I live very close to the Pleasant Oaks Fields and frequently visit the fields at various times throughout the season. I can honestly say that I see the President and Head Commisioner doing some type of task each time. Whether its loading or unloading a truck with supplies, working with the maintenance crews on the fields, running player clinics or coaches clinics, umpiring, or just talking with the parents. I have often commented to my wife about how much some of these volunteer people do to run this league. For me, I can say that I will be volunteering to help this league long after my kids have grown out of the league as I would like as many other kids as possible to get the same positive experiance as my kids did in PHBA. I would be careful reading into some of the other negative post or at least keep in mind that there is politics in every league. You cannot avoid politics when you have a stuctured League run as well as this one. Unfortunetly, its hard to tell what peoples personal agendas are when they come to this league from another. Usually they have left another league after a negative experiance or altercation with another Manager. I have seen Men and Women with lots of Coaching experiance come to this league, build up a team of great players, then take the players away to form thier own team, only to see these same players migrate back into PHBA after being disappointed. Its a shame to see these kids dragged into this as many of them have great friendships and bonds with each other. So, if you are looking for a positive reason to come to PHBA, there are many. Lots of great friendships to be had with your kids and other players, and other parents. Lots of ways to be a part of helping to keep this league positive. I hope this review will give you a reason to come join me and the 1,700 other kids this season or next at PHBA! read more

Having been on both sides of the chalk I feel like I can give a fair assessment. The league is pretty competitive and is geared towards good players while leaving the lesser athletes behind. They have tons of meetings and get to know you type of events as well as a parade which is cool for the kids but I felt is just too much (because you know I have to work occasionally). I think I had attended 5 league related meetings/events before we even had our first practice. They brag about being an all volunteer league however they fail to mention that you the parents are the volunteers and if you don't volunteer then they hit you up for more money. My team of 8 year olds had 9 kids, 2 coaches, 1 manager, 1 team mom, 2 scorekeepers another person to do field prep, 1 umpire and the other parents were required to volunteer for the snack shack or pre season field prep. I can honestly say that the parents are the worst that I have ever experienced. I've never been around so many self righteous know-it-alls in one place. The league has rules in place to ensure everyone plays all positions but they don't enforce it so some of the parents/coaches have figured out a way to game the system and keep their core of really good players together and continually pitch their best kid game after game while some kids don't pitch at all. The league communicates well albeit way too much. I was getting 4 emails a day it seems, and if I complained about something (which I did) the standard answer was "you could always volunteer more". The "league" umpires take themselves a bit too seriously if you ask me (at least for my age group) and the games were 2 hours which I also feel is a bit long for 8 year olds unless you're grooming your kid for a tournament team. My son does not need (nor do I) all the bells and whistles, we will go back to playing in Walnut Creek where we can all enjoy the experience. read more

This league has it all! What other league's motto is "Every Kid Plays"? What other league has grown from 1,000 kids to over 1,700 in the last 5 years? This kind of growth does not happen with negative experiances! This league has various levels of competetiveness. The "Rec" side gives all skill levels the opportunity to shine. There are Tournamanet teams, Girls and Boys All Year travel teams, and additional summer and fall Girls travel teams! This League has even opened a wood bat league to give the kids that are older than 15, and up to 18, a chance to continue to play when they were not able to make the local High School teams. I have been involved in this league for many years and, unfortunately, I know the situations behind a few of the negative post on this site. One of the post involve signing up very talented girls that should have stayed on thier talented travel ball team but for some reason they also wanted to sign up for a "Rec" level team?? This parent was talked too and explained the rules about not playing on travel teams and rec ball teams at the same time. What benefit would this have for thier players? To be able to beat teams 20-0?? Nobody could understand why this parent pushed for this scenario? Very disruptive for that team and the other parents. The President was constantly being summoned to this team as other parents were not happy with this parent as well. So, if you have had experiance with the "problem parent" before , than please read that review with that in mind! The other negative post about politics is a common reaction from Clowns that have traveled from Legaue to League and have either been asked to leave or have run the bashing comments up and down these leagues to a point where nobody wants to be around them anymore so when they start to feel "segragated" because nobody wants to be associated with thier constant negative talk, they chalk it up to "Politics"! I think we have all been around these types of "Debbie Downers"! It usually goes like this....."Hey Shawn Clod Vin Leaded(fictional character), nice day for girls softball, isn't it" and he replies "It would be if this league changed some things and my other coaches would listen to me, and if my girls were better, and if I could get my gas paid for by the paents for driving to these games, and......"! So, please don't make your assumptions about PHBA based on the Barnum & Bailey employee comments, and just come out to one of the PHBA fields on any given weeknight or Saturday and walk around and see for yourself. I strongly beleive that you will see a whole lot of kids having fun and lot of parents with good things to say about this league. I have nothing but positives to say about this league. If I think something could be a little better I offer to get involved to help it get better, rather than turn to another parent and complain, or go to a social media site and bash the entire league? A league with over 1,700 kids and 16 or so Board Members and an equal amount of league commissioners, must have a certain amount of structured "Politics" that are working well to grow as fast as they have. I know lots of other parents that have had thier kids in this league from 5-6 years old to 15! The only Negative thing I have to say about PHBA is that they should warn a Kid not to eat 2 Tri Tip sandwichs, 3 orders of Dip n Dots, 2 Large Sodas, and some Big Legaue Chew right before a game!! read more

I have never seen a group of parents/families lead by such horrible examples. Constantly violating clearly posted signs about parking, cussing out people who ask them to obey the law, refusing to hold themselves accountable and always acting like no one else matters but them. The league should be shut down. read more

If only there were negative stars to post about this league, I would post a million negative stars. Warning to all players baseball or softball, if your child excels in these sports and is really good and competitive and loves the game, take them to an affiliated travel team and do not come to PHBA. They will not appreciate your child, their skills, their passion or their love of the game. I was reading an article on Yahoo Sports this morning and this is almost exactly what happened to my daughter this season...Here's the article: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/highschool-prep-rally/mass-little-leaguer-banned-pitching-because-throws-too-152547911.html My daughter and two of her friends came to PHBA under their "buddy" policy because they wanted to play together. They had played travel ball previously and wanted a break from all the stress of competitive ball. They just wanted to hang out, play softball and have fun. Instead they were met with discrimination before their feet even touched the dirt of the field. They were being talked about by parents, coaches, commissioners and had targets on their backs. Everyone wanted to know who these three "travel ball" girls were and why did they come to PHBA. We tried as parents to talk to anyone who would give us a chance to speak that we did not come to the league for anything more than to just relax and play some house ball. The girls did not care about winning or trophies, they just wanted to be together. Well, coming to PHBA was the worst decision we ever made. Among the things that happened to us and our children: being discriminated against, coaches purposely not pitching to our kids so they couldn't hit, having parents yell slurs at our children from the bleachers that they should go somewhere else and play, having our vehicles vandalized with graffiti on our windows calling our daughters bitches, being accused of making it all up and called liars by the league commissioners and president. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. We were told it was our fault for bringing our girls to play in the first place and that we weren't welcomed back to play anymore just last week as our girls teammates were getting ready for the championship playoffs. The girls' teammates and coaches were very upset and not happy that our daughters were asked to leave. In the beginning, when we told the league officials about all that was happening to us, we were told at first to "get thicker skin" and in the end, we were told our girls were ineligible to play and that they were too good, so take them elsewhere. The President of this league used a rule to keep our girls from playing. Our girls were picked up by another travel ball team for this summer so we could not play for another team and PHBA at the same time. We understood this and accepted it. What we didn't accept is what the President of PHBA said next. In front of all the parents on our girls' team he said and I quote "If it weren't for your daughters playing here, some other team might have had a chance at the playoffs" So one of the mom's from our team asked him, "what is that supposed to mean, are you saying our girls are no good without these kids playing?" He did not answer her. Then that same man told us that he did not believe anything we had told him and that we were liars because out of 1700 other parents in that league that we were the only three that were having problems. If anyone on here ever considers taking their child there I would seriously suggest against it and seek baseball or softball life elsewhere. PHBA is full of lying, bullying, men who don't care about the kids at all. It's a good ol' boys club and if your not in it, they don't care about you or your kid. What it all boils down to at PHBA is the all might dollar. If you give enough of your money, then you're perfectly safe. There is a man there that puts a lot of money into that league and we sat back and watched as his daughter was allowed to play a game out of uniform and in shorts and no one said anything about it. This was the same man that spread the rumors about our daughters previously playing for a travel softball team and he has been heard by several parents and officials at this organization saying and I quote..."these kids shouldn't be playing here, they play like high school players" By the way, our daughters are 10 years old. I guess in the end we should take this as a compliment. Our daughters were so good at playing the game that they love that they were asked to go play somewhere better. So we did. read more

It's not perfect but it's the best league around. The kids are the focus. The league does its best to control the sportsmanship of the adults. Every kid gets to play, both infield and outfield every game read more

I am an Umpire for PHBA. I have Ump'ed several other leagues and PHBA is without a doubt the best Baseball/Softball program I have ever worked within. Politics are unavoidable when ever there is an affiliation of people... it's human nature. For those of you that think every child should get a trophy cause they 'tried', then please go somewhere else. Sports are competitive by design, there are winners and losers. This is an outstanding program and facility! For the haters that diss'ed PHBA here on YELP, please go to another league, you'll come back to PHBA when you get a dose of reality. read more

Incredible baseball league- my son's been playing with them 5 years now and hope he continues playing ball! read more

Pleasant Hill Baseball Association - Recreation Centers Near Me - Pleasant Hill, California

Our experience has been very good as this was our first season with the league and and our daughters first season playing softball. The league is structured very well and we cant wait for next year. She loves her teamates the coaches have been great. read more

This place is not as competitive as Concord's Junior Optimist Baseball League. But you don't have to worry about Pattie Behmlander and her family taking advantage of your child and family. It is actually about the kids and not someone's personal politics and bank account! Play here if you don't like politics or getting ripped off..... read more

Horrible horrible! my son has played at JOBL since he was 4. this season for whatever reason it was that entered my head i decided to go to PHBA. I turned in all my forms, registrations blah blah blah. they told me drafts would be late january and practice starts february 12th. so it is now february 8th and no one has called me at all! i have emailed and left several messages for people listed on their contact list and have not heard a word back !!! i am soooo disappointed that a kids association has such horrible communication. did they just not give me a call after the drafts? did they lose my application and registrations.. and if so where the heck is it? do they just not want my son to participate? i will be calling the JOBL offices where they actually call people back right now to see if it is too late for my son to get on a team over there ! fingers crossed! thanks alot PHBA i hope this review will keep other first time parents away !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JOBL is so much friendlier go there ! read more