The Silver Spring–Takoma Thunderbolts is a collegiate summer baseball team based in Silver Spring, Maryland . Most of its players are drawn from the college ranks. The team is a member of the Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League (CRCBL). The Thunderbolts play their home games at Montgomery Blair Baseball Stadium . The Thunderbolts are funded through ticket sales, sponsorship, merchandise sales, donations, and other fundraising efforts at games.
7-742: In January 2000, Richard S. O’Connor purchased the charter rights to a collegiate summer baseball team in the Clark Griffith Collegiate Baseball League . The prior team was named the Southern Maryland Battlecats and played their home games in Charles County, Maryland . Maryland Community Baseball, Inc., the parent corporation of the Thunderbolts was formed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to promote youth baseball in
14-655: A National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) school, have at least one year of NCAA eligibility remaining and be amateurs by NCAA rules. The CGL was a charter member of the All-American Amateur Baseball Association and was designated a Premier League by the National Baseball Congress . The league had five teams in 2009 but suspended play for the 2010 season and does not appear to have been operational since. The Clark Griffith Collegiate Baseball League
21-585: A 1–0 lead in the best-of-three LCS against the Bethesda Big Train , needing just one more win to clinch their first league title in 13 years, but dropped two straight to Bethesda, coming up short. Clark Griffith Collegiate Baseball League The Clark C. Griffith Collegiate Baseball League ( CGL ) was a collegiate summer baseball league , with teams located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. All league players had to be enrolled at
28-720: A charter member of the Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League. The Thunderbolts were the league's co-champions in 2005 and champions in 2006. They have also won the Montgomery Cup, boasting the best record of any Ripken League team in Montgomery County , twice since 2005. The Thunderbolts returned to the League Championship Series in 2019, after sweeping the D.C. Grays in the semifinal round. They then took
35-771: The Silver Spring-Takoma area. The team began play in June 2000 at three locations in Silver Spring. In 2002, Maryland Community Baseball Inc. signed a 20-year license agreement with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to play all home games at Blair Stadium. From 2000 to 2004, the Thunderbolts were members of the Clark Griffith Collegiate League. In 2005, the Thunderbolts became
42-481: Was changed to its final form in 1995. In 1966 the league began playing all its game on the baseball field at George Mason University . That continued until 1987 when teams began playing on their own home fields. The league instituted a rule requiring the use of only wooden bats in competition in 1993. More than 50 CGL alumni went on to play Major League Baseball and over 250 went on to play Minor League Baseball . See: [1] Sites of teams that participated in
49-735: Was founded in 1945 and was then known as the National Capital City Junior League . In the earliest years, games were played around Washington, D.C., including on The Ellipse behind the White House . Clark Griffith who then owned the Washington Senators (now Minnesota Twins) gave the league financial support. When he died in 1955, the league was renamed the Clark Griffith Memorial Baseball League . The name
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