Rain, Rain Go Away – It’s Opening Day!
PLEASANT HILL, CA (Mar. 3, 2024) — The clouds parted just long enough on March 2 for the annual Pleasant Hill Baseball Association Opening Day parade to mark the 66th Opening Day for the organization.
Youngsters, led by a Pleasant Hill Police patrol car, a Contra Costa Fire District truck and vehicles carrying the requisite local dignitaries, donned brightly clean and colorful uniforms. They walked as teams from the staging area at Sequoia Middle School to the Pleasant Hill Sports Complex at Pleasant Oaks Park via Patterson Boulevard.
The parade’s festive nature, with older players representing baseball and softball squads at the front, grew ever louder as their younger peers followed yelling out their respective team’s chant to one up each other.
Appreciative crowds, including handfuls of parents scurrying for photos of their children, bundled up along the route for the chilly early morning affair. Earliest PHBA records indicate a parade was held at least since the 1980s. This year approximately 1,600 youngsters will be participating in PHBA league action.
David Scholz
David Scholz is back in journalism as a freelance writer and photographer after nearly two decades in education. Prior to moving into teaching in 2000, he worked as a full-time journalist since 1988 for rural community and small daily newspapers in Central Ohio and Northern Nevada, and later in California with The Business Journal in Fresno and dailies in the Bay Area, including The Oakland Tribune and The San Francisco Chronicle. More recently Scholz also worked in an editing, writing, and page layout role with the Rossmoor News.