Baseball Field Featured in ‘A League Of Their Own’ Burns

Jay Littleton Ball Park was built in a working-class neighborhood in Ontario, California, about 45 minutes east of Los Angeles, in 1936-37. Nearly a century later, the field retained much of its quaint, vintage charm.

It was that charm that led location scouts to select the bucolic neighborhood park as the setting of the 1992 film “A League of Their Own,” which still evokes fond memories decades later as the definitive film adaptation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that enjoyed its heyday during World War II.

Thursday, the stadium burned to the ground.

The Ontario Fire Department said the fire broke out around 11:30 p.m. Thursday. The blaze had erupted from the dugout and the stadium seating by the time firefighters arrived on the scene, according to reports.

Located in John Galvin Park, Jay Littleton Ball Park is owned by the City of Ontario and maintained by its Public Works Agency. According to the city’s website, the ballpark consisted of a wood-frame grandstand and a ball field with two ancillary utility sheds, one to the east of the grandstand and one to the northeast of the ballpark.

“We were able to get a knock down on the fire — no injuries to firefighters, first responders, or civilians so far as far as we know of,” Dan Kloosterman, fire investigation supervisor for the Ontario Fire Department, told the Southern California News Group.

The cause of the fire is unclear, according to the report.

“We are in the very early stages of the investigation,” Kloosterman told SCNG. “This is a sad day for the city of Ontario.”

Littleton served as the home field of the minor league Ontario Orioles for one season, in 1947.

Other classic baseball movies, such as “Eight Men Out” and “The Babe Ruth Story,” were also filmed at the park. The City designated the facility as a Historic Landmark in 2003.

In proclaiming its historic status, a report published by the City of Ontario noted that Littleton “is also architecturally significant as an excellent and rare example of a 1930s ballpark with a wood-frame grandstand. As such, those distinctive features, spaces, and materials that are key to the feeling and function of a ballpark from the 1930s are character defining.”

Now, a piece of American history has been lost.

A local resident, Rich Rivas, told KCAL News “It hurts a lot, but this community is very resilient. I believe at some point people will be coming out to see what they can do to rebuild it.”