Historic Ballpark Featured In ‘A League Of Their Own’ Destroyed By Fire

A historic baseball stadium featured in the 1992 film A League of Their Own was destroyed by a fire late Thursday night.

The Jay Littleton Ballpark, in Ontario, Calif., went up in flames about 11:30 p.m. and is a "a total loss," city spokesperson Dan Bell said. He added that the stadium’s grandstand was wooden and likely burned very quickly.

The field first opened (as Ontario Ball Park) in 1927, and the wooden grandstands were completed in 1937. The ballpark was designated a historic landmark in the city in 2003 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. In 1947, the Ontario Orioles made the stadium its home for one season. The field featured surprisingly large dimensions — 402 feet from home plate to center field. That's 7 feet deeper than Dodger Stadium.

In addition to serving as one of the filming locations for A League of Their Own, Jay Littleton was also featured in the 1988 movie Eight Men Out (starring John Cusack and Charlie Sheen) and The Babe Ruth Story in 1948.

"If you look up and down the street, you have baseball lovers everywhere," Ontario Eastern League president Aaron Matthiesen told NBC Los Angeles. "This ballpark has been the heart of Ontario, the historic ballpark, the place to play for our kids. They’re not going to get a chance to play in it anymore."

Unfortunately, despite its storied past, this beloved ballpark has grown dilapidated in recent years.

"A lot of that has to do with the fact that the homeless (were) going in and breaking things and continually causing issues that made it unsafe for our players to be on the field and unsafe for our spectators to be in the stands," Matthiesen said, speculating that might have been part of the problem Thursday night.

The cause of the blaze isn't yet known, but, according to ABC 7 in Los Angeles, an arson investigation is currently underway.

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