Babe Herman Field named for legend

In 1986, the Verdugo Little League Field on Cañada Boulevard was renamed for Floyd (Babe) Herman, a native son who led his Glendale High School baseball team to its first playoff competition in 1920.

Herman was drafted right out of high school by a Western Canadian League team, then spent time in the minor leagues before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, where he set batting records and inspired this city to participate in a campaign to elect him to the Hall of Fame in 1977. Although that campaign and others were not successful, Glendalians chose to honor their hometown hero with a ballpark of his own.

Verdugo Field wasn’t the city’s first Little League field. The first was built in 1951 after George Frederick and Len Joseph appeared before the City Council, seeking a place for children to play.

The council initially opposed the request, but the men persisted, and Frederick was appointed the city’s first Little League commissioner.

Donations poured in, including $1,000 from the Jewish War Veterans, and local businesses offered materials at bargain prices. The new stadium, in Pacific Park, put the two organizers $9,000 in debt, according to Frederick’s obituary in the Dec. 6, 1994, Glendale News-Press.

Some 500 youngsters showed up at the first tryouts in spring 1951, and a few weeks later, the two men had paid their debts. The Little League program grew rapidly.

Verdugo Field was built in 1953 across the street from Verdugo Park, on city property with money and labor supplied by the Little League, according to the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 9, 1986. It was named for the city’s founders.

Six years later, Verdugo Field became the home of a fictional Little League team, the Bobcats, for a Disney production “Moochie of the Little League” starring Kevin Corcoran as Moochie, a little boy who spends most of the season on the bench. It was filmed in early July 1959 and aired later that year.

By 1986, there were seven fields in the city, used by more than 100 Little League teams for girls and boys. That was the year Parks and Recreation Commissioner George McCullough suggested to the City Council that they rename Verdugo Field for Herman.

“Babe Herman has been around town for a long time,” McCullough told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. “I thought it would be very apropos to name a Little League diamond after him.”