The baseball season is starting early for one Greene County town. 

The 5th Annual Rippey Ruckus includes four teams with two games tomorrow at Walt Anderson Field in Rippey to begin at 4pm. Then on Saturday, there are four games starting at 10am, with the last two games taking place on Sunday with the first pitch time of 10am for the first game. Kevin Hick is with the Rippey Ballpark Commission and he tells Raccoon Valley Radio the teams are from Chicago, Kansas City, St. Michael, Minnesota; and the local Rippey Demons.

“And then the Rippey Demons are actually made up of several people that have Rippey baseball history, and then other ones that are from the Des Moines area that plays on my brother David’s adult league down there.”

Hick points out that the players must be at least 50 years old to keep all teams on the same age level and he invites everyone out to some entertainment of something that people will not see anywhere else in Iowa, as two of the teams are making their third trips to Rippey Ruckus, and the other team is coming for the fifth time.

“How this come about with the contacts with those teams from out of state, was that fellas from the Des Moines area went down to a senior ball tournament down in Florida. And that’s how they made these connections to these ball teams, and they said, ‘Yes, we want to come play! And once they’ve been here, they want to keep coming back, and they just are really impressed. There’s several teams that say, ‘We don’t have this good of a field to play on at home. They enjoy coming to Iowa and play.”     

Hick adds that all of the games are free for people to watch and concession stand items will be available for purchase.