About Me

As you've probably already noticed, I enjoy minor league baseball quite a bit. But, while I've been a baseball fan for most of my life, visiting minor league ballparks didn't become a hobby for me until 1999, when my home town of Altoona, Pennsylvania, got a minor league team of our own. Going to games at Blair County Ballpark opened up a whole new world to me. The baseball was great, I was much closer to the field, and it was cheap! At that time, I was a high school teacher, which meant that a good portion of my summer was spent catching Altoona Curve baseball. I enjoyed it so much that I even went to some away games in New Jersey and Ohio.

And that's when I got hooked.

Since then, I've taken vacations to see ballparks in the northeast, the midwest, and in North Carolina, visiting as many ballparks as I could get to in a few hours' drive. Shortly after I embarked on the first of those trips, I began to see websites by people like Joe Mock, Gary Jarvis, and Charlie O'Reilly, who had been to unimaginable numbers of ballparks. I thought it'd be fun to try my hand at the web, too, even though I knew my site would be on a much smaller scale than theirs. So, with a little bit of help from my brother, Joe, Small-Parks.com was born. From the humble beginning of just a handful of Easterm League parks, it has grown to over 40 ballparks and counting. I suppose one day I'll either get tired of this hobby or decide that I just don't have the time or the energy for it any more. But today is not that day.

More about me in a nutshell: I was born and raised in Altoona, PA. I went to college at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where I majored in secondary education, specializing in both math and chemistry. I taught high school for a few years, worked for a great campus ministry organization called the Coalition for Christian Outreach for a few years, taught again for a few more years. In the last couple of years, I responded to a call to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. After finishing up at Wesley Theological Seminary in May, 2003, I'm currently a pastor at the First United Methodist Church of Jersey Shore, PA. In addition to baseball, some of my favorite things are cycling (both the bi- and uni- varieties), all kinds of music, cats, and coffee.

Thanks for visiting Small-Parks.com and for reading my bio page. With any luck, I'll see you at the ballpark!

Peace,
Jeff LeCrone