Dynasty vs. top seed: Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League championship to feature two MoCo teams

Bethesda Big Train looks to win its fourth consecutive championship against newcomer Olney

July 29, 2026 11:10 a.m.

Bethesda Big Train baseball game — Big Train pitcher Kide Adetuyi plays in the 2025 Clarence "Pint" Isreal Juneteenth Classic at Shirley Povich Field in Rockville. Adetuyi is wearing a replica jersey of the 1960s Scotland Eagles, a Black baseball team from Montgomery County. Photo credit: Courtesy Bethesda Big Train

The championship series of the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball league is set, and two Montgomery County teams will face off in a best-of-three series to determine the 2026 champions.

Game 1 will be Wednesday night at First Responder Field at OBGC Park (4501 Olney Laytonsville Road, Olney), and game 2 will be Thursday night at Shirley Povich Field (10600 Westlake Dr., Rockville). If a game 3 is needed, it will be Friday night back in Olney. All games start at 7 p.m., and tickets are available on the team’s websites.

The Olney Cropdusters, the top seed in this season’s tournament, are looking for their first Ripken League championship. They will face the No. 2 seed Bethesda Big Train, who are looking to win their fourth consecutive league championship, and fifth in the last six years.

The Cal Ripken Sr. League, named in honor of legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Cal Ripken Sr., is an amateur summer wooden bat baseball league that comprises eight teams across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

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The last time two teams from Montgomery County competed for the title was in 2019, when the Big Train defeated the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts in three games.

The Cropdusters and Big Train last met on the final day of the regular season on July 23, when the Cropdusters (26-12) came back from three runs down in the eighth inning, scoring six unanswered runs to beat the Big Train (25-12) by a score of 11-8 to clinch the No. 1 overall seed, their first regular season title since the team’s founding in 2021.

The two teams are at the top of the leaderboard in multiple categories. The Big Train leads the league in hits and RBIs, as well as strikeouts. The Cropdusters led the league with 32 home runs, and also had the league’s lowest combined ERA at 5.08 while allowing the fewest earned runs.

Additionally, two of the top five leaders in league batting average this season come from the Big Train: catcher TJ Gramesty of Florida Atlantic University and third baseman Logan Ponnett of Gaston College. Cropdusters outfielder Cade Walter, a sophomore at Jacksonville University, is second in the league with 38 RBI, followed by three Big Train players.

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine