Home Run Ranch in Bells Opens Its Wiffle Ball Field to Outside Events; Texas League All-Star Game Unverified

Home Run Ranch, the Bells property with a lighted Wiffle Ball field built to resemble Boston's Fenway Park, opens that field and its building to outside groups that make a supporting donation, according to the organization's website. Whether the Texas Wiffle Ball League held its annual All-Star Game there could not be independently verified: neither the league nor the venue has published a record of such a game, a GvilleTX Newsroom review of both organizations' sites found.

The league itself is documented. On its own site, the Texas Wiffle Ball League describes itself as an organized Wiffle Ball league founded in 2012 and based around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Its published materials do not name Home Run Ranch as an All-Star site, and they list no date for such a game. The venue's materials make no mention of one either. Because no first-party record of the event exists on either site, this story asserts nothing about when the game took place, who played in it or how it ended.

The venue's account of its own history is more detailed. Home Run Ranch traces its beginning to 2017, when Lana Newton started a Bible study for high school students in Bells. The organization says that gathering grew from a few teenagers into a weekly crowd of more than 125 students. Those students come from more than 20 area high schools, according to the site, which describes a recreational setting that mixes them with members of the surrounding community. The organization publishes no attendance figures tied to any league All-Star Game, so descriptions of who might have turned out for one cannot be checked.

The league's posted rulebook gives a picture of what any game played under its banner would look like. Contests run four innings with a 40-minute time cap, per the rules on the league's site. Nobody physically runs the bases; ghost runners advance in place of batters who reach. The published format is designed for short recreational play rather than full-length baseball.

A league event at the Bells field would fit the venue's posted policy, since Home Run Ranch invites outside organizations to use the field and building when a supporting donation is made. That policy alone does not establish that a booking happened. As of this writing, the public record documents the league's existence and its game format, the venue's field, the venue's history as a student ministry and its openness to outside events. It does not document an All-Star Game bringing the two together.

GvilleTX Newsroom will update this story if either organization publishes or provides a record of the event, including its date or results.