The Bethesda Big Train is a collegiate summer baseball team located in Bethesda, Maryland. The season runs from June-August and home games are played at Shirley Povich Field.
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John Ourisman and Bruce Adams founded the Bethesda Community Base Ball Club (BCBBC) in 1998 with a mission to improve the quality of youth baseball and softball fields in our area. In our first project, we built a $2 million jewel of a ballpark at Cabin John Regional Park and named it after the legendary Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich. Povich Field is now the permanent home of the Bethesda Big Train as well as playing host to Georgetown University’s baseball team and hundreds of youth and adult ballgames each year.
Since completing Povich Field, BCBBC has helped make more than $500,000 worth of improvements to youth baseball and softball fields, including Cabin John #2, the youth version of Povich Field, and Jackie Robinson Field in Anacostia, home of the Fields of Dreams after-school program.
Since the Big Train commenced play in 1999 as a part of the Clark Griffith League (CGL) success on the field has been a staple of Big Train baseball. After winning the CGL Championship in 2004, the Big Train joined the Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League (CRCBL) and have been a member since. That first year, 2005, we won the league championship and shared the post-season tournament championship with the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts and, in 2006, were able to repeat as regular season champions. In 2009, the Big Train won both the regular and postseason championships and in 2010, after finishing 3rd in the regular season, went on to capture their 2nd consecutive CRCBL Championship. All of this success has led to national recognition, with the Big Train being ranked as the 9th best summer collegiate baseball team in America in 2009 and 27th best in 2010.
