{"id":229745,"date":"2026-03-21T06:04:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T06:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/229745\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T06:04:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T06:04:24","slug":"ceres-youth-baseball-contract-dispute-turns-physical-during-heated-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/229745\/","title":{"rendered":"Ceres youth baseball contract dispute turns physical during heated meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A dispute over a youth baseball contract in Ceres escalated into a physical confrontation between league leaders and a city employee, raising questions about control of a long-standing community program and potential changes to its funding.<\/p>\n<p>Video obtained by CBS News Sacramento shows a heated exchange that turned into a shoving match during a meeting between representatives of Ceres Youth Baseball and the city.<\/p>\n<p>League president Jorge Guerrero said he began recording when tensions escalated.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I saw it was about to get more confrontational, so that&#8217;s why I started recording,&#8221; Guerrero said.<\/p>\n<p>At the center of the dispute is George Costa Field, a city-owned facility leased to Ceres Youth Baseball, a nonprofit that has operated in the community for more than 50 years. The league signs a contract with the city every three years and says the current agreement was approved last year.<\/p>\n<p>Vice President Ismael Ontiveros said the city recently called a meeting to discuss changes to that contract.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was a contract\u2026 ratified last year\u2026 and they wanted to change it and we refused,&#8221; Ontiveros said.<\/p>\n<p>According to league leaders, the city is proposing to bring in a for-profit youth organization that would collect gate revenue: a key source of funding the nonprofit uses to maintain the fields and keep player costs down.<\/p>\n<p>League officials say they pay for year-round maintenance, including groundskeeping, and rely on tournament revenue to offset expenses.<\/p>\n<p>They also believe the proposed changes may be tied to previous disagreements with the city over field lighting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We felt like it was retaliation\u2026 after we spoke about the lights,&#8221; Ontiveros said.<\/p>\n<p>The league further claims a separate organization has offered the city a six-figure payment to use the fields, though that has not been independently confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Ceres Mayor Javier Lopez told CBS News Sacramento the city cannot comment in detail ahead of a closed-session city council meeting scheduled for Monday, where the issue is expected to be discussed. He added that the video circulating online captures only part of the altercation.<\/p>\n<p>League leaders say they plan to attend that meeting and speak in support of keeping the current agreement in place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dispute over a youth baseball contract in Ceres escalated into a physical confrontation between league leaders and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[32526,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-229745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-ceres-news","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}