Gretter Autoland donates to youth baseball

The Community Y?s Little League Baseball program has received a large infusion of cash and supplies from a local business. On Saturday, John Gretter of Gretter Autoland in Washington presented a $500 check to Josh Riffel and Greg Woller of the Washington Community Y. Gretter Autoland also donated 10 buckets of balls and 10 equipment bags to the Washington chapter of the Cal Ripken Youth Baseball League.

Gretter Autoland will make another donation to the league later in the year, and the size of that donation is determined by the young ballplayers themselves. Gretter Autoland is offering raffle tickets for a couple of high-end items: a new flat screen television and even a new car. That new car could be either a Chevy Cruze or a Chevy Equinox. The drawing for the television will be from all the raffle tickets in the eastern Iowa region and the drawing for the car will be from the tickets in the larger, Midwest region based in Chicago.

The Little Leaguers will sell the raffle tickets for $5 apiece. All of the proceeds will go right back to the league. And the ticket is more than just a raffle stub. It doubles as a coupon for $10 off any product or service at Gretter Autoland.

Washington?s Little League consists of 10 teams. The teams will compete to sell the most raffle tickets. The winning team will receive a pizza party at the end of the season, also courtesy of Gretter Autoland.

Riffel is the wellness and physical director at the Community Y, and is in charge of the Y?s Little League program. He said the $500 donation will go toward purchasing catcher?s gear. The mask, shin guards, chest protector and everything else a catcher wears collectively cost $100. Riffel said he cannot wait to take Gretter?s donation to a sporting goods store and purchase five new sets of catcher?s equipment.

The automobile manufacturer Chevrolet has sponsored youth baseball for five years, and this is the first year Gretter Autoland has gotten in on the action. John Gretter is the president of a group of 12 dealerships in eastern Iowa. Chevrolet approached him a few months ago to see if his group would like to join the company?s involvement in youth baseball. The group of dealerships jumped at the chance.

The group collectively raised $68,000 for the program. Each dealership picks one organization in its area to sponsor.

?The Y is a great organization,? said Gretter. ?I talked to Josh about the sponsorship, and that sent him to the moon.?

Gretter said the idea of making the raffle ticket a coupon was his idea.

?I wanted to help Josh out and help the kids sell them,? he said. ?I know what it?s like to have people knock on your door and try to sell you stuff. These little kids often ask people for a donation, but this coupon makes it a no-brainer. First of all, you have a little kid who is doing something for a great cause. Add to that the fact that the buyer can double their money. It?s an easy way for the kids to get the donations back to the Y so Josh has even more money at his disposal.?

Gretter said the $500 donation is just the beginning. Depending on how many raffle tickets the kids sell, the league could be inundated with cash.

?We want this to turn into a $5,000, $6,000 or $7,000 donation,? said Gretter. ?If this works well, we have every intention of doing it again next year. We can continue to meet the needs of the Y whether it be through uniforms or improvements to the field. This can turn into a huge deal for the Y and for the community.?

Each of the 10 Little League teams consists of 11 or 12 players. Riffel said that if every kid sold 10 raffle tickets as he expects, the league would receive more than $5,000.

?My hope is that each kid could sell between 10 to 20 tickets,? said Riffel. ?I?m hoping for anywhere between 500 and 2,000 tickets sold.?

The pizza party at the end of the year is something to ?add a little extra motivation,? said Gretter.

Woller is the executive director of the Y. He said the Y normally pays for the league by obtaining sponsorships for each team.

?Doing it through sponsorships gets hard because we ask for sponsorships for a lot of sports,? said Woller.

Every kid who goes out for Washington?s youth baseball program gets to play. Each kid also gets a T-shirt and a hat with the logo of a professional baseball team that corresponds to one of the 10 league teams. The league plays all of its games at Redlinger Field. There are two games every day, Monday through Thursday, during the season.