76ers, Devils owners buy into Ripken, Cooperstown baseball

Cal Ripken and Cooperstown are connected again.

Ripken’s eponymous tournaments for youth baseball players have merged with Cooperstown All Star Village under a new agreement with the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils.

Josh Harris and David Blitzer have become majority investors in the deal announced Wednesday that merged two of the leading youth baseball brands that combined to host more 15,000 teams and 250,000 participants last year. The Ripken Experience operates in Maryland, South Carolina and Tennessee and plans to open a location in 2023 in Kentucky. The All-Star Village, based in Oneonta, New York, hosts more than 10,000 players ages 10 to 12 each summer.

“We can maybe explore newer complexes in other parts of the country at a much faster rate than it was going,” Ripken said in a phone interview. “Our growth has really come along the last few years. When we started talking, it just became obvious, why kind of compete in the same space? Why don’t we merge because we’re very much alike.”

Harris and Blitzer spent an unspecified sum out of their family offices, rather than Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which has ownership stakes in professional sports teams and other entities.

The 1982 AL Rookie of the Year and 1983 AL MVP, Ripken spent his entire career with the Baltimore Orioles before retiring in 2001. He set a record by playing in 2,632 consecutive games and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007.

The Ripken Experience and All-Star Village also pledged to grow inclusion efforts in baseball. Blitzer already was a minority owner with the Cleveland Guardians and he said the franchise would sponsor one underserved, Cleveland-area team to attend the All Star Village this season.

For the first time since 1950, shortly after...