When Mt. Lebanon won the WPIAL Class AAAA baseball title in 2002, George Strasbaugh's Greater Pittsburgh Federation League team bearing the same name saw an influx of players eventually matriculate from that championship squad.

Those players helped catapult Mt. Lebanon near the top of the Federation League.

When the Blue Devils won the WPIAL title again in 2006 Strasbaugh saw no such influx of players. He didn't have one player come over to his Federation League team.

"After the WPIAL title [in 2002] the next three years we were strong in the Fed League. The players [from the high school team] who went on to play college baseball came back to play for us in the summer and they formed the nucleus," Strasbaugh said.

"After the second title, I got nobody off that team. That is only a short period of time [four years]. My assumption was that it was going to be just like 2002 and I would get a nice nucleus of four or five ballplayers coming in here knowing how to win and wanting to play locally.

"I didn't have anybody and that says a lot about what the Fed League is going through right now. Some of those players might have played for me this year and we could have had a team."

In just the past three seasons, five franchises have folded. After the 2005 season, the Greentree franchise folded. The following year, 20th Ward, one of the league's oldest and most revered teams, called it quits along with Clairton. Then following last year, Mt. Lebanon and Findlay decided to drop from the league.

So in just three seasons, the Federation League has shrunk from nine teams to five (Elliott joined in 2007). League officials cite dwindling player involvement as the main culprit.

Once the premier independent semipro league in Western Pennsylvania, the Federation League, a wooden-bat league, has been a victim of a decreasing talent pool of players along with the emergence of a few other independent leagues. The Federation League once boasted as many as 12 teams.

With high school players remaining mostly with their American Legion or Palomino teams and college players going to play in college leagues such as the Great Lakes League or for teams such as the Pittsburgh Pandas, who pay in the Tri-State Collegiate League, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Federation League teams to maintain full rosters.

The Frontier League, where the Washington Wild Things play, is another example of a league that is challenging the Federation League for players.

The Federation League has extended invitations to the Pittsburgh Pandas and Allegheny Pirates, among others, to join the league.

The current five teams that form the Greater Pittsburgh Federation League are Elliott, St. Johns-Lefty's, Allegheny Valley, Crafton-Ingram-Thornburg (CIT) and Bethel Park (formerly called South Hills).

Former Federation League dynasties such as North Pittsburgh, 20th Ward, Monroeville and Dormont have since folded, but St. Johns-Lefty's, named after a former church by Sullivan Field in the Bloomfield-Lawrenceville area where the team used to play, has picked up the role as the league powerhouse.

St. Johns has captured six out of the past eight Federation League titles and advanced to the National Amateur Baseball Federation title game last season in Louisville, Ky.

The team was originally sponsored by Lambros Bar on Route 28 but with its impending closure, the team has switched sponsorship to Lefty's another bar owned by one of the players. St. John's Church on Liberty Avenue has since closed and is now the Church Brew Works. That is an example of the longevity of the Federation League. The team has managed to outlast its sponsor and the namesake church.

The Federation League has been around since the 1930s and the current group of managers involved may feel the pressure to keep the league going and not wanting to see it end on their watch.

Pat Paulson is the current league commissioner and is helped out by the managers who chip in with administrative duties.

Paulson was asked to take over as commissioner after her husband, Paul, passed away in 2004. The Paulsons originally got into the league in 1986 and were managing the Bellevue team together.

"It's still a good league with a good brand of ball and some great players," Paulson said. "St. Johns made it big nationally last year and there have some darn good players. A lot of these young players don't realize how good these teams are. The older guys do very well and the younger guys can really learn a lot from them."

The Federation League has seen some future major leaguers come through including Curtis Leskanic, who played for Tom McCarthy at St. Johns. Recently players such as Zach Jackson, who played in the Fed League for Bellevue and is now in the Milwaukee Brewer farm system, and Don Kelly, who played under Strasbaugh for Mt. Lebanon and is with the Arizona Diamondbacks, have played in the league.

Elliott's manager and top pitcher, Ryan Douglass, is one of the premier players in the league and a former 13th round draft pick by the Kansas City Royals. After an eight-year minor league career and one year in the Frontier League Douglass joined the Federation League.

Douglass, who reached the Class AA level in the Royals organization, says Fed League play compares to minor league ball.

"I think it is [comparable to] low Class A to high A depending on what team you face," he said. "St. Johns has a lot of guys who have played professionally at some point and it's good competition.

"Young players are very surprised how competitive the league is."

The Federation League is midway through its current season. With five teams, each team plays a 24-game schedule seeing the other teams six times a season. There was a time when teams played as many as 40 games.

"This is the first year we have dropped this low [in numbers]," Bethel Park manager Jim Lowen said. "Having to play each team six times, I think it is going to wear on you after three or four games, but that's what we have to do.

"We certainly don't want to drop any lower. We are hoping that this is just a down year and we are hoping to get some new teams [next year]."

League managers are optimistic the Mt. Lebanon and Findlay teams will return after this year. "Having to play each team six times, I think it is going to wear on you after three or four games, but that's what we have to do."

-- Jim Lowen, Bethel Park manager