Thirteen days before the official start of summer, Cranston West won the Rhode Island high school baseball state championship. For the team’s seniors, it was a culmination.

For the city of Cranston, it was just the beginning.

Once summer began, Cranston teams kept winning – and winning and winning and winning.

There are 15 state championships up for grabs across high school, Little League, Cal Ripken, Babe Ruth and American Legion.

Cranston won 11 of them.

West won the high-school title. CLCF swept the four Cal Ripken divisions and Cranston Babe Ruth did the same for its three levels. Edgewood/South Elmwood won the Senior Little League championship, and in legion ball, Cranston teams won both the senior and junior divisions.

The Babe Ruth 13’s also won a regional title and are headed to the Babe Ruth World Series.

Even the state championships Cranston didn’t win went through the city. The Johnston Junior League team that’s now in the World Series had to beat Edgewood/South Elmwood to win districts. Cranston Western’s all-star teams won the District 1 title at every level and stood in the way at every state tournament.

As if that wasn’t enough, two Cranston natives, Anthony Meo and Jeff Diehl, were selected in the Major League Baseball draft and another, Evan Marzilli, played in the College World Series. Western also hosted Little League’s 9/10-year-old East Regional.

To some extent, it’s not new – for as long as youth baseball leagues have been around, Cranston has been a hotbed. Given the strength of the city’s youth programs, the coaching, the talent and the emphasis on baseball, success like this has always been possible.

But even for a hotbed, this year is historic.

The baseball capital of Rhode Island is making itself stronger and stronger.

“I think baseball people in Cranston have really created a culture,” said Dave Schiappa, manager of the Gershkoff Auto Body/Auburn Post 20 American Legion team. “It starts from the bottom up. Cranston has always been a baseball city, but I think the culture is just growing. You see it all the way down to 10-year-olds with the regional. People are excited about baseball.”

That may be the single biggest factor. Excitement isn’t just a product of success; it’s a driving force for more of it.”

“It starts from tee-ball and it goes all the way up to Gershkoff,” said Cranston Babe Ruth President John Enright. “There’s a lot of baseball and a lot of people putting the time in. Anytime you get a great system like we have, it’s going to work.”

The system and its strong youth programs have been in place for a long time. Cranston hosted the first-ever Rhode Island Little League state tournament in 1957. In 1970, Edgewood/South Elmwood won Cranston’s first state championship. One member of that team was Mike Stenhouse, who went on to become a first-round Major League draft pick out of Harvard.

In the 41 years since, the scripts have been similar. Cranston leagues have dominated District 1 and have won eight state championships, while talented players have moved on and starred at higher levels.

Included in that group is the 1996 Cranston Western all-stars, the city’s most famous baseball team. Managed by Mike Varrato, the team won state and regional titles before winning the U.S. Championship at the Little League World Series.

Whether that was the beginning of a new era or simply a step to a higher level, that run holds a prominent place on Cranston’s baseball timeline.

“That raised the bar to a whole new level,” said Cranston Western vice president Gary Bucci. “I was just coming into the league at that point, and you could feel it building. That was a level of success that no one had seen around here.”

No one has quite matched it, but in the last decade, Cranston teams have sure tried.

Cranston Western has won five more 12-year-old state championships since then and came within one game of the World Series in 2005. Cranston Babe Ruth has sent a team to a World Series nine times in the last 10 years. Gershkoff has won two of the last four American Legion state titles and has come close to winning regionals. Cranston West has won three of the last six state titles and has become Rhode Island’s premier public-school baseball program. And CLCF has ramped up its programs in recent years, culminating in this year’s state-title sweep.

“I think the level of commitment and competition among kids is alive and well,” Bucci said. “It’s very active, and that’s crystal clear. You can see it. In our area, kids are competitive and the parents are willing to go the extra mile and pay for the lessons and the winter instruction.”

In addition to his duties at Western, Bucci is an assistant coach at Exeter/West Greenwich High School. He said he loves it, but he can see the difference.

“I love coaching those kids, but you’ll have kids come up and say, ‘I have to work, so I’m going to miss practice’ or ‘I can’t get a ride so I won’t be there,’” Bucci said. “It’s only 20 miles away but it’s a different mindset in Cranston. That doesn’t fly because of the competitive nature.”

At both West and East, the results are baseball programs that take themselves seriously. There’s tradition, and in turn, there’s an expectation. Cranston coaches can demand a lot.

“It’s very competitive,” said Cranston West head coach Rob Malo. “We had 67 kids try out this year and a lot of them are quality players. They know it’s a fine line between who makes it and who doesn’t. We tell them it’s not just what they do on the field. It’s how they approach the game, their hustle, their attitude.”

In Cranston, those qualities have been instilled at an early age – and for a lot of years. Many of the city’s youth programs have unusual stability. Varrato, the manager of the 1996 Western team, is still the league’s president. Enright has been at the helm of Cranston Babe Ruth for years. CLCF has veteran coaches like Pat Keough. Dave Ciolfi is a longtime president at Edgewood/South Elmwood.

“I think one of the biggest keys is that a lot of people are constants,” Schiappa said. “A lot of leagues have parents coaching their kids and moving on. These are people who have been doing this for a long time and who stay when their kids leave. They have a passion for it.”

The results are easy to see. Kids have talent and the means to make the most of it, and the people who’ve had a hand in creating the city’s baseball culture can nurture the talent.

And the role models are there. Every year, Cranston sends several players to the college ranks, and stars are born, too. Meo went from CLCF to Babe Ruth to West to Coastal Carolina, where he became one of the top pitchers in the nation. He was drafted in the second round by the Diamondbacks this year and just signed a contract.

Diehl followed the same path and was drafted directly out of West, in the 23rd round by the Mets. Marzilli grew up in Cranston, went to Hendricken and has now played in two College World Series for South Carolina. He’s likely to be drafted next year.

There are plenty of others getting scholarships and having solid careers at smaller colleges, opportunities that might not have been possible without their baseball beginnings in Cranston.

Now a new generation is on the same path.

“It’s a chain reaction,” Enright said. “All the Little Leagues and CLCF, everything goes good down there. As long as they start young, the system works. It’s like Coventry in wrestling. They had a great feeder program and built a powerhouse.”

Cranston is showing no signs of stopping its own construction. The Andreozzi Tournament in Pawtucket concluded last week. It’s for 8-year-old teams, from all around the state.

Not surprisingly, Cranston Western played CLCF for the championship.

“There are a lot of good things happening for kids who want to play baseball in this city,” said CLCF baseball chairman Steve Richard. “It’s our job to keep it going.”