Roy Hobbs World Series

Friday, October 13, 2023 - Sunday, November 19, 2023

Every fall, more than 10,000 baseball players (and their families) on almost 300 teams flock to Fort Myers to play in Roy Hobbs Baseball’s annual World Series. They come to celebrate the great game of baseball, perhaps recapture their youth and engage in two great American pastimes – baseball and capitalism.

They come for the games and camaraderie, the fun and the competition, the sunshine, green grass and swaying palms of Southwest Florida.

They come to relax, to recreate and even relocate … and they make Roy Hobbs Baseball into an economic powerhouse for the Lee County Business Community on an annual basis.

The players come from near and far. From Tallahassee and Nova Scotia, from Florida’s east coast to the Great Northwest, from Chicago and Boston and towns across the fruited plain you’ve never heard of before. They even have come from Canada, Russia, the Ukraine, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

They also come and spend money. Local restaurateurs, hoteliers and government officials know what the Roy Hobbs World Series has meant to Lee County’s economy since it moved here in 1993. Back then, 54 teams competed. Now it’s pushing 6 times that number. All those teams and all those players (and their families) come and do more than crack singles to right and snag pop-ups. They spend…

A man named Ron Monks started Roy Hobbs Baseball in California in 1988. It was an idea whose time had come – a chance for men to return to the sport of their youth.

In 1993, he turned the organization over to Ellen and Tom Giffen, who moved the World Series event to Fort Myers, starting a 30-year relationship that shows no signs of slowing down.

Monks lived in Ukraine for a number of years, teaching baseball, and he brought a Ukrainian team to the 2017 Roy Hobbs World Series and used the words “mystical” and “magical” to describe the event and its allure. Additional Ukranian teams played thru 2021, but Monks is back in the USA.

Roy Hobbs current agreement with Lee County runs through 2024. There is, as Roy Hobbs President Tom Giffen says, “a lot more ground for us to cover. We enjoy a great relationship with Lee County, and we are looking forward to it just getting better and better for Roy Hobbs, for Lee County and for our growing base of participants.”

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Location: Player Development Complex | JetBlue Park