To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of American Legion baseball have been greatly exaggerated.
Perhaps it isn’t what it used to be, as the popularity of travel baseball, where players can play for franchises with kids from other communities, has taken away from the concept of playing with kids from the same youth organization.
But legion baseball can still thrive, as North Parkland proved this summer.
The Buffaloes won the Lehigh Valley League title and then won the eight-team Region 2 championship in Boyertown to advance to the state tournament in Erie. They won their first two games by 2-1 scores, then lost a heart-breaker to Bushy Run, 5-4, before being eliminated by Stars & Strikes Post 76 from Hazleton.
“It was a memorable and fun season, one that a lot of us will cherish for many years,” head coach Jay Marakovits said.
The team had many members from Parkland High School’s Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and District 11 6A championship on its roster.
Many of the other Parkland High players spent their summer with South Parkland.
“We ended up playing South Parkland six times throughout the season,” Marakovits said. “They beat us three times in the regular season and we won the three times we played them in the playoffs, including the winners’ bracket final in the Region 2 tournament in Boyertown. It’s extra special whenever we have a chance to play those guys. The coaches for South Parkland are guys I coached when they were little kids. The rivalry between us makes us both better, and to give an idea of how close we are with their coaches, they made the trip out to Erie, a five- or six-hour ride, to watch us play and cheer us on.”
North Parkland came close to advancing to the Mid-Atlantic Regional in Maryland because the top two finishers in the state tournament advance.
The Buffaloes would have guaranteed themselves a shot had they won the third game in Erie after winning the first two.
“We were down 5-4 with two out in the bottom of the seventh inning, and our batter, Payton Scherff, hit a hard liner right at the shortstop,” Marakovits said. “Had it been a little off to either side of the shortstop, it would have scored two runs, and we would have been on our way to Maryland. So just a few feet in either direction made the difference, and we could have been the ones moving on.”
Marakovits said that he has seen a lot of Region 2 tournaments over the years, and the games are usually decided by small moments and plays that could go either way.
“Every year it’s a grind, and in the years that our team is not participating in the regional, I am there as a member of the tournament staff, and I get to see all of the games,” Marakovits said. “The games are usually decided by narrow margins and it’s usually the teams that are a little more well-rounded and a little more resilient that come out on top, and that was us this year.”
It was a special season for longtime coach and North Parkland founder Terry Stoudt, who served the team in an advisory capacity and got to celebrate his 87th birthday with the players and coaches in the team hotel in Erie.
“It was extra special having him around for all the success this year,” Marakovits said. “We had a nice event in the hotel when the parents of our players organized a little party in the lobby and got him a cake, sang happy birthday to him, and signed a bat for him. It was definitely something I will never forget, and I think most of the players understood how special it was to have Terry around. He started the organization and coached legion baseball for decades. They embraced him and learned a lot from him because he wasn’t just there. He was still teaching the kids the right way to play the game.”
As for the health of legion baseball in the travel team era, Marakovits said things are looking up.
“Legion baseball is back on the rise,” he said. “We found a way to coexist with travel ball. There’s a place for travel ball showcase, and guys have the ability to travel around and play good competition on the weekends, and our league and others have structured our schedule so we don’t play on weekends. Many of the kids like to work during the day in the summer and then play baseball with their friends at night. We’re trying to get the message out that you can do both. There was a misconception for a few years that you have to either be a travel ball player or a legion player. But there’s room for both.”
Blue Mountain League baseball
Veteran Jordan AC Orioles pitcher Justin Jachowicz worked six innings Sunday at Egypt Memorial Park in a 15-9 win over the Northern Yankees in Game 1 of a Blue Mountain League baseball semifinal series. (Keith Groller)
Everyone should feel right at home in this week’s Blue Mountain League semifinals.
That’s because on one side of the bracket, it’s an all-Limeport Stadium series as the Bulls and Dodgers go head-to-head; in the other Final Four matchup, it’s an all-Simmons Field Series as both the Jordan AC Orioles and Northern Yankees, who share the field at Egypt Memorial Park, are paired up.
The Orioles made themselves feel more at home Sunday, slugging their way to a 15-9 victory in the first game of the best-of-five series.
Ian Csencsits had four hits and scored twice to lead a 16-hit attack. One of Csencsits’ hits was a triple that scored a run in the top of the first. The Orioles (23-7) broke it open with eight runs in the fourth inning after a three-run home run by Brock Bollinger gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the first.
The Orioles entered the postseason as the No. 3 seed, but have played like a No. 1 with three straight victories. The 2022 and ’23 league champs eliminated Hellertown two games to none in the quarterfinals.
“This was the first year in a while we didn’t get a first-round bye, so we had to start from the ground up,” Csencsits said. “Luckily, we were able to gain some momentum with those first two games against Hellertown, and it transferred into the start of this series.”
Veteran pitcher Justin Jachowicz, who has set the modern-day league pitching mark for wins with 85 in his 19-year career, worked six innings, scattering nine hits with a walk and four strikeouts. He allowed four runs.
“We got hot at the right time,” Jachowicz, a Panther Valley High and Kutztown University graduate, said. “We started to get things rolling with those two wins over Hellertown, and it continued today. This was a good start to the series. We’re kind of happy to have this whole series here because we’re used to playing here. We just flip-flop with the benches and today was their home game so it was nice we didn’t have to do the field work after the game.”
The series will resume at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday at Egypt.
The Dodgers and Bulls were set to get their series started Sunday night with Game 2 to follow Tuesday night.
Southside reaches ECCBL final
The Bethlehem-based Southside franchise won the East Coast College Baseball League North Division title with a come-from-behind, 8-7 win over the South Jersey Kings, on July 26. Southside trailed 7-3 entering the bottom of the ninth before scoring five times to pull out an improbable win.
Liberty High graduate Jacob Rivera had four hits and four RBIs, and his single to right scored Whitehall and DeSales product Owen Fischl with the game-winning run to cap the rally.
Southside is coached by Dylan Dando, who led the Allentown Railers to four Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League championships in a span of five seasons before the pandemic hit in 2020. The team posted a record of 20-5. The Mercer Mammoths won the ECCBL South title.