Youth Baseball Postponed Again,

Fall League in the Works

By Chris Tramel

DeKalb Youth Baseball is once again on hiatus after Covid-19 concerns halted an already late season again. Officials say the season will resume in a couple of weeks, and that there are plans for a competitive fall season.

League President Casey Midgett told the Smithville Review that the two week halt to the games is due to an abundance of caution over the coronavirus. "We had a player in Machine Pitch show up to a game with symptoms. He went and got tested and haven't got the results back yet, but we feel like he's probably alright. We decided we didn't want to take any chances, so we shut down play for a couple of weeks."

Midgett said the season is postponed until August 3rd, but hopefully some teams will see some make up games. "Minor League and Machine Pitch will resume August 3rd, and Major League and Senior League will start back up August 4th. Basically what we're going to do, because we lost two weeks of the season, we're going to extend the season out two more weeks, because we don't want the kids to miss out on two weeks of games. We'll basically begin our July 20th games on August 3rd."

"Machine Pitch has really had it tough this year," Midgett continued. "We've had more rain this year than I can ever remember, especially during the evenings. We had to end up canceling a bunch of games for weather. So, we're going to try to make up some of those games. They normally play on Mondays and Thursdays, but we're going to try to make up some of their games on Tuesdays and Fridays as well. The season will end on August the 21st. "

Midgett said that Minor League, Major League and Senior League, will most likely not have make up games because of a planned competitive fall league in the works. "What we're going to try to do in the fall, since a lot of stuff has been cancelled, is have a competitive league. Probably either on August 22nd, or the following Saturday, we'll hold another draft."

While the current league is being played as a non-competitive season, Midgett said the fall league will competitive and open to all that want to play. "This league will be competitive, so we're asking anyone that wants to play to come sign up, even if you're playing now we need you to sign up again. They can sign up at the concession stand at the little league field, basically any day starting August 3rd."

"If you're playing now, in this non-competitive season, the cost for the fall season will be $15, but, we're going to open it up to anyone in the county that wants to play, even if you didn't play this year. If you didn't play this season, and you want to play in the fall season, it will be $50."

Midgett said that in order to keep cost down for parents, there will be a few changes to the teams. "What we're going to do, that's a little bit different, is we're not going to have sponsors this fall, we're going to have colors. We'll have a red team, a blue team, a green team, whatever teams that we need, and everyone will get a team shirt and you can just wear a hat of your choice. We're not going to buy hats. You can just wear whatever hat that you want."

"We didn't want to cost people a lot of money," he continued. "It's kind of tough on everybody anyway, and that's one way we thought we could do it and still play a league. They can sign up at the concession stands, or they can find us on Facebook, we're DeKalb County Youth Baseball, and they can message us there."

In addition the team ages will be adjusted. "The ages we're going to do will be different" Midgett explained. "We'll do 7-8 year olds in Machine Pitch, just like it is now. Then, we're going to combine ages in the other leagues. We're basically doing away with Minor League. We're going to play 9, 10, and 11 year olds under Major League rules this fall. Then, we're going to move the 12 year olds up to Senior League. So, it will be 12, 13, 14, and 15 year olds will play under Senior League rules, which is real baseball. They will play at Joe L. Evins Field like they do now."

Midgett said that in a year that has seen so many cancellations and disappointments, the league is working hard to give the kids the opportunity to play and have some normalcy.