Local minor baseball groups still hope to hit the diamonds

REGIONAL — Young baseball players in this area who are anxious to play some ball, may have to wait a little longer, but the hope is that they will get to play some baseball this summer.

The last weekend in May was the target start-up for Leamington District Minor Baseball to launch their house league team bubbles, but the announcement last week by the province to restrict unnecessary travel has put a damper on the plans.

Once the restrictions lift, local organizations hope to be ready to go.

According to Leamington Minor Baseball president, Kevin Gale, there will be some subtle changes to the usual schedules.

“We will be operating to start the season in bubbles of 50 players, which will allow us to have four teams in a bubble,” he said.

This means that three of Leamington’s local programs — 5U T-Ball, 7U Jr. Rookie and 8U Pixee Slo-Pitch — will run as usual because their numbers don’t exceed the 50-player bubble limit.

For the 9U Sr. Rookie and above, Leamington will work with neighbouring centres to create bubbles of four teams based on location and competition level.

Travel baseball seasons will be set up in a similar fashion and the Sun Parlour Baseball Association has already assigned centres to their respective bubbles.

Travel baseball play will start up as soon as the current stay-at-home order is lifted.

“Baseball Ontario — along with other sport associations — are currently petitioning the Ministry of Sport to open the bubbles to more players,” said Gale. “We proved last summer and in the fall leagues, that we were able to operate baseball activities in an extremely safe manner with not one report of transmission occurring during a baseball event.”

Over in Kingsville, Minor Baseball President Steve Hatt echoed Gale’s optimism that they hope to be able to get underway once the restrictions are lifted.

“The plan was for our travel teams to start May 1,” he said. “We’ll have to take the ‘wait and see’ position before we make any decisions on any new start dates or the season as a whole.”

Kingsville is also following the bubble format, so that they restrict the number of players and coaches that each are exposed to. Kingsville has about 275 kids registered and waiting for the okay from the province to take the field. Hatt says that number is usually between 400 and 425 kids.