Keeping Up With The Times

I don't care who you are if you don't keep up with the times by making good decisions that keep you in step with the world, there will be a day when you look back and say what happened.  Sears had the best mail order catalog in the world at one point and now today they are lucky to still exist.  Wooden Matches and clothes pins were at one point a thing that every family needed but they failed to keep up with the times.

North Carolina American Legion baseball is facing a crisis of competition from every angle.  Travel leagues, wooden bat leagues and one area lost in the shuffle is there are no more vacant lots to play ball on.  Today's children play baseball on a computer game and not outside running and catching.

The apathy has hit eastern North Carolina Legion first.  We are of course the least populated.  It is sometimes 30 miles from one town of 5,000 people to the next.  The hot bed in North Carolina for Legion baseball is that I-85 corridor from High Point to Charlotte and I-77 towards Statesville.  It is probably the hottest hotbed of Legion Baseball in the country.  Just because they are so hot for Legion ball they can't see the end of their nose for trouble ahead.

North Carolina is one of the Last of the Mohican's that still plays nine innings every game. Nine innings is simply to many innings for pitchers pitch counts in today's modern world for players under 19 years old..  Those on that interstate Corridor turn away players because everyone still wants to play Legion in that area.  Sagging numbers in Eastern North Carolina  and the State Legion's answer is bring in any one that wants a team.  If the already existing teams can't support a full compliment of players how is dividing those up with another team going to solve that.

That answer sounds like government at work.  Any project not working like we want pour more money into it and it will then work worse than before.  The answer is not getting more teams  but keeping the ones you have and stock them with the very best players possible.  Don't dilute what we already have that have been the main stay of Legion from the very first year of Legion ball..  Seven innings would help Eastern North Carolina but those toward the west that can't see the end of their nose that Legion Baseball is dying because those who make the rules are stuck in the 50's.  There is not a player playing today that knows one thing about back then.

Day two of Area One East Division playoffs
Rocky Mount seeded #1 wins 2 games to 0 from  Edenton who forfeited
Kinston the #2 seed  Sunday beat Albemarle 8-2 to win that series 2-0
Wayne County the 3 seed beat Pitt County 11-5 to even that series at 1-1.  Game three is 7pm Monday at Mt Olive College.
#5 seed Wilson beat #4 Windsor 4-0 Sunday to win that series 2-0  Wilson will open the second round at Rocky Mount at 7pm Wednesday at Legion Field.