Lexington has baseball in a summer most cities don’t. ‘Hopefully, this will go well.’
“This is what summer’s for.”
On a day when the Lexington Legends got word they wouldn’t get to play in Whitaker Bank Ballpark this year, Sayre alumnus Aidan Elias said it best.
“Ballgames,” Elias added. “Just, you know, getting out here, getting dirty. I missed that.”
A lot of folks are missing baseball and other sports amid the coronavirus pandemic that shut down the sporting world and almost everything else in early March.
But Elias and other players hailing from schools in NCAA Divisions I, II and III, junior college and NAIA ball, are getting back in action over the next month in Central Kentucky as part of the fledgling Commonwealth Collegiate Baseball League, one of the only functioning baseball promotions in the country at this time.
“When all this stuff started going down a couple of months ago, it kind of seemed like everything was just kind of done,” Elias said of his last season at Western Kentucky where he was a redshirt sophomore when the virus hit. “I was just sitting around not doing anything and I got a text from one of the guys running (the CCBL) and it said, ‘Hey, you want to play some baseball this summer?” I said, ‘Yeah, That’d be great.”
So, Whitaker Bank Ballpark opened its gates Tuesday night to welcome a new league.
Opening day
Patrons (for now, mainly family and friends) paid $5 for a ticket, got their temperature checked and were asked to kindly social distance anywhere in the stadium. With a capacity of 6,994, Whitaker easily spaced out the more than 60 or so folks at first pitch.
But with five competitive teams filled with 20-plus college athletes each with some kind of Kentucky connection, the new CCBL could catch on. It’s the only game in town.
“This is awesome,” said Legends CEO Andy Shea, who worked with the CCBL’s organizers to help make Whitaker one of its home fields along with Asbury University, Lexington Christian Academy and Transylvania University’s old Marquard Field. “They are all great, talented baseball players and the fact that so many of them are local guys either local in terms of this is where they grew up or this is where they’re playing their college baseball, having them all together is awesome for us and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for them, too.”
Frederick Douglass product Haiden Hunt found out about the league a little late, but is happy he got in as he prepares for what he hopes will be his sophomore season at Chattanooga State.
“The competition is nice,” Hunt said. “It’s good to play against good competition or even better than you expected (competition) just so you can feel really comfortable going back to school, wherever you’re going, just knowing that you’ve put in the work against some good players.”
Northern Kentucky’s TJ Graves, who hails from Washington County, heard about it from his brother and quickly got interested.
“Then once I found out we were playing I was super excited and I talked him into not being on the same team as me because I’m a brother. I’m competitive. I’m like, ‘Let’s go!’” he said.
COVID precautions
There are rules to respect the pandemic for players, coaches and fans. Players must stay socially distanced while not in action and fans are “strongly urged” to wear masks. A new norm for now, players are taking it in stride.
“It’s definitely a struggle just because you want to be able to sit close to your teammates and you want to be able to give them a high five when they do something good and stuff like that,” Hunt said. “But you have to keep in the back of your mind that we’re still in a pandemic right now and that might not be the best option.”
Among the fans in the stands were Jaime and Debra Kumar, parents of Kentucky State’s Aram Kumar, a player on the CCBL Xpress Gold team Tuesday.
“We are not used to summer without baseball,’ said Debra Kumar, whose son played his final high school season at Franklin County. The Kumars, both wearing masks, said they appreciated the safety precautions. “We’re both high-risk, so we have to be very careful about taking precautions. We’re really excited that it’s out here and they are doing such a good job of keeping everything clean and everybody seems to be following good social distancing and wearing masks when necessary, so hopefully, this will go well.”
Getting it going
The CCBL began as an idea out of Commonwealth Baseball Club, one of Central Kentucky’s traditional summer travel ball organizations. The CCBL’s team names, “Xpress Blue, Xpress Green, Grays White,” are a nod to its roots in the CBC, a club formed by the merger of teams named the Xpress and the Grays.
CCBL General Manager Matt Cox, who is also an assistant coach at Henry Clay, said the effort so far has exceeded expectations.
“Our idea behind this was that there’s like 30 colleges across the state from D-I to (NAIA), and between that and the surrounding states … there’s a lot of (potential players),” Cox said.
Collegiate wooden bat leagues exist all over the United States as a place for college players to hone their craft with bats like the pros use as opposed to the aluminum ping allowed in college. But fees and travel can get pricey and competition to earn roster spots fierce.
The CCBL could “give everybody a home,” Cox said. The cost to sign on was $550 per position player and $375 for pitchers. And when the pandemic began shuttering all the other wooden bat leagues around the country, the CCBL with its light travel demands became a perfect option.
Soon, Cox didn’t have to drum up players by hitting them up on Twitter. They came knocking. Originally planned four four teams of about 20 players, the league has five — a good start for a league that hopes to remain viable next summer.
“We’re going to keep pushing to grow,” Cox said.
A few kinks
Transylvania University assistant coach Landon Steiner signed as one of the CCBL’s managers. Before coming to Transy, Steiner spent two seasons with the Asheboro (N.C.) Copperheads, a team in the well-established wooden-bat Coastal Plain League. He sees potential in the CCBL.
“There’s a lot of kinks that still need to be worked out, and we’re just going to see how that goes through all this stuff,” Steiner said. “We’re trying to make sure some of these kids come back and play in summers to come.”
That begins with making it competitive and fun. The CCBL plans to have 33 games with its five teams with a playoff that culminates in its first championship on Aug. 6.
“We’re trying to be competitive every day going out on the field because they lost that whole season and I did too,” Steiner said. “So, we’re going to play it as a real game every day and get really into it.”
Coming up
Thursday: Blue vs. Gold, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Whitaker Bank Ballpark
Full schedule: Ccblofky.com/schedule
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 8:02 AM.
