Legion baseball teams don't take a backseat

Mike Rooney was in a foul mood.
“Rooney in a foul mood?” asked Blue Springs Rod’s Sports A’s catcher/outfielder Matt McHenry, with a big grin, “stop the presses!”
For those folks outside of the A’s tight-knit American Legion family, the veteran manager might seem like a stern taskmaster who learned most of his vocabulary from an angry Marine Corps drill instructor.
“If you don’t know Mike, you don’t know what he means to us,” A’s shortstop Bret Schwartz said. “He loves us, and we love him.”
Adds McHenry: “There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for us – and nothing we wouldn’t do for him.”
The A’s just wrapped up one of the most successful and surprising seasons in team history, going 53-8 with a squad that lost many of the studs from last year’s state championship team.
The season posed a challenge – and the A’s love a challenge.
Tell Rooney his team can’t do something, and he’ll prove you wrong.
He accepts and savors the challenges that come from solid American Legion stars like Blaine Hines, Kirk Huismann or Ross Taylor from Blue Springs Post 499/Fike, Post 21’s Kyle Clifton or Hi-Boy Drive In/Post 340’s Christian Velez.
But he’s about to face a new challenge that has him hacked off – so hacked off his forehead turns a scarlet red and steam pours out of his ears.
“They’re doing it to us again,” Rooney said. “There’s a new competitive/traveling team out there for 15- and 16-year-olds and they’re talking all this negative crap about American Legion ball and it just pisses me off.
“These teams want $5,000 a kid, plus travel expenses and tell them they’re going to get them a Division I scholarship. Do you know how you get a Division I scholarship?
“You have Division I talent. Look at our team – we won 53 games and we have one D-I guy, and that’s (11-0 left-handed pitcher Kyle) Barbeck. Now, you want to talk about scholarships? Any kid on our team who wanted to play ball in college got some money and got a scholarship.
“It’s not like the scouts and college coaches don’t come watch us play. Dave Bingham (the former University of Kansas head baseball coach who is now an assistant at the University of Nebraska) told us we could play with any traveling team he’s seen.
“He said our kids were well coached and knew the game. That’s what we do in Legion ball. But you couldn’t tell it by what some other people say about us.”
The Missouri Gatorade High School Player of the Year, Nick Tepesch, played American Legion Ball.
Ditto for Barbeck, who is about to start his freshman year at the University of Mississippi.
What are their takes on the ability of American Legion ball to produce scholarships?
“I dreamed of playing American Legion ball since I was a little kid,” said Tepesch, who was a standout in the Mizzou bullpen this past year. “I could have played on the traveling teams, but I didn’t want to. If you want to play and have scouts and college coaches see you, play Legion ball.
“You’ll get plenty of attention.”
Barbeck agrees.
“After we won state (at Blue Springs High School his junior year), I got a lot of calls. I could have played for just about any team in the area – and I know a lot of guys who played on traveling teams – but I thought that Legion ball was the only way to go.
“You don’t just play games on the weekend. You play throughout the week, you do some traveling, but not a lot, and the coaches get to see you play. I’m not putting down travel teams, because there are some good ones out there, and my friends play on them. But I don’t think it gets any better than Legion ball, and I know all the guys on the team agree.”
And moms and dads love the price of a spot on an American Legion team.
“We charge a kid $500,” Rooney said. “Next year, it’s going up to $600, but we cover the expense for all the team travels and if a kid can sell enough ads in our program, it doesn’t cost them anything.”
It’s a big world – certainly big enough for American Legion and independent baseball teams.
They should live in harmony and not use a negative approach to sway players. We get enough of that in today’s politically charged atmosphere that focuses on an opponent’s faults rather than an individual’s strengths.