The last time Hudson’s Rick Harvey didn’t have a summer baseball season was 1997, the year before he started coaching American Legion Baseball.

Well, the unthinkable has happened. He now has this summer off, along with, theoretically, all the other state Legion programs.

This shouldn’t have happened. At least not yet.

Hey, we know all the risks, the dangers, the problems that this horrible pandemic has created. We know there is a “new normal.”

But we also know that the new normal needs a chance to develop.

National American Legion officials did the right thing last month when they said there would be no World Series or Regional Tournaments this summer. Travel, putting players in crowded hotel rooms for a length of time. Older Legion volunteers working the games. All way too risky. Made sense.

But what in many minds still doesn’t make sense is the total cancellation of the national Legion season as a whole, which happened Sunday night. It impacted hundreds of programs in 29 states that had yet to cancel their seasons on their own.

Why?

L and L.

Liability and lawsuits.

National officials certainly felt the risk due to the pandemic would be great, and teams may have wanted to assume that risk but the national Legion umbrella would ultimately be on the hook.

“It all comes down to lawsuits,” Hudson’s Rick Harvey, the New Hampshire Legion Baseball chairman who saw all the work he did on a Legion season safety proposal for the Governor’s COVID-19 Task Force go down the dumper. “Absolutely. It’s something new. You never heard of a liability issue for Influenza A. But this is new, it’s a scary thing in a short amount of time. I’m sure the lawyers in the Legion, if they have them, and the insurance company said ‘We can’t do this. We’re opening up ourselves to a real can of worms here that we have no answer to. … If one kid got (the virus), God knows what could happen with lawsuits.’ ”

Harvey was asked if there could be a liability waiver for players’ parents to sign – perhaps the most practical way to deal with any questions. “If we had gone ahead, that’s probably a question that would’ve come up,” he said.

Yes, safety first. We get it, absolutely. But the national ruling stunned many. Too many teams were blindsided, to the point that they are looking into ways to have some type of non-Legion affiliated season.

“I was a little caught off guard,” said Nashua Coffey Post manager Tim Lunn, who is spearheading that rogue effort. “Especially after they laid out their policy saying ‘We’re not going to have our national and regional tournaments.’

“That made sense with the logistics and the travel that goes with it. But to make a unilateral decision on a state by state business I feel is contrary to what we need.

“Every state is different in sort of their situation with this crisis. The people who understand it the best are the people on the ground level. I understand the organization’s worry on a national level, but it was sort of a blindside to many of the programs that were still working toward some sort of season.”

Lunn said that a lot of teams he knows in Massachusetts didn’t find out until Monday. He wishes this decision had been made earlier when the national and regional tourneys were cancelled. Instead, a month was lost.

Harvey has to deal with the big picture, as most administrators do. He said knows an insider that says the liability issue is a national real life business issue as well, “and it trickled down to us.” He says he’s even worried about 2021 unless that problem gets solved, probably with some type of Congressional action.

Harvey didn’t have a good weekend. He had a tip Saturday night that the end was coming. Then, five in-state Senior and Junior Legion teams had bailed on their own on Sunday, including Concord and Meredith.

“It seemed like we were dying a slow death,” he said. “I had a little sigh of relief (with the national decision), it took the pressure off. But then again, we would’ve stuck to the end.”

States deserved to make the decision, like they all are for their individual re-openings. For example, last week Idaho announced it was going to have a Legion season with a phased opening, beginning with pitchers and catchers practicing the end of May, then full teams, then a season by mid-June. Poof, that all disappeared with one electronic “send”. The email went out nationally.

“Legion’s been my life since 1997,” Harvey said. “I played Legion when I was a kid … I haven’t stopped since.”

Instead, he’ll spend some time at his lake house, enjoy his grandchildren, etc. But not baseball. The COVID-19 fallout threw Harvey & Co. a curve.

Tom King may be reached at 594-1251,tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or@Telegraph _TomK.