Staff file photo by TOM KING P:layers like former Nashua North catching standout Will Brooks, who caught for the Nashua Legion team last summer, hope to play for the Nashua entry in the newly created NHCBL.

They’re warming up in the bullpen, ready to come in and give local sports-starved fans relief.

Take your pick between the relief help. You can choose between the newly expanded New England Independent Baseball League (NEIBL) or the basic one-year-only circuit, somewhat American Legion based, called New Hampshire COVID Baseball League. Thanks to Governor Chris Sununu’s phased openings, it appears there will be competitive summer baseball in New Hampshire, including the Nashua area, beginning in early July.

As many as 30 high school or American Legion based teams around the state, and probably between the two leagues an upwards of 600-700 players from the age of 14 through 19 could be playing baseball if all works out.

It is all due mainly to the efforts of Nashua/Coffey Legion manager Tim Lunn and Souhegan High School coach Tom Walker, the two leagues look to be off and running by the end of the month or early July. Lunn’s NHCBL is based on Senior Legion teams who would have played had their been a Legion season; state Legion officials cancelled the Senior and Junior seasons following the National Organization’s removal of sponsorship for this year.

Walker’s NEIBL, with two levels, is seen as a high school developmental league with varsity players on one level and sub-varsity type players on another.

“The kids are lucky with Tom doing the NEIBL and us with the Legion teams, they have multiple outlets,” Lunn said.

Both coaches had posted on social media the opportunity for teams to register with their respective leagues. The NEIBL deadline was this past Thursday, while the NHCBL was also looking at the end of the week. The NEIBL isn’t knew; this is just an expanded version, going from about 8 to maybe as many as 15-20 teams.

Here’s a look at how both leagues, on a preliminary basis, were formed:

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NEIBL

Walker says his group has put together a waiver to try to take to school districts for field use, and with the Governor’s phased approval for baseball, Walker says he hopes “the dominoes fall” for towns and schools to relax their field restrictions. Meanwhile, proper insurance has been secured.

The lineup of teams was expected to be finalized late this past week. From the area, it will likely include teams from Hollis-Brookline, Souhegan and Merrimack. Other teams will have rosters made up of players from ConVal, Keene, John Stark-Bishop Brady, Concord, Salem, Londonderry, Kingswood, Pembroke-Merrimack Valley, Kennett, Littleton, White Mountains, Inter-Lakes, and even Berlin high schools. The northern tier will play separately with perhaps some one-time southern teams traveling. “They’ll have a northern league under the NEIBL umbrella,” Walker said.

There will be two divisions – varsity level and a JV-type level, the latter providing the ability for incoming high school freshmen to compete, and with a sophomore group.

“We’re still doing head counts,” Walker said. “Now that we’ve gotten the go-ahead people are door-knocking and making all the contacts. We now feel pretty good this thing is going to go forward.”

It’s an ambitious project. For the varsity level, Walker, who will work on the schedule, sees games played on a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday routine; for the so-called “junior” level, it would be Monday-Wednesday and Saturday.

“We’re hoping to give everybody the appropriate rest,” Walker said. “We’ve said if we can get 18-20 games in in the next month, six weeks, that will be a huge boon to where we were a month ago.”

And the NEIBL won’t have a champion, but maybe a round-robin showcase day – if the can have that many teams in one area.

“Part of it was we wanted to keep it still developmental,” he said. “For us as high school coaches, we definitely wanted to reach out and have contact with the players, which we can do, develop them, which we couldn’t do in the spring, and just relax it a little bit.

“Keep the competitive nature of the league up – we certainly want competitive baseball. But we didn’t want to dangle a carrot, because everybody’s goals were going to be a little bit different. And everybody was in agreement. There was no dissent.”

Walker wants to have a showcase day at the end of the season with college scouts present. He also wants to get the entire league together for a round-robin day sometime around July 4.

“We’d like to have all our teams, centrally located, in a baseball bash,” he said. “The thought would be to take a venue like a Concord or a Londonderry that has multiple fields and play in two or three hour increments. … There’s no parade, there’s no fireworks; the best place for us to be is on a baseball diamond. Take three fields, start at noon, and play at noon, three and six o’clock.”

As for fans, there will be the need for social distancing.

But the increase in teams is very much due to the fact there was no high school season.

“That’s playing a big part of it,” Walker said. “There is some pent-up (anxiety). Most of them are on board. … the numbers (of players interested) are up across the board.”

Is this a one-year thing for the NEIBL or will it go back to being a smaller league?

“I think if they have a good experience here this year, I think this will extend into the future,” Walker said. “What was presented to the coaches who are unfamiliar with the league, and our approach to summer baseball, is I guess refreshing for some.

“One, it’s relatively inexpensive, and with people out of work now, the expense factor is important. The ability to schedule work and baseball is another thing. And again, not everybody is going to make a Nashua Legion team. Now that the (coaches) are open to seeing that this could work, it’s a great stepping stone for us to grow in the future.”

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NHCBL

Lunn went right to work the day after the state Legion season was cancelled.

Basically, the difference between Lunn’s NHCBL and Walker’s NEIBL is that Lunn’s league will allow college players to compete, as it’s a 19-and-under deal. In fact, it will not use the Legion rule that denies eligibility to players who played more than one college season.

“We’re following a lot of the same Legion rules,” Lunn said. “We’re going to have expanded rosters, we’re going to allow college kids, so we’re looking at that sort of structure to increase the competition a little bit.

“And then, it’s going to look similar to a Legion type of season.”

Lunn got a couple of AAU teams involved, and is hoping to expand from there.

“We’ve got a couple of AAU teams involved and a bunch of Legion teams that would have fielded teams,” he said. “Around 10 teams. Depending on when we go from there; I don’t know if we’ll lose a couple or if we’ll gain a couple. There are a few outliers there. We’ll see what happens.”

Lunn says teams in the league will play somewhere between 20-25 games, potentially, “depending on timeline purposes.”

Different from the NEIBL, Lunn’s league will try to have a tournament to declare a champion.

“We’ll have some sort of tournament that would be a best of three series,” Lunn said, “amongst the top eight or something like that. We have a plan in place, rules in place. We’ve had all the things in place, it’s just a matter of committing to it now that we have the (Governor Chris Sununu’s) go-ahead.”

The teams include what would have been, in general, Senior Legion teams from Nashua, Merrimack, Dover, Exeter, Laconia, and possibly Newmarket. The maybes were Rochester, and Lebanon, and Manchester’s Sweeney Post was as of this writing a remote possibility.

The AAU teams set to be in the circuit are out of Manchester, Concord, and perhaps the Seacoast. Some teams may have to play on the road if fields aren’t available in their locales. The field situation is the wild card for all the teams.

“We should have a good representation across the state,” Lunn said. “And we’ll have some pretty good talent.”

There are still a lot of unknowns. “Ultimately it depends on how many teams we have registered,” said Lunn, who has had informal workouts under the state guidelines (no more than 10 on a field) already. “A lot of it will depend on when we’re going to be able to start playing. It depends on when Phase 2 begins. But where I’m coming from, whenever Phase 2 begins we need a full week of practice. Just so teams can do team things.”

“We can work things out,” Lunn said. “I think everyone wants to play bad enough where they’re not going to make too much of a fuss.

The rules are mainly Legion, with high school varsity age players mixed with the college players. Lunn said the league would likely have expanded rosters from Legion, to possibly as many as 22 to be able to play four games a week.

“That’s a lot of baseball, so you want to have a lot of bodies in case kids have to work, and other stuff, and you don’t want to run anybody down,” he said. “It also gives teams a chance to bring extra kids in and give as many kids a chance to play as possible.”

While there won’t be any junior Legion type teams – those will be in the NEIBL – some younger players may fit in with that roster expansion.

“If you have a freshman that’s really, really good, then obviously the freshman could play,” Lunn said. “It’s tough to know who the good freshmen are when there’s no high school season. That’s really the trick there. We haven’t discussed anything at the junior level.”

Merrimack may have a team in both leagues. As Lunn reminded, the Merrimack Legion program, headed by Mike Henzley, can also pull players from Goffstown, Bedford, and Manchester, according to the usual Legion rules. Meanwhile Merrimack High School coach Kevin Moyer, Walker said, has enough other players interested as well in the NEIBL.

Meanwhile, let the workouts begin. Walker was having his group wait until this Monday, June 1, while Lunn’s crew is already out there looking for remote spots.

“It seems about two or three weeks we’ll stay in this phase of 10 or less,” Lunn said. “And I would envision having games sometime at the end of June – maybe June 21 or 22, or maybe as late as June 29. It really depends on what the other teams want to do. But I think we need a good three weeks of practice in to really get these kids back into shape so we don’t get any injuries.”

Lunn said he’d start with low level scrimmages that time near the end of June and then hope to proceed with games.

“We’re basically using the state Legion rules, but we modified them a little bit,” Lunn said, adding that it will be basic rules of a designated hitter, courtesy runners, seven inning games, wood bat, re-entry during the regular season and still to be determined for the post season.

“I think we’re going to run MLB rules rather than Federation rules,” Lunn said. “And then kind of go from there.”

The biggest difference between those two rules sets are mound visits.

“There are minor differences, nothing major,” Lunn said. “Most of us Legion guys are used to the MLB rules, everybody knows the MLB rules, or at least thinks they do. It’s just an easy rule set to follow.”

In any event, barring any health setbacks in the so-called pandemic curve, it appears baseball will be back.

“Now that we’ve gotten the OK, I think we’ll get a lot more buzz,” Lunn said, “and hit the ground running.”

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