Telegraph photo by TOM KING Nashua's Ethan Smith steals second ahead of the throw to Merrimack's Ryan Juliano during NHCBL action this summer. Both the NHCBL and NEIBL combined to give as many as 400-plus baseball players a league to play in around the state.

If there was any lesson learned in local sports this past summer, it’s that baseball is indeed back.

The New Hampshire COVID Baseball League and the New England Independent Baseball League had close to 750 high school and early college athletes playing this pandemic summer, when in May things looked iffy at best.

The NEIBL had an estimated 560 kids statewide playing, with teams allowed to carry as many as 20 players, and crowned varsity and sub-varsity champions.

The NHCBL had close to 200 players, mainly from American Legion and AAU programs – both were cancelled due to the virus – and nearly made it through all the necessary protocols to crown a champion, but a potential COVID-19 exposure cancelled its title game.

Still, it was considered a success.

“Overall I think the league was top notch,” Nashua Defenders manager and NHCBL creator Tim Lunn said. “From start to finish. All the teams were on board with the guidelines that were put in place. And as you saw from the games, the competition was top-notch. I find it hard to believe you’d have another league out there where the games were as close as they were every single night. That, to me, is the sign of a good league.

“When you have a league that’s two, three, four runs apart all the time, that’s good baseball.”

Souhegan High School coach and NEIBL head Tom Walker, who saw the league greatly expand from past years, was just as happy.

“Well, if I could’ve painted a picture on what I envisioned and how it went, it probably met every expectation and maybe exceeded what we feared might happen,” he said. “We didn’t have any outbreaks; we had no player issues, no parental issues, so it was a great summer start to finish.”

Here’s a look at both leagues’ seasons:

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NEIBL

Manchester Jutras beat Stratham in the JV division final while Portsmouth beat Weare to win the varsity division. Locally, in the varsity division, there were five teams: Amherst, Hudson, Merrimack, Hollis Brookline, and, with a limited schedule due to late field availability, the Nashua Chiefs.

“I think it met everbody’s expectation,” Walker said, adding that a couple of college coaches had remarked that the baseball was better than expected in terms of quality. In fact, one unrecruited player from Weare, Gunner Hagstrom, reportedly got an offer from the University of Hartford based on his NEIBL play.

“I think the baseball, top to bottom, was better than I expected,” Walker said. “I think it had to do with the kids’ level of enthusiasm and focus. Having gone through everything, having lost a spring, I think those kids were eager to play and show well. And I think the coaches approached it correctly, we got the guys into shape properly; the guys peaked and played extremely well.

“I saw a lot of different kids I normally don’t see from different divisions. There’s just an incredible amount of baseball talent. It’s great.”

Will the experience bode well for the players as they look to the spring? It appears that way, because many of the players who could play high school ball in the spring will be playing fall baseball, as there are a couple of leagues that are going as scheduled, including the 603 Fall Wooden Bat League and the Showcase League, the latter having a few games slated for Holman Stadium this weekend.

“I think this is going to leap frog into the fall ball,” Walker said. “I think there is still some interest – baseball could be a magnet for players.”

As proof, Walker said he had interest for about 28-30 kids from his own Souhegan program for fall baseball, “and that’s excluding football. So our numbers are very solid for a fall program.

“It’s pretty exciting. We talk about the death of baseball, I don’t know. It seems that baseball is getting a bit of a resurgence.”

Walker held his breath the entire season with the coronavirus shadow lurking.

“I’d say we were very fortunate,” Walker said. “We followed (the protocols), and were very lucky. … You can do everything right, but you just never know.”

Walker said the protocols weren’t too difficult to manage, but not a piece of cake, either.

“There’s no getting around it,” he said. “Kids are going to be kids. The dugouts in many locations were confined space, and once you get outside the dugout area, the kids aren’t going 120 feet away from the baseball field. The distancing thing was difficult to manage at times at certain fields. But everybody put their best foot forward, from the parents to the umpires, to the kids participating. I think they did their best to manage the request of the distancing and so forth. I don’t believe there were any issues. I think we were clean.”

Because all the high school teams didn’t get to play in the spring, many jumped at the chance to play at the NEIBL, which normally has been a much smaller league. Some may return to American Legion sponsorship next summer, if there’s a return to more normal times. But Walker feels the NEIBL will be fairly large.

“I think it will,” Walker said. “We may have some teams exit and go back to the Legion, but there are other teams that expressed an interest and now have the knowledge to offer a viable local alternative. Most of the teams that were involved this season thought it was well organized, a good experience.

“But again, depending on what route they take – AAU, Legion – they now know they have a legitimate, inexpensive local baseball option and good baseball. That’s important, that’s the message we wanted to get out.”

Walker said prior to this summer, the NEIBL was relatively unknown. “But througout the high school circles, people now understand the people involved in the NEIBL can make this happen and make it a good alternative for kids who can’t afford AAU (many have four-figure charges), or get cut from a Legion program, that there’s a baseball home, a landing spot. They liked the flexibility of the roster, of our free defensive substitution and participation. We kind of loosened it up.”

That’s because the NEIBL under Walker’s guidance is more focused on developing players rather than wins and losses. In fact, a post season was not even in the cards until about halfway through July when the various coaches clamored for one based on the good level of play.

“It’s developmental,” he said. “It’s about innings, it’s about at-bats. And how we get that accomplished, it’s a little bit different from some of the other league structures, and I think (the coaches and players) appreciated that.”

And so did the fans of some of the smaller towns. Walker said there was a crowd of between 200-300 at Weare Middle School watching Londonderry play Weare in the semis.

“In this era of distancing and video conferencing, it was great for the community,” Walker said.

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NHCBL

Lunn says that if things are unfortunatlely the same next summer, with no Legion sponsorshp, “we could do something almost identical. Really from a logistical standpoint it’s a large undertaking, but it was a pretty simple summer overall. … Once the teams were hammered down and the games started rolling, there were very, very few issues.

“Next summer, depending on what happens, hopefully we’re back to normal. But if not, we’d look at ressurecting it again. The plan was for one year, one and done.”

Lunn said that if things do go back to normal, teams like Nashua made contacts to play non-league games against some of the AAU teams like the Concord Cannons, the Seacoast United teams and the New Hampshire Prospects, etc.

“It’s nice to make those connections and those bridges, so to speak,” he said. “Even though we’re a Legion team, we don’t have to exclusively play Legion.

“That’s one thing I liked about the league. You had a good representation from the state overall. Each major part of the state was represented, but you had a good sort of balance between AAU and (former) Legion.”

Nashua featured a combination of some older college players who may not have been eligible for Legion, and some up-and-coming players who will likely be in the Coffey Post lineup next summer. Merrimack, which started 3-0 but struggled thereafter and missed the playoffs, had a player mix with those expected to play varsity at the high school level next spring and some players from the Souhegan program as well.

Of course, Nashua lost a heartbreaker to Upper Valley in the semis, losing an 8-0 lead with two innings to go.

“It was the worst,” Lunn said. “Even if you have a hiccup defensively, you should be able to weather that storm and come out on top. You don’t really anticipate the complete meltdown. Obviously it’s a heartbreaker and I feel bad for the kids on our end. Kudos to Upper Valley for not giving up.”

Lunn said it’s a lesson that no lead in the game these days is safe, especially when pitchers start chasing velocity.

“But it’s a trend in baseball we’re starting to see,” he said. “A seven run lead in the big leagues now isn’t what a seven-run lead was 10, 20 years ago, right? You never take anything for granted.”

And, after that, Dover and Upper Valley weren’t able to finish their best of three championship series, which was even at a game apiece when,unlike the NEIBL, COVID-19 reared its ugly head. A Dover player was reportedly exposed to someone who tested positive and that was that. With caution on mind, co-champions were named.

“It is what it is,” Lunn said. “There’s nothing you can do about it. But at the same time one game in the grand scheme of things is kind of irrelevant. You have the potential of fall sports, some (players) trying to go back to school, which is the reason why we did what we did. I don’t know exactly what transpired, but when you hear ‘potential’ or ‘possible’, there’s no reason to go any further.”

Lunn’s Nashua Legion team has had its tryouts and had a great showing in a Showcase Tournament recently in Manchester. The Nashua Junior Legion team that played some games in the NEIBL this summer had some players who were on the Nashua 14-year-old Babe Ruth World Series All-Star team that went to Alabama last summer.

“We have a good young crop moving up in my opinion, they work hard, a lot of good athletes, multi-sport athletes,” Lunn said. “I’m excited to see what this group is going to do when they move up. But we are going to be younger. With a winter of off-season training, the talent is there with this younger group to make a mark of their own.”

But this summer was a victory in that a season was played. When the Legion season was cancelled due to the pandemic, it appeared a lot of ballplayers were going to be out of luck.

“The way I look at it is we got through over 230 games this summer across the league, and we got baseball. … Close to over 200 kids.”

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