Pittsfield won’t have Legion baseball

Pittsfield will not field an American Legion team this summer.

Pittsfield had been admitted into Zone 1 and was to be one of two new teams in the zone along with Waldo County. That would have brought the number of teams in Zone 1 to nine.

Wally Covell, the baseball coach at Maine Central Institute of Pittsfield, said there simply wasn’t enough interest from prospective players to warrant fielding a team this summer.

Pittsfield could have drawn players from MCI and Nokomis High School in Newport and players from Mount View in Thorndike had their choice of playing for Pittsfield or Waldo County, according to Covell.

“I’m disappointed,” said Covell. “I needed to have 18 players committed to play and I was only able to get 12 to 13 commitments and they were iffy. We tried to play with 12-13 players a couple of years ago and couldn’t do it.”

Pittsfield was forced to withdraw from Zone 1 after playing only one game in 1991 due to a lack of players.

Brewer Legion coach Dave Gonyar said the original schedule will probably remain intact with the Pittsfield games deleted. That will give each team 21 league games as they will play everybody else three times.

Covell said he hasn’t given up hope of eventually putting a Pittsfield Legion team on the field.

“A lot of our players at MCI were freshmen and sophomores, so, in another year or so, hopefully we’ll get it done,” said Covell.