Following an all-night coach bus ride, the Manitowoc American Legion Baseball team arrived in Midland, Michigan this morning (August 2nd) at about 8:45 a.m. eastern time.
The Wisconsin state champions will begin competition tomorrow in the Great Lakes Regional Tournament at a stadium on the campus of Northwoods University.
After their arrival at the hotel, Seehafer News spoke with Post 88 Manager Kevin Stangel about this experience.
“[I’m] just happy for the kids…and for everybody who contributed to Manitowoc Legion baseball over the years,” he revealed. “This is our 46th or 47th season, depending on how you look at it. A lot of people have put in a lot of time and effort into running this program and making it cost-effective for a lot of different kids to participate from many local high schools.”
We asked Stangel if he could see this success coming at the start of the summer season.
“Early on we had good tryout numbers for all three of our teams and I knew in particular, our senior team we would have a fairly good team. It’s always difficult until you start playing games just how good you’re going to be,” he explained. “But then everything fell into place, we didn’t have a lot of injuries, we had kids that meshed as a team, liked to be around each other, and wanted to play together which always makes it a better season. No, it’s hard to tell when you first get going but as the season progressed we won a lot of close games and were finding ways to win, you could see that we would have a shot at going to state and doing well when we got there.”
Kevin Stangel remembers the co-founders of Legion baseball 46 years ago, Jim Fuhs and Cary Jolin.
“I didn’t know Cary very well but I knew Jim fairly well over the years,” he explained. “Jim and I spent a lot of time together from about 2000 on until he passed away recently. He put a lot of sweat equity and a lot of his own time and money into Manitowoc Legion baseball and legion baseball in general, also in Oshkosh. Jim took a lot of pride in the product that we put forth in Manitowoc. I did think about that and am sure he’d be proud of where we ended up.”
Manitowoc will have a workout and batting practice later today in Michigan, then get a good night’s sleep and report to the stadium tomorrow for their opening round game against the Illinois champion, Aviston which is near St. Louis.
Post 88 comes into the action with a 26 and 5 mark while the Aviston Legion has gone 27-&-1 so far.
First pitch is 11:30 a.m. central time.
