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Central may also petition the American Legion to join the Central Penn league as opposed to the Cambria County league.

That would make sense in terms of HS competition with the likes of Philipsburg, Lewistown, and Clearfield.

Travel would be an issue with either league and a huge commitment to be made for players when considering summer jobs.

Either way, the American Legion baseball for this area in my opinion is superior to the fiasco of the Kelly Federation league in Altoona.

I am going to bet that if Central really wants a team they will get one. Especially since they have a positive rep for such a good high school team. ALB is run by old guys and all they care about it is how many teams they have. The more the better so they can get big time sponsorships. Why do you think Diamond is the official baseball, and for crying out loud why else would Buick be the official vehicle of ALB. Its an old-man's car!

As far as Berlin, they didn't come up with enough kids so that is why they didn't have a team, not because of any other reason. You have to prove you are viable before they let you back in to the league. I also doubt the assertion that small teams like Portage don't care if they win or lose, and they just play for experience. Maybe their high school coaches want them to get experience. However, show me a legion coach happy to get his kids experience while getting smacked around by teams that draw from multiple school districts and I will be surprised.

The issue a lot of people have is Claysburg and Bedford have always had huge recruiting zones. And not only do they have a lot to draw from, they also get a lot of loyalty due to the distance from the Johnstown and to a degree Altoona. Kids only go to those places to play when they are out of Legion, and they don't go to legion until they are out of teener ball. This is why they are always so dominant. Case in point - Bedford's high school team always gets beat up in the LHAC, but in legion its the opposite because they always get nine or 10 new kids.

Unfortunately, this is never going to stop. Going back to the early 80's when Kline ran the Bedford team league officials tried to get them to split the county up and put two teams in the league. But the excuse always has been that if they didn't get four or five schools, then they wouldn't have enough kids to field a team. It is a ploy that some of the Cambria teams should try.

Not entirely disagreeing with your points, except one. "Kids only go to those places when they are out of Legion ball." Absolutely NOT true. As a general rule, your quote is true, but here in Ranger country, for the past several years anyway, we have had 2 or 3 kids every year either going to Johnstown as 14-15 yr. old Colt players, or AAABA league "dual roster-ing" and you know what that means, they will be playing some, or sitting 98 % of the time for those teams rather than playing full time for Legion.

Manfred wrote:Not entirely disagreeing with your points, except one. "Kids only go to those places when they are out of Legion ball." Absolutely NOT true.

Sorry but that statement is absolutely TRUE in the context of that post because I was only referring to Claysburg and Bedford. Those kids do not travel to Johnstown or Altoona AAABA to play until their legion eligibility is done. Furthermore, they don't have a problem with their younger players dual-rostering because they basically go one league at at time. That is because there has never been a need for them to dual-roster young kids because they pull from FOUR SCHOOL DISTRICTS each.

Meanwhile, I'd say it has been established several times on here that Cambria County Legion players are dual-rostered with teams in several leagues. In fact I believe we have mentioned that as the primary reason why St. Michael, Portage, Richland, Cernic's, Ebensburg, Lilly, and Nanty Glo have trouble getting enough kids to roster, let alone all of their eligible players on the field at the same time.

It gets so frustrating to come on here and read things from people who act like the foremost experts and cant get there facts straight and make things seem how they want them... Maybe it isnt the same number of players but i know Claysburg for example has lost people to both Johnstown and Altoona over the last couple years and has many kids dual rostering in each of those years. In 2009 They had Cody Swope and Dave McMurtrie both playing in Johnstown although Cody chose only to play legion in 2010. Mike Blair also played part time in Johnstown in 2010. In 2009 they also had both Elliott Chamberlain and Jared Baird dual rostering and neither was available for regionals after day 1. They had the Ickes boy who played on a young traveling team that year also. In 2010 Baird, Chamberlain, Joe glass, Tyler Ickes, Presley swope all played on traveling ERA teams while Drew Ebersole chose to play in Johnstown and not dual roster. IN 2011 they had Jared Baird dual rostering with Redbull and Chamberlain only played for them and did not play legion ball, Cameron Strayer, Zach Cox, Trey Claar, Tyler Ickes and Devin WEyandt all played for Pa. Pelicans (AAU) baseball. Kasy Hamm Played for ERA and missed the first game of the playoffs. Everyone has there problems and concerns with summer baseball and kids doing multiple things but if you are gonna come on here and run teams down on a constant basis at least get your facts straight !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, lets make this simple - a lot of teams have players on travel teams but not everyone can offset dual-rostering with four school districts to choose from. If Claysburg were just Claysburg high school then you'd know what a lot of other teams have to deal with. I know your response will be that if you had to just get Claysburg kids you wouldn't have a team because that is always what the response has been.

All valid points, I would guess. The more information we all have, from more than a couple "sources", the better it is to discuss and formulate our own opinions.