After having a Maine team involved in the Senior League East Regional Baseball Tournament for just the second time at Mansfield Stadium in Bangor last summer, there won’t be one when the tournament is held later this month.
The Senior League features players 13-16 years of age.
Gray-New Gloucester beat Hampden in a best-of-three series a year ago to earn a berth in the nine-team tourney, but tournament director Mike Brooker said there are no Senior League teams in the state this summer.
So it will be an eight-team, double-elimination tournament field involving state champions from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware and Connecticut.
It will be held from July 21-27 and the winner will advance to the 12-team Senior League World Series at the J.B. Red Owens Sports Complex in Easley, South Carolina, on Aug. 1-8.
Brooker said there were some communities in Maine that expressed interest in forming a Senior League team, “but they never got enough players” to do so.
He pointed out that there is no “minimum game requirement,” so a Maine team wouldn’t have had to even play a game to be included in the field.
Brooker noted that players are opting for American Legion baseball or travel ball rather than Senior League.
He said they play American Legion baseball because they feel they need to in order to make their high school team roster and the ones who play travel ball do so because their parents are convinced they are Division I-caliber players and they need a higher level of competition to enhance their chances of playing at that level.
“And do you know how many Division I players have come out of the Bangor area in the last 20 years? Not too many,” Brooker said. “It’s frustrating.”
Mansfield Stadium hosted its first Eastern Regional tournament in 2019 and there was an Old Town team in the field.
The didn’t have a tournament during the COVID years, 2020 or 2021, but it returned in 2022 without a Maine team, and there wasn’t one until Gray-New Gloucester participated in last year’s tournament, which was won by DuBois, Pennsylvania.
The other winners were Auburn, Massachusetts (2024), Cherry Hill, New Jersey (2023), East Vineland, New Jersey (2022) and Wilmington, Delaware (2019).
Four international teams have already qualified for the Senior League World Series: the Australian champion is Brisbane North Region Little League (Queensland); Pabao Little League from Willemstad, Curacao is the Caribbean champ; the South Czech Republic LL from Brno, Czechia is the Europe and Africa titlist and the Coquivacoa LL from Maracaibo, Venezuela won the Latin American tournament.
Canada and Asia-Pacific have yet to determine their champions and the six American regionals will all be held later this month.
Mansfield Stadium hosted the Senior League World Series from 2002-2016, but it was moved to Easley, South Carolina, because it was an easier destination to reach than Bangor.
Brooker said the playing surface at Mansfield Stadium is in “excellent condition.”