Brandon senior AA baseball league folds

The Andrew Agencies Senior AA Baseball League has officially folded after the GW Vacuum Truck Service Young Guns and the RFNOW Cardinals jumped to the South West Baseball League.

That left the Brandon league with just two teams, the Westman Fire Protection Cubs and the Sioux Valley Dakotas, and with no hope of finding new clubs, it quietly ceased operations.

Adam Hartman has spent time in both leagues.

He grew up in Virden and played a few seasons with his hometown Oilers in the South West. He spent one season in Brandon when he was a member of the Brandon University Bobcats men’s basketball team, and then played one more season in Virden.

After a couple of summers off, the Cardinals started around 2008, and he has been with them ever since.

“We’re definitely excited for the new opportunity and the challenges that it poses going to the South West but I definitely know there are a lot of people who are still sad our Brandon league has folded,” Hartman said. “We have a lot of great memories over the years playing in this league and playing against all the teams we’ve had an opportunity to play against. I look back and think of the friendships and the summers we’ve had at Andrews and Sumner (fields).

“We’ll still have great memories here in town, it’s just sad to see the Brandon league fold.”

Chris Campbell served as president of the Andrew Agencies league for the past eight years and also managed the Young Guns. He said the move was inevitable.

“Just from an interest level and an excitement level, it made sense,” Campbell said. “It gets a little bit bland when you’re playing the same three teams year after year. I think the guys were seeking a little more variety and the road trips. I think it will bring a little more intrigue and excitement back to the ball park.”

Carter Loewen, who organized the Cubs and pitched for them, has played in the senior AA league since he was a teenager.

He said there was no meaningful discussion of moving forward without the Young Guns and Cardinals, saying the hunt for teams hadn’t worked out in recent years.

“There were rumblings last summer that was another team of ex-midget guys who wanted to start a team, but I guess that just never came to fruition,” Loewen said.

DEEP ROOTS

The Brandon Intermediate Baseball League began in the summer of 1989 with four teams. The new loop officially launched on May 17, 1989 at what was then called Kinsmen Stadium when Cresting Unlimited beat the Yankee Clubbers 12-9 in a six-inning game.

The league changed its name to the Houston’s Country Roadhouse Intermediate League in 1999 — it had five teams that season — and by 2004 was the MacArthur Senior AA Baseball League.

It became the Andrew Agencies Senior AA Baseball League in 2014.

“I played in it in the early 1990s and at the time there might have been seven or eight teams,” Campbell said. “It’s just the way it is. We have to adapt to change and just move forward. I’m not losing too much sleep over it.

“I just want there to be competitive ball available to the guys who want to play it. This is our best option to move forward that and ensure there is some entertaining ball on a consistent basis to be watched at our diamonds in Brandon.”

The Marlins won the league title in 2017, with the Young Guns or Cardinals winning every other championship since 2013. In fact, the Cards were champs eight times and runner-ups four times in that span.

Loewen said the talk of the league falling apart began in earnest last July after years of discussions.

“A few of the guys on one of the teams in particular really have been pushing it but we’ve always fought back on that,” Loewen said. “Up until this year we’ve kind of won. It really started to pick up once the Young Guns were eliminated from the playoffs, obviously they had more time so that was what they were pushing for.

“Then we had a league meeting in September and talked about it a little bit. They said they were doing it, we said we likely wouldn’t have enough guys and then really we didn’t hear anything for the entire winter.”

Loewen said he learned the news last week, and officially heard it was going through on Thursday.

“It’s been a great place to play,” Loewen said, noting his father Kevin also suited up in the league. “It’s 10 minutes away from everyone’s house. If you play at 7, you’re maybe leaving your house at 5:50 or 6 o’clock and making it with plenty of time to go. It’s extremely disappointing for lots of the guys who won’t be able to play. They just don’t have that option and that time commitment ability.

“It sucks.”

Loewen said his biggest fear is that players who are graduating from the under-18 AAA program will leave the game since there are two local teams. There simply won’t be enough room with just two local rosters.

“If guys wanted to leave Brandon and go play in the South West league — maybe there is a little more competition and definitely more travel — that’s always been an option,” Loewen said. “However, it hasn’t always been the only option.”

Loewen expects only four or five guys from the Cubs to make the jump to South West teams, saying the rural league demands a different level of commitment than playing in Brandon.

“We had a pretty good core of young guys, but lots of them are trades workers that aren’t off work until 6 most nights,” Loewen said. “Those guys can’t just disappear from work to go play senior baseball on a Tuesday night in Oak River.”

NEW ERA

In a very different era of competitive sport in Brandon, in 1989 the new league joined the Manitoba Senior Baseball League, the Brandon Commercial Fastball League and the orthodox fastball Merchants League in what was then a crowded athletic marketplace for ball players.

Less than 40 years later, they’re all gone, with Softball Brandon now operating slo-pitch and orthodox fastball leagues.

“It is a big-time commitment and I guess people are seeing different paths in their lives,” Loewen said. “There are obviously more sports around now that you could be able to play if you wanted to. Baseball is not really the only summer option anymore. And our league saw fewer players after COVID for sure.

“People spent one summer at home with their families or friends and realized maybe it’s not worth it to go spend those two nights a week outside of my house when I’m having just as much fun with my friends, kids, families.”

He noted there are fewer adult players in most sports and he’s not completely sure why.

Campbell agreed there are more options these days.

“It does seem like there are less people that want to step up and put the time in doing the work to operate or helping operate a team,” Campbell said. “I can’t put my finger on that but I think a lot has to do with so many different options out there and work schedules have changed too.”

In recent years, the Brandon league has had some turnover in its ranks.

The Marlins left in 2020, the Dakotas joined in 2022 and the Giants fell away in 2023.

Campbell said some Young Guns players were so tired of the small league that they didn’t play last season, but are coming back for this season.

The biggest change is the team will carry more bodies this year — somewhere between 15 and 17 — to ensure they have enough players when guys have work commitments. They’ll accomplish that with the returnees and some of the youngsters who joined them last summer.

NEW DIRECTION

The South West league also had its own ups and downs over the years with teams coming and going. It got as low as seven teams in the early 2010s, but in 2016 split into two five-team divisions.

They were up to 11 teams in 2017-2019 but were back down to eight teams after a pair of COVID-shortened seasons. They had nine teams all playing in one division last summer.

South West league president Aaron Tycoles said the decision was made last September to admit the two clubs. The league then had its pre-season meeting on Wednesday at Oak Island Resort.

Tycoles said there was discussion about whether the teams were a good fit.

“There were some concerns obviously,” Tycoles said. “We wanted to be at a point where there is at least two teams. We don’t want to see just one team from Brandon come into the league because they could basically just be an all-star team from Brandon. That was the one concern that did come up.

“We were worried about their travel and ability to travel because they’ve never had to do that before but both teams are pretty confident they’ll be able to travel and support it. There was no real concern there so they answered those questions for us.

“Really, the more teams the better. It allows for a more competitive league so they were accepted unanimously when those questions were answered.”

The Young Guns will play in the North Division with Reston, Rivers, Virden, Hamiota and Oak River, while the Cardinals will join the South Division and Boissevain, Deloraine, Souris and Wawanesa.

That decision was made on a coin flip.

“We’ve already played each other a million times over the past 10 years so we wanted to have a Brandon team in each division,” Campbell said. “We flipped a coin for that and I won the flip, so I chose the north. Then they gave Reston the choice of either going south or north, and they decided to go north.”

It wasn’t discussed if the Brandon teams could potentially flip divisions in the future.

Elkhorn is taking a leave of absence this summer, while Souris is back after four years away as their excellent minor baseball system now pays dividends at the senior level.

The South West teams will play a home-and-home series within their division and play the teams in the other division once.

That means the Brandon teams will face off just once after playing over and over in the Andrew Agencies league.

“I think our team is excited to have an opportunity to travel to towns and see their diamonds and to compete against a larger variety of teams,” Hartman said. “That’s for sure.”

Campbell said his team’s goal for their home games is to replicate the atmosphere that can be found in some of the smaller communities, with an announcer and the scoreboard being used.

A schedule should be released around May 5.

“It’s big,” Tycoles said. “More teams, more competition. Last year we had a tough time getting 16 in with the weather so teams are going to play 14 or 15, depending on the division. Adding teams is always a positive, and we’re back up to the most we’ve ever had at 11. It’s a good thing.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com