Legion battling to fill roster

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The Welter family of Batavia plans to set sail on an international cruise next week with all hands on deck. It’s a rarity from past summers, when Ryan Welter’s travel baseball kept his journeying abroad.

Every weekend last year, it seemed, the Top Tier 17-and-under team ventured across state lines from Lake Forest for a game or four. So continued the tournament routine Welter had known since his days as an 11-year-old member of the aptly-named Wasco Travelers, veterans of trips as far as Florida.

“There’s no question travel ball has been emerging,” Welter said, “but it’s always been big.”

An 18-year-old’s use of “always” carries different meaning, so Welter is inadvertently unconscious of how much history he’s leaving out. Truth is, travel teams haven’t always been as traditional as he says. Lately, however, they have done a number on the far more entrenched American Legion program and player turnouts.

“Between travel teams and high school summer baseball, the talent pool is very diluted,” said Greg Kowalski, St. Charles Legion Post 342 assistant coach. “ It’s become a bigger and bigger problem through the years in the Chicago suburbs.”

Kowalski makes that distinction because most of the teams Post 342 is playing in a tournament in Moline this weekend don’t face the same problem. Kowalski estimates the summer high school program, which allows teams to get life without their recently graduated seniors, has been around since the mid-1980s.

Competition from travel teams, however, has seen a shorter timetable. An assistant to Dave Wilderspin for 10 seasons, Kowalski said the number of area travel team options has grown from two to “a dozen or so” in that span.

Legion hits the road just as often as travel teams, although typically not as far. Post 342 played a tournament in Champaign last weekend before heading to Moline, and midweek stops for non-tournament games have included Crystal Lake, Elmhurst and Wheaton. 

“The competition that we play is phenomenal,” said Post 342 infielder and recent St. Charles North graduate K.C. Wright. “The teams, the places we get to go are all top-notch.”

Welter, sitting out from baseball this summer as his wrist heals in time for the start of his college catching career at Benedictine, offers the same plug for travel ball.

“No matter where you go, it’s the best of the best,” he said. “Guys who are getting drafted, guys who are the best in their schools, the best in their towns. It’s like that every weekend.”

Post 342 seemingly scored one for the old guard last month when Chronicle Player of the Year Brian Krolikowski joined the team midseason. Originally slated to suit up for the Illinois Sparks, a travel sibling to Top Tier, the former Batavia pitcher/first baseman changed plans when his Miami of Ohio coaches told him to pare summer activity down to 50 pitches a week.

The Sparks, including ex-Bulldogs outfielder and Joliet Junior College recruit Tim Drish, are in Georgia this weekend. Post 342 is in Western Illinois. The comparisons of prestige either start or end there.

“It’s a lot of different situations and scenarios,” Kowalski said. “When high school is over, high school is over for some guys. Maybe they don’t want to play baseball because they won’t be playing in college. Maybe there was a stronger impulse just to play before.

“There are the guys who think travel is the way to go, and the guys who are just as good of prospects that would rather stay close and keep playing with their buddies. Again, it’s different.”

Post 342 struggled to fill its 18-player roster for the first time in the Wilderspin/Kowalski era this summer, as injuries to potential recruits – including Welter – took a toll.

Sixteen players comprised the roster to date, with the Kane County tournament coming next week.

“It used to be that legion was a player’s only option,” Kowalski said. “The travel teams, everything, has really put a strain on legion ball.”