MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Mistakes were made and rust was slowly chipped away after months of no live baseball, but Morgantown 2 pulled out their season-opener win over rival Bridgeport.
“There were a lot of things, just kicking the rust off,” Morgantown coach Andy Altemus said. “We made a lot of mistakes that we probably should make, they haven’t played for a while. It’s good, we’re going to fix them and have them ready to go for the fall and next spring and summer.”
Down 5-2 in the second inning after giving up all five runs in the first, Morgantown put up seven unanswered runs to claim the win over WV Patriot Club, 9-5. The team, the evolution of Morgantown Post 2 due to COVID-19 shutting down the American Legion’s summer season, is just happy to be able to play again even if it’s a shortened season. That being said, the victory itself is an allusion to the up and down process to get baseball back.
“A couple of the guys said they haven’t seen a genuine live pitch in a game since last August, so that’s a long time,” he said laughing.
While Altemus is happy to log win No. 1, it was unknown whether teams would even play this summer at all.
“We found out in March or April that the American Legion was not going to sanction any play, and right after that there were a few meetings with the state officers and people who are administrators of legion baseball as to what to do,” he said. “A lot of the Legion posts, they operate based on a budget, so because they shut down and weren’t allowing play their budget went to zero. That didn’t leave a lot of options.
“I know a lot of people have scrambled to put things together but there were four to five programs throughout the state that are pretty well off and were able to piece it together as best as they could [for teams to play].”
With a season back, it especially brings with it a breath of fresh air for the players. While part of the roster is college players who played some of their freshman season, the rest is high schoolers who lost everything save but for a few practices.
“We have four college guys that played half of their season and were doing well, so they didn’t skip a beat,” Altemus said. “All the high school kids, it’s not like they weren’t doing anything. They worked hard [through] the winter months and they were ready to go and got shut down, but as soon as they were able to start stuff up again we did that. We were able to do almost a month of training, and we’ve had three weeks of practice so it’s not as bad as it seems. They’ve all been doing stuff on their own. When we’re practicing it doesn’t look any different, they’re ready to go.”
Though short, the summer season looks bright for Morgantown 2. One event, in particular, excites Altemus and the team: Their 4th of July game against Wheeling. Not only will there that 9-inning game, but Mylan Park is also hosting a Davisson Brothers at the new track and a fireworks display on the varsity baseball field.
“That’s one of the thighs that we did before this even hit,” Altemus said. We put a lot of money, time and effort into getting that backfield at Mylan Park. There are 1,500 seats, a new press box, new surface, we’re putting up a video board, they’re getting a whole lot of new stuff leading into us hosting the state and regional for the next two years. We’re going to have teams from all over the East Coast coming there. But I know that July 4th thing is going to be cool.”
Morgantown returns to action this weekend at the Tournament of Champions in Bridgeport.
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