Legion is still very strong in pockets around MD. The four county area (Montgomery, Frederick, Carroll - sans Howard) have some good leagues. Gaithersburg and Mount Airy are the better known programs to me. Frederick and Funkstown are traditionally very good as well. I would love to see a resurgence of legion baseball. IMO, it is the purest form of summer baseball going. I generally find the better legion programs to be coached by some of the best coaches around. These guys can't cherry pick their teams from all over the metro area...they get a set population to draw from and that is it. It is real baseball IMO. None of this showcase (only playing on weekends) nonsense (just kidding - but I don't like it).
For a number of years, our 15-16 team was a strong feeder. (Did you know the Columbia Reds started as a 14 year old team?) Those teams were coached by tremendous coaches (Merson, Maxey, Martin, O'Brien, O'Connor, etc...) who put their all into building winners. Sean and Tim made a formidable team. But Tim's added duties for USA Baseball and Sean's taking on the varsity position at Dematha has created a vacuum for the summer program. With Tim pretty much gone most of the summer, and Sean wanting to see his high school players develop during the summer, the Columbia Reds 15-16 team was becoming a team of kids from everywhere but Columbia/Howard County.
John Lopez gave me and Jimmie a tremendous opportunity in 1989. We were coaching together at Oakland Mills and his son Brian was on our team. He asked if we'd be interested in starting a summer team for 17-18 year olds and play in the BML. Paul joined us on the coaching staff and we were off and running. Boy, those first few years were tough. We went 8-27 and 10-29 our first two years in the BML, and that was with some of the better players in HoCo on our squad. Those teams weren't lacking talent...they were lacking good coaching. We learned from our mistakes and got a little better as the years went on.
Back to the 15-16 team, I guess with BML going to single age groups, the team evolved into a 16 year old team. I never liked it, but it was what it was. We also had the problem of some local folks taking our name at the younger age groups. Trust me, as treasurer and the person who files the tax returns, we only incorporated Columbia Reds Inc. for two squads (15-16 and 17-18). I doubt we will build back up. To do so would require me and Jimmie to get more involved. My dad died suddenly in the fall of '03, so I quit coaching all together to help my mom with her place in E.C. I went from 1989-2003 without ever missing a practice or game (my wife was/is a saint!). I figured after dad died I couldn't put that same commitment on the table, so I decided to walk away from my onfield duties. As for Jimmie, he started getting into college coaching and his kids got older and started playing other sports more. I've known Jimmie since 1972 and knew he needed to be around for his family more. Without the two of us, it is simply too much for Paul to oversee. And to tell the truth, I think Paul is really liking this 20U thing he has going the past two seasons. His team last summer was one poorly played ball to rightfield away from walking into the AAABA World Series championship game.
It has also been very difficult for us when we really don't have much of a home to speak of. Back in our heyday, we had AHS' baseball field as the showplace in HoCo. The county stepped in back in the late 90's, early 2000's and threatened to pull our permit if we didn't stop "taking care of the field". Our tractor was vandalized (by workers who said we didn't have any business mowing the grass), the water was turned off on us, our clay pile for fixing batters box and pitchers mound was shoved into the woods by a large bulldozer, etc... All that stuff eventually wears you down.
Probably the only thing that really bothers me to this day is the fact that we asked for assistance from some of the other "local" organizations, and we got very little help. This after feeding many of their 17-18 programs with coaches, when they couldn't fill the spots...or when we would set up games for them with out of state opponents who would come to play us...or if we had a college coach in town to watch out team, we would ask the coach to stick around an extra day to watch those "local" teams. I know this sounds childish from an adult, but it does bother me. We never acted like we were the only game in town. We would frequently point players to these other programs if we couldn't fit them on our roster.
Sorry for the rambling...