Southern Senior Babe Ruth, NH

I don't know a whole lot about that league as my son wasn't of age to play in it yet. I did find the following list of the other 9 teams in that league.

Hollis/Brookline Cavaliers
Keene
Monadnock
Nashua Chiefs
Nashua Marauders
Nashua Mavericks
Salem Cardinals
Souhegan Valley Pirates
Walpole

There were 4 Senior Babe Ruth Leagues in NH last year. The Seacoast Senior Babe Ruth League had two divisions as they had 10 teams (That put 5 teams in the State tourney w/2 coming from the Seacoast representing each of their divisions, the other leagues just sent their champion). I would assume that the SBRL would now split into two divisions with the addition of Londonderry giving them 10 teams. That would likely put 6 teams into the state tournament. (2 from SBRL 2 from SSBRL and one each from Granite State Babe Ruth League and National Senior babe Ruth League.

Here is a link to the state website showing the 4 leagues and the teams that were a part of them as of 2009.

NH Senior Babe ruth League

There is also a Regional tournament as well. I assume like regular Babe Ruth there is ultimately a World Series too.

hope that helps....lol

The Londonderry SBR team played in one of the Seacoast divisions last year, so that might mean that League is back to 9 teams. Perhaps with this change Pelham will decide to come back to NH rather than playing in the MA league.

Anyway, the competition is pretty good - below Legion and above Jr. Legion (because of 18 year olds in SBR). The Nashua teams are usually pretty good especially since there's essentially 1 Legion program in Nashua and 3 SBR teams. Last year Salem was in the finals vs. I think the Marauders. Souhegan had a pretty strong team too. Keene always seems to field good baseball teams, so adding Londonderry should be good for the League and baseball in general.

Strength of teams is a cyclical thing. There's also a bit of "who" decides to play SBR rather than Legion or how "stacked" a Legion team may be with returning college freshman. Beyond that it probably depends on where an 18 year old wants to play. Does he play Legion or SBR? If you're going off to college you may want a more relaxed environment that SBR seems to provide.

There is a Southern League tourney and a State Tourney. Not quite sure how each League determines "which team" goes onto the State tourney. I know Southern League had an "all star" team (Scott Painter was the coach). The winner of the state tourney goes onto Regionals.

Last year for Seacoast, the State tourney was completed before the Seacoast final. I'm not quite sure how it worked, but my son played for Central Orange (eg, Londonderry) last year and we were playing games in Portsmouth after the Southern League All Star's won the state tourney. Our team ended up losing in something like 11 or 12 innings to a Portsmouth team... We had 8.5 players at the field - the .5 was a player who's hamstrings were shot, but we needed a 9th warm body so he played. We were missing a couple of players who were playing for Londonderry Legion in that state tourney. There was another game after our loss and I think the team that lost to Southern in the State tourney losers bracket won the Seacoast title. The only reason I remember this is because the team wore PINK (no kidding) - it's hard to forget something like that!

The talent level at SBR is really not close to Senior Legion. It is better than Junior Legion as a general rule however the towns that don't have SBR programs do have pretty good JL teams (comparable to most SBR teams.)Salem did win the Southern League title last year, beating the Chiefs not the marauders. The state tournament team is an all star team picked from the whole league. Salem had 3 players on last years team that beat Concords Big Blue. Honestly South and Concord were a step above the other entrants in the tournament (last year anyways, not sure if this is always the case.)The regionals were in Stamford CT and we got our asses handed to us twice. The CT team had four D1 pitchers on thier roster . I got the feeling that other states in N.E. take SBR a lot more seriously than we do.In my opinion,for whatever it's worth, Senior Legion is where you should strive to play but if it doesn't work out SBR offers a pretty good level of competition. (wow, my fingers are killing me )

Good analysis by both of the above posters. The "leagues" page on the SBR web site (linked above) was not updated in 2010, although the district and state tournament pages were updated promptly last year during the tournaments. In the Seacoast League, the regular season champions in each division went on to the state tournament, but they held divisional post-season tournaments anyway. The lovely pink shirts belonged to the boys from Somersworth.

I generally agree that the caliber of play is somewhere between Legion and Jr. Legion, but it varies by community. In towns that have both programs, players will play one or the other based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) the opportunity for playing time, quality of coaching, and their overall level of "seriousness" about summer baseball.

One thing I will say is that this Southern Babe Ruth League has some very highly respected baseball people, including:
Bill Dod - Souhegan High Head Coach
Scott Painter - BG High School Coach
Jim Sanderson - Long Time Nashua Baseball
Dan Kellher Sr - Long Time Salem Baseball

Among others, after attending one meeting I saw that this was a very well run program, which is probably why they have continued for over 20 years now.