Northwoods League to play ball

The Northwoods League is ready to get wood bat baseball started during the coronavirus pandemic, although plans don’t include the Lakeshore Chinooks – not yet, anyway.

Three teams will be playing in Bismarck, N.D.

The Bismarck Larks will be joined by two new teams — the Bismarck Bull Moose and the Bismarck Flickertails.

The trio will play a rotating schedule of 72 games when North Dakota moves to its Low Risk phase in its ND Smart Restart guidelines, according to a release from the Northwoods League.

All games would be played at Bismarck Municipal Ballpark.

North Dakota, Northwoods League President and Commissioner Gary Hoover said, was the state with the greatest likelihood in which baseball could be played due to the pandemic.

The league worked with the North Dakota Department of Health, Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health and the Bismarck Parks and Recreation District to create a “Larks Smart Start Plan,” Hoover said, “in order to create an environment where the fans, players and personnel at Bismarck Municipal Ballpark can return knowing the place where they are gathering has been subjected to a rigorous process with their safety as the primary concern.

“The league is mindful that a special relationship has been established between the Larks and the greater Bismarck community, and each step in this process has been taken in a way that respects, and hopefully reflects, that special relationship.”

Either the Bull Moose or Flickertails will be mostly filled with players “on loan” from the Thunder Bay Border Cats, a team that plays in Canada.

Given the border restrictions between the U.S. and Canada, the Border Cats wouldn’t be able to play home games. Allowing their players to come to Bismarck provides an opportunity for those players, who were willing and could play, Hoover said.

Newly recruited players will fill the rest of one new team’s roster and all of the other new team.

Hoover said the quality of play may be elevated, given there’s an abundance of talented college players with nowhere to play right now.

“If you’re able to provide an opportunity for a college player, they’re taking it,” he said.

The Northwoods League, which covers three time zones, seven states and an international border, faces a different set of scenarios, but Hoover said that’s a good sign.

“I’d much rather be this successful and broad geographically,” he said.

Where it becomes possible in each sub-region of the Northwoods League for play to safely commence and the teams within each area develop a comprehensive safety plan for their ballpark, the league will adopt a similar “pod” approach to schedule games within each sub-region.

The Lakeshore Chinooks, based in Grafton, play games at Kapco Park at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon. Northwoods League rosters have college players.