POWERLINE BASEBALL LEAGUE MEETING AROUND THE CORNER

Today a post on the Powerline Baseball League website alluded to current league president, Craig Neufeld calling for a spring meeting. Two items that were mentioned in the short blog post were the possible expansion of the league to an eight team league, the largest the PBL has been since the 2004 season, as well as what will happen to the PBL website and Facebook page now that longtime web administrator Jason Buzzell has retired and moved on. 

While there was no date proposed for the meeting, it sounds like the meeting will be held in Tofield, the hometown of President Craig Neufeld. As Spring officially starts on Friday March 20 and PBL baseball fans will no doubt be ready to discuss any rumors and off season stories heading into the 2015 PBL season. 

Any time there is talk of PBL expansion without too much detail about who, where and when this potential new team will come from and where they will play, you can bet the discussion will be carried by speculation and rumor. In the last few seasons the PBL has seen stories of teams coming from Fort Saskatchewan, Sherwood Park and even a Camrose midget team entering the fold, all of which never amounted to more than rumor and speculation and accusations of a team convincing an expansion team to avoid the PBL. But that is not saying that the league hasn't seen expansion at times, the issue has always seemed to be sustainability of these new franchises. Throughout the 2000's the league saw expansion into Ardrossan (originally the Lamont franchise), Chipman, a second franchise in Camrose as the Colts all of which were only able to last a year or two and then moved on. There has been successes though as the Leduc Milleteers entered the fold in 2008 and then went on to win five consecutive championships from 2009-2013, the Holden Blue Jays renewed their franchise again in 2010 and have been to three PBL Championships since then, the Beumont Angels came together in the 2013 season and even the Ryley Rebels were an expansion team in 2009. With all of the expansion and changes that have happened in the last few seasons, the constants have been the Armena franchise and the Bardo Athletics endruing since the late 1990's and beyond.  

The new expansion team could really be anything, from a team leaving one league to join another league, to a team from a larger centre unable to join a senior AA or senior AAA league for a variety of reasons or a local minor baseball team such as a midget team looking for more game experience locally. But there will be a lot of logisitics to work out and the expansion team acceptance will be taken to a vote before all is said and done. 

The second big change to the league in 2015 will be its website. The Powerline Baseball League has always managed a website that has been the source of conversation and perhaps even envy of other leagues as it was always updated quickly and effciently througout the season while remaining fairly modern and baseball specific (minus the kids soccer score tables). Over the last few seasons the website even was set up to accomodate individuals from each team to be able to post their own stories and pictures to add more depth to the league, the communities and the players that play in it. This was all due to longtime Armena Royal and PBL supporter Jason Buzzell, who this February announced that he is saying goodbye to the PBL and moving on. The league will have an interesting decision to make on who can they approach to run the website and the social media side of things while keeping the costs low enough that the league doesn't get run into deficit because of it. 

While nothing has been set in stone yet as far as details of the meeting, baseball fans can check back or look on the Powerline Baseball League website as more details emerge.