Wyoming Legion Baseball Returns for the 2022 Season
The 2022 American Legion Baseball season in Wyoming is here. Play on the diamond begins this weekend and will last into August.
Here are some changes during the off-season.
The new Wyoming American Legion Baseball State Chairman is Jack Simms. He takes over for Cody Beers, who stepped down last September. Simms was approved as the new chairman last October.
The Double-A (AA) level of American Legion baseball will not have two conferences. The coaches voted and approved a single division of eight teams. Those eight are Casper, Cheyenne, Evanston, Gillette, Jackson, Laramie, Rock Springs, and Sheridan.
Each team will play one 7-inning doubleheader against the other seven teams on a two-year rotating schedule. Some teams will have four home games and three road games this year, while others have three home games and four road games. The schedule will flip in 2023.
At the state tournament, teams will be seeded based on their outcome in those 14 conference games. Also, teams will be seeded 1-8 at the state tournament, instead of the old 1-4 from each conference.
The 2022 ‘AA’ Wyoming American Legion Baseball State Tournament is at Thorne-Rider Park in Sheridan on July 25-29.
The Single-A (‘A’) level of legion baseball will have 13 teams in four divisions. The Northeast is Buffalo, Casper, and Sheridan. The Southeast will have the Cheyenne Hawks, Douglas, Torrington, and Wheatland. The Northwest Division is comprised of Cody, Lovell, and Powell. The Southwest Division will be Green River, Rawlins, and Riverton.
All teams will play their division opponents in four conference games. These will be a home and home series with two 7-inning games as part of a doubleheader. Those games will determine the seeding at the two District Tournaments.
Those two District Tournaments are on July 18-20, 2022. Those will be 6-team or 7-team, double-elimination brackets, to determine the four teams from each side of the state that will advance to the ‘A’ state tournament. The East District Tournament will be in Douglas, while the West District Tournament is in Green River.
The Single-A state tournament will be at Milward L. Simpson Stadium, in Cody, on July 25-29, 2022. The Cody Cubs receive an automatic bid to the state tournament as the host team. The ‘A’ state tournament is on a rotation between east and west. The ‘East’ will host in 2023.
Coaches at the Single-A level also agreed to continue with an All-Star game. That contest will be played at Nida Field on August 6, 2022, in Douglas. There will be a home run derby on Friday, August 5, 2022. The rosters will come from the all-conference selections made by a vote of the coaches. The rosters will be limited to the top 18 players.
Both the ‘AA’ and ‘A’ levels will use the Regional/National Modified double-elimination bracket.
The ‘B’ legion baseball state tournament will be in Powell on July 21-24, 2022. All ‘B’ level players must be born in 2005 or after.
The ‘C’ level legion baseball state tournament will be in Cheyenne on July 14-21, 2021. All ‘C’ level players must be born in 2007 or after.
Both of those levels will use a standard double-elimination bracket to determine their champion. The top two teams in each conference will advance to the state tournament in the ‘B’ and ‘C’ divisions.