Little League Baseball season starts Monday

Welcome to a new season of Little League Baseball/Softball.

For most of the roughly 1,200 boys and girls four and older in Great Falls and on Malmstrom Air Force Base, the 2015 baseball/softball season begins on Monday. That ballpark number of 1,200 is down by about 100 kids.

"Last year, we had 513 kids registered," said Garn Warner, in his first year as president of the Americans Little League, one that saw a drop in signups. "Last year, we were near 600."

Tom Croskrey, president of the Great Falls Riverside Little League (which covers Riverview, Sacajawea and Valley View, and North), says his league's numbers are pretty much status quo, neither up nor down. He has about 300 kids just itching to put a bat on a ball and give it a ride.

"Our older kids — the Minor A, Majors, Juniors and Senior Leaguers, ages nine and up — start play Monday," Croskrey noted. "The younger ones, eight and under (Minor B and T-Ball) starts their season the first Monday in May (May 4)." The Americans, Westside and MAFB circuits also start on those dates.

Malmstrom Little League president Tom Kiernan has 86 youngsters playing.

"That's down 30 from last year," Kiernan said. He added that many of his older kids are in other leagues … the closest being the Americans … and that teams from different leagues face each other in interleague play on a regular basis.

The one league with an increase in registration is the Westside League, according to president Keith Marr.

"This year we have about 240, and that number keeps going up," Marr says, noting he has a lot of late registrations. "We've been generally in the 220 range in the last five years I've been on the board."

The one number that is a little disappointing is the number of girls registered for softball.

"We have 25 this year, so we'll have two teams in the 7-8 year old range and one in the 9-10 range," Marr added. "We also have several girls playing with the boys in T-ball, plus we had three older girls we had to send to Riverside."

The older kids will play 14 league games before the City Tournament begins in late June. After subdistrict and district tourneys is the state tournament and, for those boys in the Majors, the Western Regional in San Bernardino, Calif., before the Little League World Series at Williamsport, Pa., in August.