American Legion Baseball Committee Chairman Gary Stone reflects on the program’s first century, and its future.
Few people know American Legion Baseball like Gary Stone.
For 25 years, the Marine Corps veteran coached Post 340’s team in Independence, Mo., including future major league All-Star Albert Pujols.
Stone retired in 2008, but didn’t say goodbye to the sport. For a decade now, Stone has served as chairman of the national American Legion Baseball Committee — a position he’s proud to be in as the program celebrates its 100th birthday this year.
Prior to the centennial season, Stone talked with American Legion Assistant Editor Andy Proffet about ALB’s staying power.
Andy Proffet: From your perspective, what does it mean that American Legion Baseball has lasted 100 years?
Gary Stone: How it has lasted is what it offers to the young men who have participated. It’s a sense of community; this is the only program of its kind I’m aware of that’s sponsored by a veterans organization. And if you look at the alumni — what they’ve contributed to their communities and the nation — those are the things we stand for.
Q: What values does American Legion Baseball instill in players and coaches?
Stone: The values, I think, are teamwork, sportsmanship, how to get along with others, how to work together as a group to accomplish a set goal. Coaching was an honor for me. It fulfilled me. If you take a young man who comes from, say, an impoverished background, give him a sense of belonging and a goal, you change his life.
Q: What sets American Legion Baseball apart from other programs?
Stone: We emphasize team skills like hit the cutoff man, bunt, hit-and-run, those types of things, whereas other programs focus more on the individual. How far can you throw? How fast can you run? Those things are important, but what The American Legion does is bring them together to form a team to reach a goal.
Q: One of the challenges that American Legion Baseball runs into is (the individual goals): look at me, how can I improve as opposed to teamwork. What would be your selling point to someone who’s looking at, “Should I go play travel ball and improve myself, or should I go play American Legion Baseball and maybe sacrifice some of my personal goals for the team?”
Stone: One of the big selling points, for example, for travel ball is, a lot of them will guarantee you if you play in their program, they will guarantee that you will get a D-I scholarship or whatever. But that’s expensive. They charge a lot of money to do that. So if you sit back and look at it, a parent, let’s say they’re going to charge you $5,000 this year, and your kid plays for them for a couple of years, you’ve already paid for your college, right? And then they’re finding out a lot of times that promise that was made to them doesn’t happen. That’s one of the downsides of travel ball, and I’m not here to knock any other organization, it’s just a reality. Whereas Legion, I’ve always been of the impression that, if you’re good, the colleges and whatnot will find you. I don’t care if you’re on the worst team in the Legion program or any program, the talent will rise to the top. But that’s my biggest difference with travel ball. And again, I’ve walked up to a kid that’s played on travel ball, say three days after his last game, and said, “How did your team do?” “I don’t know, but I was 3-for-3.” And that kind of symbolizes the whole problem with all that.
Q: Are there moments that come to mind over the history of American Legion Baseball that have shaped it, or events that are important to recall?
Stone: You can go back through archivable issues and see people like Ted Williams talk about it, what it meant to him. When you look at his videos, he calls it “Junior American Legion Baseball” because at the time, that was what it was called. He gave up a lot of his time in (World War II and the Korean War) for service to our country. And he’s a Hall of Famer and he did all this stuff, and yet he still goes back to his roots about what American Legion Baseball did for him. You go back and look at its inception, back in 1925, Babe Ruth was too old to be part of the program but in his later years after he retired from baseball, he became an ambassador for Legion Baseball. Toured the country pushing the program. So those are the things. If you go to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and you see the statues of Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, and look at all the enshrinees who were Legion players, it’s got a rich history and 100 years, that’s a long time. But we’ve survived and we’re still going strong.
Q: What does it mean to you personally to be in this role as we hit 100 years of American Legion Baseball?
Stone: To hold this position as we go into the centennial, I feel honored, proud to do it. I’m an old guy, been around awhile. I’m just honored to be here and be part of recognizing an organization that’s lasted this long, and contributed to the fabric of our country by providing quality young people to go forth and lead the country.
Q: What do you want for American Legion Baseball as it enters its next century?
Stone: I’d like to see it continue, and I’d also like to see it grow. I think at some point down the road, when parents stop and look at what they get out of amateur sports, and they want to look at our program and it’s lasted 100, and to your point, a second hundred years, if it’s lasted that long, we must be doing something right. And I think parents will at some point start weighing things and seeing what they’re getting out of all this. And I think our program will grow.
One of the things I would like to see this next year is that we could have a huge increase in team numbers. The last few years, we’ve kind of been going down. I’d like to see a huge jump this year just to kick off the next (century).
… One of the biggest hindrances to increasing the teams, No. 1 is sponsors. Most Legion posts don’t give any money, so there are outside sponsors. Outside of that it’s getting people to do it, coaches. It takes a lot of time. I did it 25 years, and it does take a lot of time. And there aren’t that many people willing to put in that commitment anymore.
Q: How do you get the departments on the same page when it comes to the program’s direction and celebrating the centennial?
Stone: The challenge of getting the state chairman to go by the rules is … it is a challenge, because you’ve got 50 different states, and what works in one state may not work at all. And when you get on the committee, as a member or chairman or whatever, there’s always a tendency, “This is the way we did it in Missouri” or whatever, and you can’t do that, that might not work in California. So those are the things, that’s the biggest challenge is getting everybody to understand because some states have 300 teams, some states have 10. But they all have to go by the same rule.
The other challenge that comes up, all these things we say that they have to do, are not necessarily driven by the baseball committee. For example, the new background checks on kids over 18 years old. The sexual abuse training. These are all things — the sexual abuse training is driven by federal law. … Those are the challenges, is getting them to understand that we might not like doing it, it’s something we have to do.
Q: Over the course of 100 years, obviously there have been changes to how the game is played and how it’s run, that may not have necessarily been popular at the moment. From your perspective, and in your role, why is it important that you explain these rules are important, things like the seven-inning games and the pitch counts?
Stone: As we go through time, the changes that we make, some are not popular. I’ll go with the seven-inning games and the pitch count rule. The pitch count rule was put in based on a study made by Major League Baseball and others about the damage of overpitching young men, what it does to their arms. So the pitch count rule was put in. Well, that drove the seven-inning thing because if you’re going to play nine innings, it becomes very difficult to have a pitch count limitation on them. That’s one of the biggest challenges, and I think everybody has adopted that pretty much. There have been other changes; for example, and I totally disagreed with but we just put in next year will be this, in extra innings, put a runner at second base. Which the major leagues adopted a couple of years ago, and we opted not to, because it was done as a speed-up rule which we didn’t think we needed. But this past season in the (American Legion) World Series, we had a 14-inning game. Which makes a team actually play two games instead of one in a day. Which is an unfair advantage, but it’s part of the game. However, what we put in was, we’re not going to immediately in the eighth inning go to it, we’re going to go to it in the tenth. You could still have a 14-inning game.
Things like the shift, when the major leagues did that, we never did do that. So there are some things Major League Baseball has proposed that we look at, pitch clock, we don’t need it. Baseball’s doing that as a time thing; we don’t need it. The latest thing that’s come up just in the last few months, they proposed a golden bat, where you can use a guy to come in and hit … if he’s already hit in the inning, he could hit again if you want him to. I don’t understand that.
We try to apply the (changes) we think will help our program. If we don’t see the need for it, we don’t do it.
Q: Any good memories or moments you’re especially fond of?
Stone: One of my favorite moments, I’ll go back at the (ALWS), is the Hawaiian team. Those kids came to have fun. They were noisy, but they weren’t criticizing anybody. …
One of the things at the (ALWS) too was, we were in a rain delay, huge rain delay, it might have been South Carolina (vs.) Minnesota. But the kids come out of the dugout and started dancing in the rain, and seeing who could outdo each other. It was all in good fun, and you remember those things.
You remember the joy of winning, and handing out the trophies and you see their face. But then you see the second-place finisher, and I thought before about maybe instead of having both teams out there—that second place team doesn’t really want to be there. I’m thinking, how can we do this differently, recognize them and let them go on before we do the (trophy presentation).
Q: Does that moment reflect what American Legion Baseball is about, because you’ve put in a lot of effort but come up short?
Stone: One of the things when I go out and do the (sportsmanship) code, first thing I tell them is that there are no losers in this tournament; you’re a champ or else you wouldn’t be here. And I share with them my extensive baseball knowledge, one of you is going to score more runs than the other one. Somebody’s going to win, somebody's going to lose; doesn’t make you a loser. You say all that and you hope it gets through.
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