Patriotism to Drive Legion Resurgence

The American Legion was chartered in 1919 by Congress as a patriotic veterans organization devoted to mutual helpfulness, focusing on the service to veterans, service members and communities. It had evolved from a group of war-weary veterans from World War I into one of the most influential non-profit organizations in the United States.
On July 17, 1925 the Legion created the American Legion Baseball Program. As the program grew, it saw upwards of 82,000 youths playing on legion-sponsored teams each year. Today more than 50% of Major League baseball players are graduates of the program.
Local legion team Post 335 out of Norfolk is one of those teams. Under the guidance of General Manager Bill Lagos, who has been involved with the program since his playing days in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, the team has prospered. However, over the past few years Norfolk has seen a decline in numbers of athletes trying out for the squad, leading Lagos to try and reinvent the program.
“I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. We’ve been losing a lot of good athletes to the rise of lacrosse in the area and Tournament or AAU baseball,” Lagos said. “AAU has done a good job marketing and has targeted the kids at an early age (8-10) so by the time that they get to high school (where they can begin playing legion ball) they are already locked up.”
In addition to athletes playing AAU ball instead of Legion, the economy has also taken its toll on those who might think about playing America’s pastime.
“In today’s society it’s a reality that these kids need to pay for college, so they get a job during the summer. There are a few that will work all day, stretch on the way and show up five minutes before the first pitch,” Lagos said. “More and more athletes are also committing to colleges early and once that happens a lot of the coaches don’t want them to get hurt playing summer baseball so they shut them down.”
With all the contributing factors coming into play with the Norfolk team’s decreasing numbers, Lagos had to do something before the program faded away.
“I really started thinking about it a year ago. We needed to do something to excite the boys into wanting to play American Legion baseball for us,” he said. “We decided to rebrand and came up with a new name to honor the veterans that we were playing for, while wearing the uniform with pride.”
At the time Lagos began thinking about rebranding the team, Norfolk Post 335 had only 3 actual athletes that resided in Norfolk, so there was no real pride in wearing a Norfolk uniform for the vast majority of the squad.
Norfolk’s new uniform has the word “Freedom” written across the front, and on the back where the athlete’s names normally would have gone is “Post 335.” In addition to recognizing the Legion that sponsors the team, the athletes are giving visibility to the men and women who were instrumental in their freedom. According to Lagos, it’s a way of honoring veterans for serving and allowing us to have our freedom.
After the team got behind the idea, Lagos took them to Magliaro’s Custom Apparel Inc. in Medway to put the plan in motion. The GM was hoping that once the athletes saw the eye-popping logo they would want to be a part of the transformation that was Norfolk American Legion baseball.
“I was looking to bring the image and our new brand to the forefront where kids would want to wear the uniform with pride,” Lagos said. “And hopefully numbers would begin to increase and maybe in the years to come put together a junior legion program.”
Unfortunately for Lagos and the team the numbers didn’t really improve. In fact, Lagos had said that he heard it was a bad year overall for American Legion baseball with some 1000 Legion teams folding nationwide.
“It’s sad because American Legion baseball has such a storied history and is a well-run program where college coaches look for athletes who have played Legion ball,” Lagos said.
Prior to this year, Lagos was not only the General Manager of the team, but also its coach. However, not being able to give 100% to the team this year he vacated his duties on the field. The next task at hand was finding a new coach.
“Finding a coach wasn’t really problem at first – many wanted to take over the coaching responsibilities,” he said. “That is until they found out they were not going to be paid to do so; instead they went to the AAU. There was our latest challenge.”
Eventually Lagos found two individuals who were willing to take on the challenge of bringing the Freedom back to relevance: Brendan Carty, who Lagos coached at Westwood, and Dave Lannigan, a former Norfolk player.
Thus far, the rebranding is taking flight and the other Legion teams in district 6 like the new uniforms. Once they saw them, they understood the concept behind the design and the sacrifice made by veterans for our freedom.