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Sports

SLABA: Local Youth Baseball Organization Thriving

Area SLABA teams St. Charles Stallions and Eagles West are part of a league that provide St. Louis-area high school players with a chance to play against high-level competition.

There was once a time around St. Louis when American Legion baseball was the standard for summer action on the diamond.

With the rise of traveling “select” teams over the past decade, Legion baseball has lost some of its luster. Despite these select teams drawing more and more players, often for a hefty fee, one organization that remains as strong as ever is the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association.

“Sometimes you feel slighted but I think SLABA doesn’t get the credit,” said Scott Seddon, the head coach of the St. Charles Stallions 18-and-under team. “At times, you maybe use that as a little chip. At the end of the day, there is nice talent in SLABA.”

The Stallions draw players from the Holt, Timberland and Fort Zumwalt school districts. St. Charles County’s other team—the Eagles West—gets its core players from the Francis Howell North and Howell Central districts. The Eagles (14-8), coached by Mike Buda, play their home games at C&H Park, St. Charles Community College and Howell North.

SLABA was established in 1987 to provide St. Louis-area high school players and younger teams with maximum exposure to the toughest competition. This was accomplished by affiliating with nationally recognized and sanctioned youth baseball programs.

SLABA currently has national affiliations with PONY Baseball, Inc., the American Amateur Baseball Congress (AABC), and the National Amateur Baseball Federation (NABF). The league sends teams from each of its age groups to various postseason tournaments hosted by these affiliations throughout the country. The PONY and NABF affiliations give teams an opportunity to play in national playoff tournaments.

Membership is limited to organizations which are assigned specific boundaries based on two public high schools in their area. SLABA organizations draw players from two base school districts, private school players and players ages 13-to-18 from “open” school districts.

The league has 10 teams: Jefferson County Barnstormers and Blazers, South-West Stars, American National Eagles, Eagles West, Lincoln County Raiders, Stallions, Johnny Mac Thunder, St. Louis Tigers and Meramec Valley Travelers.

SLABA Baseball Serves as Path to Pro Ball

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Former SLABA players include St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Kyle McClellan, who is a native of Florissant, attended Hazelwood West and currently resides in Maryland Heights, and Cardinals third baseman David Freese, who is a graduate of Lafayette High School.

Perhaps the most prominent local player who played SLABA baseball is another Lafayette graduate, Philadelphia Phillies all-star first baseman Ryan Howard.

The 18-and-under postseason awards are named after several SLABA alumni, including the Kyle McClellan Pitcher of the Year, the Ryan Howard SLABA MVP and the coach of the year award named for Jim Medlock, a former insurance agent who founded the American National Eagles in 1975.

Howard played three seasons for the Ellisville Redbirds from 1996-1998 before moving onto Southwest Missouri State. The Phillies drafted Howard in the fifth round of the 2001 draft.

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Buda, who played SLABA baseball for five years, is in his first year as the Eagles head coach after spending two summers as an assistant. He said, while the games are more “laid back” than the high school season, they are still competitive and allow the players to “polish their skills.”

One of Buda’s favorite experiences as a player was going head-to-head with McClellan in 2002. The two pitchers each tossed 10-inning shutouts before darkness postponed the game. When the game was resumed a week later, the two hurlers tossed three more innings of shutout ball until McClellan blasted a two-run homer off Buda to win the game.

“That was a neat experience for me,” said Buda, whose Howell North team had defeated McClellan’s Hazelwood West club earlier that spring. “There’s been a lot of talent that’s come through the organization.”

Seddon is in his fifth year with SLABA and third as the Stallions 18-and-under head coach.

His team is 19-7, while the Stallions lead the league with a 9-2 mark in SLABA play. SLABA teams did very well at the 30-team Tournament of Champions, played between fields in Fairview Heights, Highland and Alton in Illinois. The Jefferson County Blazers, who Seddon called a “very talented team,” reached the semifinals of the tournament and defeated the Stallions, 9-8, on July 6.

A “coach at heart,” Seddon played baseball his entire life before getting into coaching. He said the independent teams have “watered down the top clubs” but that SLABA remains a “nice avenue” for high school players to get noticed by college scouts. He said 85 percent of his players have gone on to play collegiately.

“We’ve helped guys get exposed and have been very successful to help our guys move on,” Seddon said. “We don’t have the resources that the top teams have. We aren’t those guys, but we also think that our guys have the ability to play at the next level and we help them get there.”

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