Record high temperatures brought a record attendance to the Veto League Baseball Winter Meetings.
Nine players set their afternoon aside in mid-March to participate in the annual meeting to discuss the upcoming season. Several rule changes were made, captains were announced and opening weekend was decided.
In big news, Veto League is expanding back to six captains for 2017. In the Blackhawk Division will be Josh Paul's Goonies, along with Ryan Barton bringing back the Gremlins and rookie captain Andrew Collins. In the Saukie Division will be Jeff Kilgard's Crushers, Tyler Mulder's Kitties and 2016 interim captain Alex Miller makes his official coaching debut. The decision to expand to six captains was in part due to the number of games and attendance last season. This season, VLB plans to play more Sunday games in addition to every Saturday.
Opening Weekend will be April 22-23, tentatively at Ridgewood Field in Rock Island, which the VLB plans to once again use as their primary home field.
There were several rule changes made for this season:
- the intentional walk rule was removed entirely
- the rule of not allowing captains to pitch to the other team was disbanded
- the foul-out rule was reduced from four after two strikes to three after two strikes
- if you arrive to the field after the draft has started, you automatically bat at the bottom of the order
Help Veto League spread the word to recruit new talent for the 2017 season.