Babe Ruth League returns in Southeast Missouri, Fighting Squrriels/Tropics embark on seasons

CHARLESTON, Mo. (KFVS) – The Babe Ruth League returned to Southeast Missouri on Thursday, June 6 as the Aycorp Charleston Fighting Squirrels hosted the Southeast Tropics in a doubleheader.

Both teams enter the season with wildly different circumstances. The Tropics, fresh off a shock World Series win in 2023, prepare for a bittersweet final season. Only the 19U team is left, as the Tropics scale down before they cease operations at the end of the year.

Manager Dustin Schwartz’s decision to close the team has been longtime-coming. Schwartz, who started the team while he was in college at SEMO, had planned several times to close the team down, always keeping it running, but it was the birth of his son that ultimately made Schwartz choose to close down the Tropics.

“My wife and I had our first kid,” Schwartz said. “He’s three months old… There was probably nothing that could get me to stop doing this except for him.”

With the knowledge going into the season that this is it, the coaches and players are going all out.

“This is the last year of eligibility for a lot of them,” Schwartz said. “This is the last year I’m going to have, the last year of the team. They’ve bought into this idea of we’re gonna put one more run together and we’re going for back-to-back titles”

On the other side of the coin, the Aycorp Charleston Fighting Squirrels began their third decade of play. Manager Michael Minner spoke about the enthusiasm going into this year.

“We’re super excited anytime summer baseball starts,” Minner said. “Kids are out of school. They’re off and they’re ready to play, and so we’ve got a good group. We’ve got a bunch of kids from all over Southeast Missouri, and so we’re always excited.”

The Fighting Squirrels also have to balance a big responsibility, hosting the Babe Ruth World Series again this year at Capaha Field in Cape Girardeau.

“It’s a huge undertaking. But we like it. We like playing in Southeast Missouri,” Minner said. “We love the facilities in Cape and we like playing in front of our home crowd. So, we hope this year is bigger and better and we hope that people will come out and support it and make it a week that kids will remember. We do everything that we do for kids.”

The Babe Ruth World Series returns to Cape Girardeau, on Friday, August 9.

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