By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
What began as a six-day trip to Massachusetts could end up being a 15-day baseball journey of a lifetime for the Greece American Legion Post 468 team.
In winning the Northeast Regional last week in Shrewsbury, Mass., Greece Post became the first team from New York in 23 years – and the first ever from Monroe County – to earn a berth in the American Legion World Series (ALWS).
The regional title was added to their resume of 2025 accomplishments with a 7-5 victory over Waterford, Conn., on Sunday. Over the five games in the double-elimination regional tournament, Greece Post went 4-1 and outscored opponents 37-11.
In winning, they earned the trip to Shelby, N.C., for the ALWS. They also were guaranteed something else: the need to do laundry a whole lot more often this week.
The team (24-6) was told after the title game that they wouldn’t be headed back to Rochester but instead would stay in Shrewsbury and then fly from Boston to Charlotte, N.C., early Tuesday morning.
“We all thought we would be coming back to Rochester first,” said Tyler Cannon, a 2025 graduate of Webster Schroeder who will play baseball at Monroe Community College.
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While not everyone had packed for what they now hope will become a two-week trip, a lack of clean clothes was hardly a concern.
“This really is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Derrick Allen, a 2025 graduate of Greece Athena who is headed to play baseball at SUNY-Niagara.
It’s also the dream they chased all season.
“Since the first practice, our goal was to get to the World Series,” Allen said.
A lofty goal? Absolutely. But when you’ve won three state titles in the past four years, when you’ve lost in the regional semifinals by one run (in 2023) and when you’ve assembled a talented 18-player roster representing nine Section V high schools, then you’re allowed to dream big.
“We can score runs, we play defense and we’ve got pitching,” Cannon said.
There was a bit of growing to do as a team throughout the season. After all, most had not been teammates until the summer began.
“You’ve seen that chemistry form throughout the season,” manager Nelson Madrid said, “and now they’re so close, they’re all on the same page.”
The World Series will give Greece Post a chance to show the country what Monroe County baseball is all about. And they’ll get to see what the other seven teams – representing Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, Oregon, Louisiana, Virginia and North Carolina – can do.
“There is an unknown factor, we don’t really know how talented they are,” Allen said.
This is the 100th anniversary season of American Legion baseball. More than half of the current players on Major League Baseball rosters played for an American Legion team during their development, and 89 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame are Legion graduates.
Now Greece Post is on Legion baseball’s ultimate stage.
“We always tell the guys to enjoy every moment of the journey, that these will be moments they look back on forever,” Madrid said.
The players are intent on making sure others remember them as well.
“We want to make history for our hometown,” Cannon said.
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