On The Field was great in 2023 and better in 2024

---

The All-Star project was humming along. through 2023. But a lack of a formal communications channel ansd the lack of any formal board member involvement was a growing concern to us at "The Project" - the All-Star project. 

Everyone knows that ongoing communications are essential to any organization. It is the responsibility of the leaders to install and maintain effective communications procedures and mechanisms. That is Basic 101 stuff.  The need is greater when you have an organization - The Board - that has gained notoriety for its.... shall we say... dependence on personal agendas (a term Director Schaub liked to use).  

The State Director placed himself as the sole point of contact. Randy was sent a simple annual report to  share with the board. Board members told us they never saw any all-star annual  report. Randy and a letter to request a sponsorship grant was sufficient. However, expanding the tournament, expanding the rosters to better meet demand, adding uniforms, and moving to expensive to rent turf fields put the budget and the porogram at an entirely different scope and level. There would be querstions. There would be issues. There would be opportunities. There was every reason for All-Stars to be formally connected through  one or more actual board members.

Barron directly asked Schaub to create a subcommittee - a development subcommittee - to make sure that there was a solid connection directly with the Baseball Board. The All-Star

 founders would not be there forever. Mike wanted to transition to an advisory role after 2025. Barron after 2026.

Director Schaub became the first Baseball Board member to attend an All-Star event as he came to opening ceremonies in 2023. Barron asked Schaub for the third time to set up a development committee or board member contact.  Mike Perry would be leaving the Junior Directors position and his membership on the state baseball board would end.  We wanted  Randy to get us someone in his place.

Schaub replied with a role of the eyes ; "Your guys are my development committee". Why that answer?  It seemed clear he intended to be the only access point to the board.

The All-Star project was humming along. through 2023. But a lack of a formal communications channel ansd the lack of any formal board member involvement was a growing concern to us at "The Project" - the All-Star project. 

Everyone knows that ongoing communications are essential to any organization. It is the responsibility of the leaders to install and maintain effective communications procedures and mechanisms. That is Basic 101 stuff.  The need is greater when you have an organization - The Board - that has gained notoriety for its.... shall we say... dependence on personal agendas (a term Director Schaub liked to use).  

The State Director placed himself as the sole point of contact. Randy was sent a simple annual report to  share with the board. Board members told us they never saw any all-star annual  report. Randy and a letter to request a sponsorship grant was sufficient. However, expanding the tournament, expanding the rosters to better meet demand, adding uniforms, and moving to expensive to rent turf fields put the budget and the porogram at an entirely different scope and level. There would be querstions. There would be issues. There would be opportunities. There was every reason for All-Stars to be formally connected through  one or more actual board members.

Barron directly asked Schaub to create a subcommittee - a development subcommittee - to make sure that there was a solid connection directly with the Baseball Board. The All-Star

 founders would not be there forever. Mike wanted to transition to an advisory role after 2025. Barron after 2026.

Director Schaub became the first Baseball Board member to attend an All-Star event as he came to opening ceremonies in 2023. Barron asked Schaub for the third time to set up a development committee or board member contact.  Mike Perry would be leaving the Junior Directors position and his membership on the state baseball board would end.  We wanted  Randy to get us someone in his place.

Schaub replied with a role of the eyes ; "Your guys are my development committee". Why that answer?  It seemed clear he intended to be the only access point to the board.

But at that point, the seeds of detrioration had already started growing behind the scenes. The 'Substate Grudge' was about to undermine voting support from a key group on the board.

Vice Directors Slick Miller and Brandon Raymo attended the National egion Baseball Director's Meeting in Se[ptember 2023  and reported to the board at the Fall 2023 meeting. The National Director had pushed hard for more states to develop All Star programs while noting that Minnesota already had such a program. Great! A year later, the vice-directors wewre cited by Schaub as being hard-nosed leaders in the deciosion to end all-stars.

There were other signs of deterioration not the least being the decision of the board in April 2024 to defund All-Stars and cancel the Board's annual sponsorship grant. Perry spoke with Schaub who claimed to be "blind sided" by the vote but hoped the ouitside sponsor would still come through. All-Stars was not dependent on the board grant but, facing putting two tournaments on rental fields plus buying seven sets of uniforms, the budget for 2024 would be way higher than ever before. 

We had questions - of course. How could Randy not know the intentions and positions of the guys he was closest to on the board? He spoke to them regularly. And what was the intent of the board? What direction would there be going forward? Barron called Randy. Randy would not return the call. This was precisely the circumstance that Barron had wanted to avoid. Communication blocked. OInformation hidden behind closed doors. And a ton of people coming to paly, watch, and put on the largest Legion All-Star program in the country.

Barron met a prominent board  member for breakfast at Perkins. Barron showed a table that displayed what the all-star program entailed. Included were details of umpire costs,, games played, rental costs, uniform costs, kids sewrved, kids turned away, and more. Clearly Legion financial contributions were a relatively small part of the overall budget. The board member said the reason funding was cut was "they needed to build up the reserve fund" in case a state tournament failed and costs needed to be covered. That story sure seemed fishy. The reserve fund was noted in the September 2023 minutes to be nearly $100,000. As to the defunding decision or any board discussion about the topic the fellow simpoly stonewalled. He diud not want to break the "code of silence" that surrounds this baseball board.

Side note: $2,000 in sponsorship turned down to build a reserve? But this same board had $25,000 or more to buy hotel rooms for in 2025? 

The fellow recommended emailing the table and a report  to the entire board  and to make sure he got a copy. Barron  did so.  Immediately an angry email cam,e from Mr. Engstrrom. Randy is too busy to reply to emails or phone calls. Never should Barron send information directly to the board. He wanted all communication to go through him as he apparently was the new intermediary. Great.  The Board was inaccessible. Randy who set himself as the sole communications contact put himself behind a wall of silence. 

There is nothing worse in an organization that bliocking communication and discussion. It is bad management and will lead in  bad directions. We could feel the hostility toward All-Stars. Or was it really hostility mounting toward Perry and Barron? Or both? It seemed clear that 'board toxicity' that has been widely alleged was fully in gear.

Rnady could not attend the 2024 event. Instead, a prominent board member shjowe dup unannounced. He happened to attend the sole game that was a blowout - an ugly game where one team's pitchers could not miss a bat. The board member stopod up and made a scene that turned the heads of many in attendance. "Those aren't all stars" he shouted in disgust. You could see it ripple through the large crowd - Who is that guy? Oh that's him? He runs Legin baseball, right? It was not a good moment for anyone.

Barron asked to give a report to the Board atthe September 19, 2024 meeting. There was cvleear hostility simmering in the board room. Not fdrom all. But you could see it as a quarter of the room sunk in their chairs so one could barely see the person. 

Director Randy Schaub spoke with Mike Perry a few days later.  Schaub relayed his concerns that many board members waited until Barron left the room and then attacked him in his absence. Bravely Randy went home and sent out an email to the entire board asking them to set aside their personal agendas and to be open to new ideas.

Randy Schaub had spoken with Perry at least weekly as the current state director speaking the his predecessor. Not to mentikon their friendship that went back far longer. SAfter September 22nd 2024. Randy has never spoken with or been in contact with Mike Perry again.  

A Stone Wall of Silence was put up by the State Director. And everyone hid behind it. The accusations of the baseball board being a "secret society" or a "private social club" seemed conformed. Read the section "Closed Systrems" and you will learn how they ioperate. This was textbpook.  Communications went from minimal to partial to completely shut off. What fantastic leadership skills! Or what a sad lack of leadership skills?  Which is it?

It did not happen overnight.

The more successful All-Stars grew, the greater the need for normal communications and normal coordination. We asked repeatedly including in Barron's September 19th Report. The greater the success and growth os All-Stars - the greater the resentment,  personal grudges. and maybe even hatred grew on that Board.

November 1 2024 they killed All-Stars. Then launched different stories to blame and defame the founders.

Barron was right to continue to ask for a direct board committee to foster communication and planning. But the state director, the vice-directors and board members really don't work that way. There is much more palace intrigue behoind the scenes. From September 2023, the baseball board backing and support for All-Stars simply eroded.  And no one would come forward to discuss any issues openly.

We believe that a July 2023 incident involving an influential board member soured the climate for the board members and his  voting block.  We call it the 'Substate Grudge ". 'Board member conversations shifted, we were told, from all of us being on the same team to a different world of insiders versus outsiders., The 2023 "Us Together" thing reversed  to a "Us (board members) versus Those Guys" (Mike and Bruce).                                                                                                                                                                                               

At the end of the year, an accusation was lobbed at us alleging that we were  interferring with the main Legion sponsor. They had come forward unsolicited  to show interest in expanding their involvement with merchandiese that could be useful with all-stars. The emailed accusation was just false. Why not pick up the phone? Why the email intrigue? Where's the communication? Ultimately, after meeting with three baseball board members, that sponsor went on to drop their All-Star sponsorship. 

The Baseball Board voted to cut the  All-Star funding at their March 2024 meeting.  

• We were left to wonder -did Randy ever send a copy of our annual report to board members? 
• Didn't they know of the big  cost increase that would occur for 2024 - more games, two turf field rentals, higher umpire and equipment costs, and seven new uniform sets?

In the world we had requested from Randy, the All-Star guys would have been in conversation with the designated liason. Planning  and coordination would be facilitated. Projecting an managing budgets is an on-going process. Finding sponsors starts in the fall for the next year. Dropping sponsorship in March or April is just too late to find replacements.  Legion sponsorships allowed the All-Star committee to keep player fees to a minimum. 

Maybe the board members had other pressing priorities. Maybe personal conflicts were driving the agenda. Maybe  board members wanted financial reports and projections. 

The fact was that neither group - the board and the all-star ciommittee - had any contact. What happens in a vacuum? Everyone assumes the worst. Always.

On the advice of a board member, we emailed a report directly to each board member to show the dvelopment of the program and invite them to return as a sponsor the following year. Well that was bum advice! We were told that board members were upset to receive a report. The board secretary responded with his instruction  to never send material to board members and to not contact the state director directly anymore.  We were instructed to only go through an the secretary as the sole intermediary. The state director was just too busy to answer phone calls and had no time to reply to emails either. Direct communications with the state director were cut off . The exception being the weekly director's phone call between Schaub and Perry which rarely covered all-star issues.

Do you get the drift? In our fifth year, no one would talk freely or openly. The Schaub - Miller - Raymo - Peck regime (the state director and his two vice-directors and special assistant to the director) were changing the script without even a  normal direct discussion.  For what purppose? Meaningful conversations were avoided. Our communications went without any response or engagement. The baseball board had long been criticized for being a "private club" or a "secret society".  There certainly seemed to be a brick wall of silence with a passive-aggressive flavor to it.

The All-Star group was surprised with the vote to cut off Legion funding. Clearly we had been legft out of the discussions. Great baseball board communications. Of curse board members had spoken with each other about what to do about All-Stars ahead of the meeting. But what exactly happened? Why? What were we supposed nto take from the vote? Did backing away mean they wanted to end all-stars? Did they mean that all-stars should  stand on its own feet without their support? What was behind the decision and what was the intent going forward?

Multiple explanations surfaced.

1. The state director told Mike Perry that the board had voted to eliminate Legion funding for 2024.  Schaub stated he "was blindsided by the vote". He said he looked over at his Special Assistant who had previously voiced strong for all-stars. But he looked away and said nothing. Well maybe the Scheels mony will come through (in June). The director's frankly response raised more questions than it answered.
2. Bruce Barron called the director several times without the call being answered. Schaub did not return the calls..
3. A board member told that it was clear that the powers that be on the board had an understanding before the meeting. When the All Star agenbda topic came up, otherr possible needs for the funds were mentioned, and it was said that "those guys can figure it out".
4. Barron met with a prominengt board member for breakfast. He insisted that they needed to put the moiney into a reserve funbd that wpoiuld trigger if a state tournament host fell apart and hte Legion needed to fund that state tournament.  Huh? That seemed fishy. He reviewed material Barron provided - a historical table and a narrative. The board member advised to send the materials out to all the board members directly as they really had no idea what All-Stars was doing.

So let's see: 

• Was it a blindsiding of the State Director by his vice-directors and his Special Assistant all of whom he spoke with with regulatrity. Did they keep Randy in the dark? That would be bad. It would show really poor internal communication. Or was the directior giving Mike Perry a storyline that would seem plausible? But why would the director simply look at his Special Assistant rather than raise his own voice?  We had no idea.
• Had the grudge guys joined up with the anti-anything crowd to form a solid voting block hostile to the all-star effort or maybe just hostile to Mike and Bruce? Who knew for sure. But that seemed pretty plausible.
• Or did the Board have good reasons to think they might need a few extra dollars for 2024 for state tournament hotel expenses and a new Tioer 1A state tournamnet? 
• Or all of the above?

Barron took the advice of the board member and emasiled copies of ythe hostorical table and the narrative. You can view them here :  Table   Narrative

Well that just must have been a big mistake!

Board secretary Tim Engstrom sent a ripping email teklling Barron that he should never send materials  or communications directly to board members. Everyhting needed to go through him - like he was Chief of Staff. Additionally, do not contact Randy. He is just to busy to take or reply to phone calls. He is also to busy to read or respond to emails. Send everything to Engstrom.

How's that! Ask for direct board involvement. And a non-voting secretary with no influence or vote  on the board gets placed to short circuit any attempt at direct communication.

So what was the real deal? 

We almost cancelled the 2024 All Star event. But we decided we were too far into the effort to quit. And we felt obligated to the boys, to the families, and to the coaches to qjuit on them.

We are glad we stayed the course.

Our objective from the outset was to serve Legion Players, Legion Coaches, and Legion Baseball.

It would take all three.  

We had no control over #3.