Wikipedia - Northwoods League

The Northwoods League is a collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league. All players in the league must have NCAA eligibility remaining in order to participate. The league is amateur, and players are not paid, so as to maintain their college eligibility. Graduated senior pitchers are also eligible to play in the Northwoods League. Each team may have four of these players at a time.

Teams play 72 games scheduled from Memorial Day to the 2nd Saturday in August, while the playoffs take place the week after, starting on that Sunday and ending usually on Friday. The season itself is broken into two halves, with the winners of each half in each of the four sub-divisions playing against each other to determine a sub-divisional champion in a best-of-three series. The sub-divisional champions then meet in a winner-take-all game to determine a divisional champion. The divisional champions then meet in a winner-take-all game for the league championship.

In 2020, some teams cancelled their season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For those teams that did play, instead of playing within their usual divisions, they played in hub regions, with some creating "temporary teams".

In 2023, the Northwoods League announced plans to create a new professional softball league. The softball league will initially consist of four teams based in Madison, WI, La Crosse, WI, Mankato, MN, and Minot, ND.

History

Established in 1994, the Northwoods League was the first for-profit summer collegiate baseball league. It has more teams and plays more games than any other summer collegiate baseball league. The Northwoods League drew over 1.1 Million fans for the fourth consecutive year in 2017. The purpose of the league is to develop players while college baseball teams are not allowed to work out. Many of the teams in the league play in ballparks formerly occupied by professional clubs from the Midwest League, Prairie League, Northern League, and Frontier League. The wooden bat circuit allows communities deemed too small for professional ball to continue to enjoy high-quality, competitive baseball during the summer months. The Northwoods League was the first summer collegiate baseball league to broadcast on the ESPN network, and currently webcasts all of its games.

The teams are located in the Northwoods region of the Upper Midwestern United States and Northwestern Ontario, mostly in the U.S. states of Minnesota (five teams) and Wisconsin (nine teams); also with three teams in Michigan, two in North Dakota, and one team each in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ontario.

Over 200 league alumni have gone on to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) with 91 alumni entering the MLB ranks from 2013 to 2017. Alumnus Max Scherzer, the 2017 National League Cy Young Award winner, and American League runner-up Chris Sale faced each other as the starting pitchers in the 2017 and 2018 Major League Baseball All-Star Games.

De Northwoods League is een Amerikaanse honkbalcompetitie voor collegestudenten in het middenwesten van de Verenigde Staten en Canada. De competitie werd opgericht in 1994 en bestaat uit 22 teams in acht divisies. De teams spelen een schema van 76 wedstrijden in een seizoen dat loopt van mei tot augustus.

De Northwoods League is een van de meest prestigieuze honkbalcompetities voor collegestudenten in de Verenigde Staten. Veel spelers die in de competitie hebben gespeeld, zijn doorgegaan naar succesvolle carrières in de Major League Baseball. Sommige van de meest opvallende spelers die in de Northwoods League hebben gespeeld, zijn Derek Jeter, David Ortiz en Albert Pujols.

De Northwoods League is niet alleen een geweldige kans voor collegestudenten om te concurreren op een hoog niveau, maar het is ook een geweldige manier om het spel honkbal te promoten. De competitie trekt elk jaar duizenden fans en helpt om het spel populair te maken in het middenwesten van de Verenigde Staten en Canada.