Collegiate summer baseball league interested in Luther Williams Field

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – A college summer baseball league is interested wants to put a team in Luther Williams Field. 

It’s been years since a baseball team played at the historic ball park. 

“I believe that Luther Williams is in a good location for what we can do from a start up and initially it would be that,” Justin Sellers, the commissioner for the Coastal Plain League, said. “It would be renovating the existing ball park and going from there to identifying an ownership group.”

Sellers says his 16 team league is expanding. 

“This is a very professional league. It just happens to have college starts in it and we believe in it and we believe in what we have to offer Macon,” said Sellers. 

Macon-Bibb’s Economic and Community Development Committee talked about the Coastal Plain League at its meeting Tuesday morning. 

Commissioner Larry Schlesinger said the league talked with Commissioner Virgil Watkins and expressed interest in using Luther Williams Field during the summer. Commissioner Schlesinger explained this is separate from the baseball feasibility study agreement the county made earlier this month with B&D Venues. 

“As I understand it, it involves building a new stadium. So baseball is an economic development generator. The question is how are we going to go about it,” Schlesinger said after Tuesday’s committee meeting. 

The league, made up of college athletes who play during the summer months, wants to be the one to bring the dollars back to the city.

“Macon is one that’s in the heart of Georgia and we felt like with the background in baseball that it had, that we had something to offer. It could be a long driving revenue maker for the city,” Sellers said. 

The league’s website shows 16 teams throughout the Southeast. The newest team is in Savannah and is the only team in Georgia. The website says as of September 2014, Major League teams have drafted more than 1,200 alumni and 81 have made it to the Majors.