NEDERLAND — Metreyeon-Delahoussaye Field at Nederland High School wasn’t the loudest place in town on a calm, partly cloudy Monday evening.

The ding of the bats was still heard, as was communication among players and coaches. Parents and friends of players relaxed to an evening of baseball, some just getting off work not a full hour earlier.

“It’s relaxing,” Red Sox player Austin Bost said. “It’s great to come out here and have stress-free baseball and just have fun with the guys.”

This is the environment of a league whose All-Star team won the Babe Ruth 16- to 18-year-old World Series last August. Yet, the players of the Mid County Senior Babe Ruth league are still competing hard, most of them gunning for a valuable spot on the 2018 All-Star team hoping to keep the world championship, or national championship as some consider it, in Southeast Texas.

“We got great participation this year,” league president Jimmy Collins said. “We got 128 kids. We’re up about 10 to 12 kids.”

The league is open to 16- to 18-year-olds from across Southeast Texas.

With the high school graduation and expired eligibility of some league players from 2017, the World Series championship helped give Mid County an upswing in enrollment, Collins said.

“We lose 35 kids a year,” he added, which would figure a wave of 45 to 47 kids joined the league for 2018.

Recent Port Neches-Groves graduate Bost is spending his summer playing for the Red Sox, one of the eight Mid County teams, after playing on the Gladiators traveling team a year ago. He signed last fall to play at Panola College in Carthage.

“It’s senior year. I’m just coming out here trying to have a little fun before I go off to college,” said Bost, a stellar third baseman in high school.

The intensity around Mid County will pick up when the all-star team is selected. Bost, the 2018 District 22-5A MVP, likely will have no problem with that.

“I’m ready to play all-stars and try to win another title for this place,” he said.

Nederland rising senior Landon Hiltz was on last year’s World Series team and helped the Bulldogs win the 22-5A championship and reach the 5A Region III quarterfinals this spring. The usual shortstop pitched for the Yankees on Monday.

“Out here, it’s just everybody having fun, but when it comes to the all-stars, that’s when we take it up a notch and start playing real ball,” Hiltz said.

Each league team plays twice a week, Monday through Thursday. This is the third of five weeks of league play, and then an all-star team that will represent Mid County will be selected for the July 6-8 East Texas state tournament to be held here.

“First thing, we try to get all our kids on the same page,” Collins said. “You try to get a commitment and get them all to check out the dates and see when things are and get a commitment from them. Some of them have things going on where they can’t.”

The 2017 Mid County team had the chemistry from the first day, Collins said. It also fed off the buzz from PNG’s state championship from a few weeks earlier.

The East Texas champion will go to the Southwest Regional in Fayetteville, Arkansas, July 12-16, for a shot at the Babe Ruth World Series in Jamestown, New York, Aug. 4-11. Last year’s World Series was held in Ephrata, Washington.

“We’re looking to put a pretty good group together again,” Collins said.

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I.C. Murrell: 721-2435. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews