The name stretches back more than a century, but in a new travel baseball tournament, area fans will get to see a wide-ranging group of young baseball players this weekend.
Shawn Manning, a former Pitt-Bradford baseball player and now a coach at Core Athletics based in the Pittsburgh area, fixated at the end of last year on a piece of baseball history from his home region. The Iron and Oil League, a minor loop of the 1890s, featured teams from both Bradford and Olean in 1898.
“I was researching the Iron & Oil Baseball League from 1898 and the Olean-Bradford connection,” Manning said. “I know it goes back way further than that, they’d play Friday in Bradford, take the horses over Saturday and play in Olean.”
Manning thought he could recreate that, for a weekend at least at the under-16 travel level. He set a field of 10 teams, ranging in a three-hour radius as far as Ontario and Pittsburgh, to stay at Pitt-Bradford and St. Bonaventure and play on both campuses from Friday through Sunday in the first Iron & Oil Baseball Tournament.
In total, the teams will play five wooden bat games each between Pitt-Bradford’s Kessel Athletic Complex and St. Bonaventure’s Fred Handler Park.
The five-team Oil Division plays five games (two for each team) at Pitt-Bradford and the five teams of the Iron Division play five at St. Bonaventure on Friday before switching sites for five games each on Saturday. Then, the divisions’ teams will face off in order of their record in a final round on Sunday, with the Iron and Oil No. 1 seeds playing at 9 a.m. Sunday at SBU’s Fred Handler Park.
Teams include ones from Ontario, Pittsburgh (Core Athletics, owned by Shawn’s brother Mike Manning Jr.), Erie, Altoona, the Twin Tiers Baseball Academy from Olean and the Northeast Twins (led by coach Jerico Weitzel).
“Last year, we just took one of our Core Athletic teams up and stayed at Pitt-Bradford and played local teams,” Shawn Manning said. “We played the Olean Bombers and the Bradford Drillers, it was a five-game set and that got (the idea) started for us.”
A smaller field of under-14 teams is set to play over the weekend at Derrick City Field.
A Bradford native, Manning’s appreciation of history and desire to host in his hometown drove the idea.
“I went back a couple times to the Bradford Landmark Society from August through December, researched the Iron & Oil (League), we printed off every article that was in the Bradford Era about the Bradford team,” he said. “We kind of got into it that way. I love the history of the game, especially in Bradford, they have a picture of 1870s baseball in the square. Baseball builds community so that’s the ultimate goal.
“I’m not a businessman, I’m a baseball guy and to bring 10 teams to the Bradford-Olean area, to me, I think is great. There’s two beautiful campuses there, there’s amazing places to see, to hang out, to eat, great people to meet and I think that’s 150 kids, 300-400 people in town Friday, Saturday, Sunday.”
McCracken Energy Services, LLC is sponsoring the tournament.
Manning expressed gratitude to Bona and UPB for hosting the games. He wanted to keep the older teams at the two college campuses to give them a closer look at the next academic and athletic level.
“They can check out the campus and kind of get their minds rolling to academics and the next level and what they want to study,” he said. “Some of our guys haven’t been on campuses yet or even thought about them. Not that it’s a huge rush, but to think, ‘Hey man, maybe I like this small campus.’”
The following weekend, Core Athletics returns for the High School Panther Showcase Aug. 5-6 at UPB and SBU with a four-game guarantee for teams.
Thursday, Core Athletics will host a baseball camp at Pitt-Bradford from 5:30-8 p.m. for ages 13-and-under at $30 per athlete. For more information, visit ironandoilbaseball.com or contact Shawn Manning at 814-598-8691 or shawn@ironandoilbaseball.com.
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(Salamanca Press sports editor Sam Wilson may be contacted at samwilsonsp@gmail.com)
