WHEELING — It became official Monday. American Legion baseball in West Virginia has been canceled for this summer due to ongoing unknown issues surrounding the COVID-19 global pandemic.

The American Legion National Organization circulated a memo on Sunday to all state organizations stating it would no longer be affiliated with any type of play this season. If teams wanted to proceed on their own, they would do so outside of the Legion baseball umbrella. Without the involvement of the national organization, .teams are on their own to provide insurance. That can be an expensive proposition.

“This is something that we’ve been expecting,” Wheeling Post 1 manager Jon-Michael Brunner said Monday afternoon. “I wouldn’t say it’s disappointing at this point because we knew all along we probably weren’t going to play this summer.”

Until Monday’s announcement, West Virginia had been one of 19 states across the nation that had not yet canceled competition for this summer.

High school baseball across the Mountain State was already wiped out. The American Legion baseball regular season had been canceled on April 7, when The Americanism Commission shut down the World Series and all eight regional competitions, but some states were still holding out hope of scheduling a shortened regular season and then playing an unofficial state tournament.

Any hopes of that happening were nixed Monday.

“If we want to play (baseball) this summer, we’re going to have to find a new insurance carrier,” Brunner noted.

With the probability of the (American Legion) season being canceled this summer, Brunner and a couple of other Ohio Valley American Legion coaches have been in touch about forming an “independent league.”

“Our plans going forward called for a 5-week season starting in July, so this decision doesn’t change our plan of attack,” he explained. “We would like to have 5-6 teams within a 90-mile radius of Wheeling.”

He mentioned such cities as Parkersburg and Marietta, along with Wheeling, St. Clairsville and Jefferson County Teramana. However, if that was to transpire, no American Legion uniform patches nor post numbers would be permitted.

Another hurdle the proposed independent league would have get past would be where to play as most of the area fields are under the direction of local high schools or city parks, which are still under lockdown on both sides of the Ohio River.

“It’s just been a series of unknowns,” Brunner said. “However, if and when we get to play, it’s going to be the same product we’ve been putting on the field for the past 10 years. Nothing will change there. We just might have to go through a couple more hoops.”