When COVID-19 shut the world down in the spring of 2020, Tommy Seidl and Buddy Mrowka took matters into their own hands.

The global pandemic had postponed the Ivy League season, but the two Harvard ballplayers wanted to keep their skills sharp. That’s when Mrowka’s father, Pete, a longtime agent, suggested that they start rounding up like-minded players in New England.

“Honestly, it was his idea to start,” the younger Mrowka told the New York Daily News. “We hadn’t really done anything like this before, obviously, so it took some time for us to all wrap our heads around it.”

Added Seidl: “We just wanted to keep playing in the spring of 2020, so we started reaching out to all the guys that we knew in the area.”

One of those guys happened to be Ben Rice.

The 25-year-old is now playing first base for the New York Yankees and in the early stages of his big league career. Back then, the Cohasset, Mass., native caught for Dartmouth. Rice, who has known the Mrowkas since childhood, also sought competition after totaling just 30 games and 110 plate appearances at the collegiate level from 2019-2020.

Rice brought a bunch of other Big Green players into the mix, though he downplayed his role in the organizing efforts.

“Those two guys really spearheaded it, and Pete helped a lot too,” Rice told The News of Mrowka and Seidl. “I was kind of like a third guy steering the ship a little bit.”

As the trio recruited more players, they began to call their do-it-yourself operation the New England Grit Baseball League. The name played off of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, which canceled its summer season in 2020.

“We sort of embodied grit, toughness, dealing with adversity on the field, off the field, in the classroom, everywhere else,” Mrowka said. “So it was sort of a gritty setup.”

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