MIAA baseball finals at Holy Cross, LeLacheur

The MIAA statewide baseball tournament will sport a new look, but for those who achieve postseason success, the end of the road will look quite familiar.

The MIAA Baseball Committee announced Tuesday morning that Holy Cross and LeLacheur Park in Lowell were selected as host sites for the five state finals. Both facilities have had success hosting state championships in the past, thus it came as no surprise they were chosen.

There has been some talk of Fenway Park hosting state championships along the lines of TD Garden (hockey) and Gillette Stadium (football), but they never came up in the discussion. One interesting name did come up as the Worcester Red Sox expressed interest in hosting all five championships, provided the schedules worked. Unfortunately, this year, the WooSox are at home from June 14-26 which took them out of the mix for this year.

As for the state semifinals, the approved facilities for hosting are Westfield State, Bentley University, Fraser Field, LeLacheur Park, Campanelli Stadium in Brockton as well as Bridgewater State University. The cutoff date for seeding purposes is May 30 and preliminary round games are slated to begin on June 3.

Opening round contests are scheduled for June 5-6, followed by the Round of 16 (June 8-9), the state quarterfinals (June 11-12), semifinals (June 14-15), and capped off by the state finals on Saturday, June 18.