image description — George Canales, left, and Boston's John Romano have organized the event from opposite ends of the commonwealth for years.

New England Regional, La Festa Exchange to Delight Area Baseball Fans

iBerkshires.com Sports06:31AM / Friday, July 25, 2025Print Story | Email Story

A busy weekend of youth baseball is on tap for two historic county venues.

The action gets underway at 10 a.m. on Friday morning when Westfield takes on Vermont State Champion Essex Junction in the first game of the 13-year-old Babe Ruth New England Championship at Wahconah Park.

It will be the first of 17 games over five days to determine who will represent New England in the World Series that gets underway in Jamestown, N.Y., on Aug. 14.

Host Pittsfield will play in the final game on Friday, a planned 7 p.m. first pitch against Connecticut State Champion Stamford.

Pittsfield will then play its next two pool play games at 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

The top three teams in each of two four-team pools advance to bracket play, which gets underway on Monday morning and concludes with the title game on Tuesday afternoon.

No regional championship stakes but plenty of pride will be on the line and plenty of fun will be had on Saturday and Sunday in North Adams, when the 34th annual La Fest Baseball Exchange gets started at Joe Wolfe Field.

Youth teams from North Adams and Boston’s North End have been playing mid-summer classic for more than three decades.

This year’s edition gets going at 6 p.m. on Saturday and continues Sunday morning at 10 a.m.

Win or lose – and the teams have done both in pretty much equal measure over the years – the two teams will meet up again Aug. 9 and 10 for games on the home field of the North End Dodgers.

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Q&A with State Representative Challenger Andrew Fitch

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
10:01AM / Sunday, August 23, 2026

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — On Sept. 1, voters in the First Berkshire District will decide whether they want to send a new representative to Beacon Hill in Boston.

Andrew Fitch, currently a city councilor in the district's largest municipality — and the commonwealth's smallest city — is challenging former North Adams Mayor John Barrett III, who won the First Berkshire seat in a 2017 special election, in the Democratic Party primary.

There is no Republican on the primary ballot for the First Berkshire seat so the primary will effectively be the election for the seat.

The two candidates met for their only debate on Aug. 13 at Williams College. iBerkshires.com reached out to both candidates to follow up on some of the points raised in the debate and get their thoughts on some other issues facing the district.

Below are excerpts from a conversation with challenger Andrew Fitch:

Question: From the very beginning, you talked about the campaign as a listening experience, and this week you're continuing that with the bike tour …

Andrew Fitch: Knocking on doors that have never been knocked on before. … I was riding through, I believe it was Hinsdale coming into Windsor, and they started to yell at me, 'No!' And then the guy was like, 'Wait a second. That's Andrew Fitch.' They actually knew who I was, and they were actually wanting to chat with me.

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