The Alternative Baseball Organization — a league for teens and adults aged 15 and older with autism and other special needs — wants to establish a team in the Iowa City area.

The organization’s teams play by the same rules as Major League Baseball and stress independence. The league’s only adaptation to the traditional rules of baseball is the type of ball used.

Before Alternative Baseball can bring a team to Iowa City, however, it needs a coach. No experience is required for the players.

Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at 4-years-old, Taylor Duncan — the founder and CEO of Alternative Baseball — faced speech, sensory, anxiety, and other developmental issues growing up in Dallas, Georgia.

Though his mother, teachers, and mentors helped him overcome those obstacles, Duncan was often denied the opportunity to play traditional sports.

“A lot of those coaches seemed to have that negative connotation with autism that we can’t do the same things as everyone else,” Duncan said. “But that’s not true at all. We can. We just want to be supported just like everybody else to be able to get out there and accomplish the things that we want to accomplish too. We got dreams too.”

Duncan founded Alternative Baseball to provide opportunities for people like himself because many people that have special needs receive fewer services, if any, from their state after high school.

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“For us, being able to fulfill that niche of those over the age of 15, that demographic that’s really badly needed to be served in many areas of the country, it’s how we become successful,” Duncan said. “It’s really about being able to provide the service for them to be able to go out and provide friendships with others just like them. Being able to build character, build team chemistry skills, being able to work together as a team.”

Map from Alternative Baseball Organization

Duncan said he is interested in expanding to the Iowa City area because he wants everyone —no matter if they live in a small or large area — to have access to the opportunities Alternative Baseball offers. The closest team to Iowa City is in Rochester, Minnesota.

As for someone wanting to coach a team, Duncan said baseball and disability experience are huge pluses.

“But it’s about having the opportunity to, basically the importance of, having patience with our players and being willing to learn as much as possible and being the best encouragers possible as well,” Duncan said. “And really just having that all-can-do attitude to where the sky’s the limit as to what can be really accomplished and that’s really true on just about anything.”

Typically, Alternative Baseball’s teams are made up of about 12 players, but there isn’t a roster size limit mandated by the organization. Players usually compete on a high school-sized field.

Duncan hopes the new Iowa City area team is up and running by mid-summer, and emphasized the need to find a coach quickly.

Duncan said he hopes the new Iowa City area team can start play by mid-summer, emphasizing that a coach needs to be found, because that’s probably when COVID-19 cases will drop down enough to play safely.

Duncan also said that, in the team’s first year, there will be a lot of instructions, practices, and scrimmages, and maybe two or three games. In the second year, he hopes the team would have more games, especially with Alternative Baseball looking to also expand to Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, and Des Moines.

“As they say in the ‘Field of Dreams,’ ‘If you build it, they will come,’” Duncan said. “That’s what we tell those who want to be coach/manager in the great state of Iowa.”