2009 Last Chance Major NIT Part 1
Last Chance Major NIT
Recap!
Sterling Hts, Michigan
Long Haul is your "Last Chance" Champions and they were on it all weekend long
Conference tournament #21 is also known as "The Last Chance Tournament" and was again played in Sterling Hts Michigan. Teams like Pure Romance, O&S, AJS, and Linedrive came to see if they could pull off a top 4 finish and slide into the field of 16 teams for the Major World Tournament at the end of the year.
The tournament was won by Long Haul/Miken/Phonemasters who went 4-0 and defeated Jean Shoppe 29-14 in the winner's bracket finals. Long Haul was never really challenged late in any of their games and the tournament victory sort of validates their big win at the Dudley earlier in the year.
Resmondo who was sent to the loser's bracket by Jean Shoppe Sunday morning 36-35 came back through the loser's bracket but the Resmondo/Shoppe rematch never happened as both teams left to catch flights and Long Haul remained as the only undefeated team.
This tournament with the rain, fog and 6 fields of play was impossible to cover as a reporter and the quality of video clips and pictures are a little disapointing because nearly all the games were played at night. My apologies.
This last Conference tournament was marred by a line of thunderstorms that poured water on the fields from 6 AM Saturday morning until 5 PM Saturday evening. Many of the teams decided to take flights home on Sunday instead of finishing the tournament and for the weekend there were a total of 10 forfeits.
Friday night featured 13 games over a 2 hour period and then the tournament stopped for the night to showcase its traditional 64 man head to head elimination homerun derby. Unable to follow all 13 games, I chose the Steve's Drywall vs AJS game as the best game at 6:30 PM to watch. Steve's Drywall is a veteran "C" team out of the Toledo, Ohio area and I felt they would play well and give AJS (a conference "B" team out of Florida) all they could handle. Steve's was featuring veteran pitcher Jim Burbrink and first baseman Mark Streeter. AJS came to play however and picked up local talent Billy Barrett to do the pitching for the weekend and he was able to wiggle his way out of a few bases loaded situations to pull out a 23-16 victory.
For the 7:45 PM games I chose to watch PRI vs Elk and Elk. Pure Romance out of Cincinnati needed to finish 4th in this tournament in order to make it to the World Series and they hammered Elk and Elk (a "C" team out of Cleveland, Ohio) early and often. PRI batted around in the first and never looked back to win 26-10. Being from Cleveland myself, I would love to see Elk and Elk put together a nice Conference "B" team to compete in 2010.
In other interesting Friday night action PDC Printing (a local "B" team out of Michigan) handed Magic S&S a 19-13 loss, eliminating Magic's Conference hopes. Detroit's Own which had a huge crowd of fans in attendance won the best game of the night 21-19 in a battle with ATS/Combat out of Phoenix, Arizona.
Following these two sets of games Friday was the homerun derby. The format for this derby was a randomly drawn head to head competition with 64 hitter's battling it out in a bracket tournament. If the two player's going head to head ended in a tie they would have a 2 pitches to hit 1 "hitoff" to determine who advanced. I was able to stay until the first round ended around 11:30 PM. The crowd for this event is always pretty large and the kids are allowed to go out on the field to chase balls and try and catch the homerun's. The atmosphere is top notch. I recommend for future tournaments to use 2 or 3 fields for the first round because the contest takes forever. It is my understanding the homerun derby finished around 2 AM when "The Worlds Greatest Softball Player" Brian Wegman of Dan Smith defeated Kyle "Biggons" Yerkes of Linedrive in the finals. I believe the finals went into a hitoff which lasted 5 rounds!
The fan involvement with letting kids chase the homerun balls at the HR Derby is a great idea
Linedrive's Kyle Yerkes finished runner up in the derby for the second week in a row
Some random hitter's from the HR Derby
The tournament resumed Sunday morning at 8 AM with Shoppe finishing off Bud Light and then upsetting Resmondo 36-35 in a game Shoppe controlled for most of the way.
Sunday morning at the Last Chance. Bud Light takes on Jean Shoppe
The loser's bracket games were all played with a 5 inning or 1 hour time limit (whichever came first).
More on each of the top teams coming up later in the report.
Team Breakdown: There were 15 Conference USSSA teams and 26 teams overall from 10 different States at the Michigan Major:
4 Class "A" Teams,
9 Class "B" Teams,
6 Class "C" Teams,
4 Class "D" Teams,
Liberty Park of America notes: The softball complex was in great shape considering the unbelievable amount of rain and there were no puddles or really any muddy areas on the infields or outfields. Liberty has 11 ball diamonds, all with 300 foot fences! Home run fences were approximately 7 feet high.
The fog rolls in Saturday night
Liberty Park fields Sunday morning
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