2019 USSSA Cincinnati Major tournament report!

2019 Nationwide Conference USSSA

20th Annual Cincinnati Major

Cincinnati, OH

July 19-21

TDB's Everett Williams about to tee off on a Bay Area Legends pitch in the winner's final Saturday night!

SoftballCenter Cincy picture album link

2019 Cincy bracket and results link

2019 Cincy Major stats link once available

2019 Cincy archived games link

Resmondo's Brian Wegman hitting in front of the home crowd at his own park!

The 20th annual Cincinnati Major was played in severe heat and humidity using the Dudley Classic M ball on the 4 mostly 300 foot fields.  The heat kept the scores down as most teams did not use their home run limits.  The games started at 5 PM on Friday night with 27 teams overall from 14 different states and 18 of them were from the Nationwide Conference USSSA league.  In the first round conference teams won all 11 games.  TPJS/Seminoles (OK-A) won a game over Indiana 'B' team Belly's 8-5.  Now that is a low score.  Headlines (OH-A) just beat GMS (MI-B) 27-26 on a walk off hit, T&W (OH-A) beat Westpoint (IN-B) 20-18 on a walk off homer, and Primetime (GA-A) beat Old Bag (OH-B) 25-22.  The other 7 games were won by the run rule.

In the "round of 16" the top 5 seeds who got byes joined in the fun. Smash It/Precision (IL-AA) beat Seminoles 25-14.  Headlines upset Xtreme (MN-AA) 18-16 in extra innings making two good defensive plays to win the game.  MPT Rentals (NJ-A) pulled off a minor upset over Riot Sports (FL-AA) 25-17.  And #1 seeded TDB (NC-Major) beat Sports Reach (KY-A) by 20 runs.  In the lower half of the bracket #2 Resmondo (FL-Major) 20 run ruled Premier (OH-A), Newbreed (WA-AA) outlasted Primetime 23-19, Bay Area (CA-AA) run ruled T&W 30-14, and Rebel Sports (MI-AA) beat Nightmare (MO-AA) 31-29 in a battle of the middle of the pack 'AA' teams.

At noon on Saturday the "final 8" was played on the main two fields.  Smash It/Precision beat Headlines 15-9 as Brad Lunda went 3-4 with 5 RBI, TDB run ruled MPT Rentals 36-15 after going up 22-2 before MPT could get any offense going, Bay Area cruised past Rebel Sports 33-14, and Resmondo run ruled Newbreed 29-10.

The "final 4" of the winner's bracket and winner's final games were played out back to back to back starting at 5:30 PM on the main field #1.  Bay Areas middleman Ryan Mcclanahan was playing lock down defense against Resmondo and was helped by a nice play by pitcher Bill Pinkham to keep Resmondo close.  Resmondo 3rd baseman Bubba Mack was also stabbing some hard shots to keep Resmondo in the game.  In the bottom of the 6th Bay Area scored 3 extra runs after a Resmondo infield error to take a 20-17 lead.  In the top of the 7th though Resmondos Greg Connell tied the game with a 2 run homer and Steele Lewis gave them a 3 run lead on a homer after Brian Wegman and Kyle Pearson had clutch hits.  In the bottom of the 7th though Bay Area tied the game with base hits and loaded the bases with 1 out only to have a pop out in the infield after Resmondo had brought in a 7th infielder.  So with 2 outs and the bases loaded Freddie Bynum drew a walk off walk to win the game!  In the other semifinal TDB led Precision 13-8 going into the bottom of the 4th when they scored 9 runs and they finished off Precision in the bottom of the 8th when they scored 18 more!  Purcell and Harvey each had 5 hits for TDB.  In the winner's bracket finals TDB got some great defense from Defensive MVP shortstop AJ Montano and stretched their lead out until they run ruled Bay Area 29-14.

In the long hot losers bracket Premier and Nightmare each won 2 games before Headlines and MPT dropped down and beat them.  Premier getting an incredible defensive double play from Rocky Staton and a walk off homer by Cory Boothe to beat Primetime in extra innings.  Headlines beat Premier with their gloves in the bottom of the 7th.  And MPT Rentals beat Headlines 30-14 before losing the top half of the loser's bracket to Resmondo 36-29 late Saturday night.  In the bottom half of the loser's bracket Xtreme who had lost their first game of the tournament knocked off Sportsco, West Point, Newbreed, crushed Rebel Sports, and then beat Precision 39-26 to make it to Sunday.

On Sunday morning Resmondo jumped out to a 15-3 lead on an understandably tired Xtreme team and went on to win 39-19.  Then in the loser's bracket finals Bay Area jumped out to a 12-0 lead in the top of the 1st against Resmondo but Resmondo led 21-12 after 3 innings and a nice diving play by middleman Kevin Bazat.  But Bay Area got a second wind in the top of the 6th when they scored 10 runs after a dropped flyball and got homers from Dave Johnson, Tyler Wilson, and Freddie Bynum to grab a 5 run lead.  Bazat again making another great play up the middle to stop the bleeding.  In the top of the 7th Bay Area pushed their lead to 8 and Resmondo couldn't recover as they lacked home runs and Bay Area ended the game by turning a double play.  The championship was a bit anti-climactic as a fresh TDB team seemed to control the game and eventually pulled away to a 28-20 win.  It was TDB's 6th tournament win of the year and they clinched the regular season conference championship!

The tournament was well played with some spectacular defensive plays unlike the Smoky last week where there were too many bad throws.  The umpiring was some of the best of the year and those guys did incredible work in some terrible heat and humidity.  Some of the more entertaining comments from the tournament that I made notes of.  Brian Zirkle who is usually asked to keep the ball in the yard saying, "my bad as he was hitting a bomb".  Zirkle had the home run stroke going.  One anonymous player saying, "Precision would have a thousand rings if there were no if game".  lol.  Dave Kessler saying "gimmidat" to Zirkle after fielding his hot shot at 1st base.  We had M80's going off in the parking lot.  The nasty buzz you heard on the livestream was those old lights.  We had players hurling in the dugout from heat exhaustion.  There was an incident late Saturday where I believe 4 members of Precision were ejected.  Toby reminding Bay Area hitters that if they "hit strikes everything takes care of itself" – so true.  There were many of complaints about the shiny helmets some pitchers were wearing.  One player from Old Bag was hit in the head by the back swing by an on deck hitter and broke his nose and had stitches in his forehead.  It was a very scary situation.  Since my kids were old enough to play we would start practice and games by me asking them "what is the #1 rule of baseball?"  They would have to answer "don't get hit by the bat, and don't hit anyone with the bat".  Either one of which can ruin a game, a season, and a life…

I would like to thank Dave Maury for his hard work and hospitality and also USSSA for their support getting to these tournaments.  The livestream used the park wifi which was very good and we were able to stream all 4 fields for about 98% of the tournament even in the extreme heat with very few issues.  USSSALive now has a Roku and Apple TV app.

The Conference moves to Portland, Oregon this coming weekend and then Columbus, Ohio and finishes in North Carolina.

I am told the bigger fields in Columbus, Ohio will use the new Dudley Pro-M 44-375 ball with black print and stitches to be able to see it better.  That should be interesting.  In tests I was told it flys further than the classic M but its impact on the body is less.

TDB ready for the winner's final

Bay Area's Dave Johnson homers off of TDB in the Winners bracket finals

Team Breakdown:
27 Teams Overall
18 Nationwide Conference USSSA Teams
2 Major Teams
7 'AA' Teams
8 'A' Teams
7 'B' Teams
3 'C' Teams

The festivities in Cincinnati kicked off Thursday with the Wounded Warriors playing an exhibition game

Freddie Bynum gets Bay Area a bases loaded walk to win the game against Resmondo

Bay Area LF Tyler Marshburn makes a running catch into the fence

Sunday morning Pat Ellwanger hits a homer against his old team Xtreme in Resmondo's 39-19 win

Crowd on Friday was pretty good

Wegman hit one off of Pinkhams glove and it ricocheted to Mcclanahan for the out

Premier middle infielder Rocky Staton may have had the best diving play of the year on a hotshot grounder with no outs against Primetime and a runner on first in extra innings to turn a doubleplay on a ball that should have been a double.

Precisions Brad Lunda hits against Andy Purcell and TDB

Old Scout pollers were wrong

Video Highlites brought to you by:

Link to the Cincinnati video clips

I am working on a video of the best plays from the livestream also

Long Bombers of the Week

Long bomber of the week goes to lefty Buddy Wolf who was hitting the squirrel killers into the trees on the main field.  For righties lets go with Chad Mullins who at times can carry the Bay Area Legends lineup.

 Cincy Major Final Standings and Awards

MVP was TDB's Kyle Pearson

TDB SS AJ Montano was Defensive MVP making a great play against Bay Area in the video clips

Bay Area's Chad Mullins was Offensive MVP hitting a pile of clutch homers before a muscle pull took him out of the championship game Sunday.

Team by team notes brought to you by: