By Bruce Karnick

Veterans Park was the place to be this weekend for 90 or so 15-year-old young men and their families and friends as they participated in HYAA’s second tournament of the shortened baseball season. The most obvious observation of the 3-day tournament is, people are still excited to be outside, be social and able to watch live sports, all while being as COVID safe as they can. Tournament volunteers were at Vets at 9 am Friday setting up for the 15 games about to be played over the following 55 hours. First pitch was slated to be noon on

Friday and the _nal game would start at 2 pm Sunday.

This year, new tournament director Ryan Stoffel changed the format of both Hastings tournaments to the more standard “pool play” style tournament. Previous years tournaments were fully bracketed, double elimination tournaments. Those tournaments started on Thursday evening and required the use of multiple _elds. Multiple _elds required signi_cantly more volunteers and work for tournament staff, Vets is also the only _eld in town to have all the amenities that make

Hastings tournaments unique, a combination of permanent restrooms, established concessions and a press box with a public address system for announcing and music. Players and families all weekend were once again talking about how cool it was to have walk-up music like the pros, music and announcements between innings and what kid doesn’t love hearing his name said over the PA? ‘NOOOWWWW BATTIIIINGGGG NUMBER 29! EVAAANN KAAAISERRRR!’. The

biggest advantage of pool play over a bracketed tournament is for the families. Pool play games are clearly scheduled for the majority of the tournament. You know exactly when you will be playing regardless of if you win or lose, except the last day. Double Elimination tournaments are much more _uid. After your _rst game, your future games are determined by your wins and losses. Of course, weather affects BOTH styles of tournaments, but a rain delay in pool play is easier to recover from. OK, cool! The tournament switched to

pool play, but how does pool play work?

For 8-team pool play tournaments, teams are split in

to two pools. Each team plays one game against their

pool teams for a total of 3 games. These games are

seeding games that are played over the _rst two days

of the tournament. The best a team can do is go 3-0 in pool play. The tricky part of pool play can be the actual seeding depending on the need for tie breakers. Tie breakers can get confusing and tournament of_cials

really need to stay organized. With the way tie breakers

work, there is a list of things to _gure out and it can make your head fuzzy in a hurry. The _rst 4 tie breakers used by the Metro Baseball Tournament rules are: 1. Win, Loss, Tie record. 2. Head to Head record. 3. Least number of runs allowed between tied teams. 4. Run differential between tied teams. There are more tie breakers to use IF there remains a tie at this point, but it rarely gets that far.

After pool play is completed, the top 2 teams from each pool are seeded and they play an additional 2 games to determine a tournament Champion. The number 1 team from pool A plays the number 2 team from pool B and the number 1 team from pool B plays pool A’s number 2 in a 4-team championship bracket. This format guarantees 3 games for every team and limits the number of games the winning teams play to a max of 5 in a span of 3 days. Double elimination brackets can often mean one team may have to play 7 or 8 games in 4 days to win the championship, often 3 on the _nal day. This is

extremely hard on the players bodies, especially during their developmental years.

For this tournament, Pool A was Hastings, Minnetonka, Cottage Grove and Le Sueur. Pool B was Westonka, Farmington, East Ridge and Apple Valley. First pitch was 12:04 Friday afternoon. Friday had 5 games scheduled every 2 hours. The _nal out Friday night was close to 11 pm. Saturday started bright and early at 8 am. The 4:00 game was shortened by heavy rain that nearly ruined the rest of the schedule. As it was, the 25-minute rain pushed the 6:00 game back by almost 2 hours. Normally, a 2-hour delay is no big deal, but this one was a bit special. The _nal game of the night was supposed to start at 8:00. It started around 10. Not too long into the game, fog started to roll into the _eld. Yes, FOG. At _rst it was amazing to see, but eventually it became a safety issue. Out_elders were having a hard time seeing the ball and there was a lot of moisture on the _eld causing slippery conditions for player movement and making it tough to throw the ball.

By the end of Saturday, 3 of the 4 teams in pool A could have ended up tied at 1-2.

Thankfully, the results of pool play ended far clearer than they could have. In Pool A,

Minnetonka _nished 3-0 making them the A1 seed and Cottage Grove _nished 1-1-1 making them the A2 seed. On the B side, Farmington was the B1 seed and Westonka was the B2 seed, both at 2-1. Farmington earned the 1 seed because one of their wins was against Westonka.

The _nal day had Westonka against Minnetonka in game 1, Minnetonka won 9-2. Game 2 was Cottage Grove against Farmington. Cottage Grove edged Farmington 5-4 in what was one of the best games of the tournament. The championship had Minnetonka against Cottage Grove. Minnetonka had been the dominating team of the tournament and, unfortunately for Cottage Grove, that domination continued. Minnetonka won 12-1 in 5 innings to take home the trophy. Overall, Minnetonka scored 52 runs in 5 games, only allowing 8 runs, a very impressive tournament. The most impressive aspect of Minnetonka’s run this weekend was their sportsmanship. They may have won each game handily, but they did it right. They stopped stealing when they gained a large lead, they played smart baseball but were always respectful and seemed to never really talk smack to opponents. The players, coaches and fans were great representatives of what baseball is supposed to be. Along with Minnetonka, the guys from Cottage Grove were pretty awesome too as were both

sets of fans. Cheering from both sides was always positive and supportive and they let

their coaches do the coaching. Even the guys from Hastings, despite being eliminated by Cottage Grove, came to the championship day games to cheer on Cottage Grove.

Behind the scenes was another testament to the culture that is Hastings baseball. Players and parents from all the HYAA teams playing this summer and the Hastings Hawks board came to help with _eld prep and repair between games,

even the Hastings team that was in the tournament. Fieldwork to some is annoying but it is so vital to all levels of amateur baseball. Amateur baseball does not get the paid grounds crew like the pros do. At College level, players must help with the _eldwork as well. Yes, the City

of Hastings has a parks staff, but that staff is already stretched beyond belief and they just

do not have time to work the _eld they way it

needs to be done. Thankfully, our coaches at the

younger levels understand that _eld work is just

as fundamental as swinging a bat or catching a ball. The tournament would not be possible with out the help of the volunteers working the _eld between games. This was emphasized even

more so when the previously mentioned rain delay hit. Thankfully, the only puddles on the _eld were on the third base path, but the in_eld was very close to having puddles. When the in_eld at Vets gets that much water on it in a short time, parts of it start to have a slimy feel to them. That is a dangerous situation to play in. Thanks to the efforts of some of the Hawks board, Ryan Seleski, Johnny Teigland, Conner Stoffel, Mitch Iliff, Aaron Vadehoef, Eddie Peine, Aaron Herber and Sawyer Tjomsland, and numerous bags of diamond dry, the _eld was ready just before 8 pm.

Sadly, by the time this hits the newsstand or

your mail box, baseball at Veterans Park will likely be over for the summer. HYAA had 3 teams play 30 plus games, the Hawks had 5 and the summer season is coming to a close. What does that leave us to look forward too locally? Right now, we do not know. The Minnesota State High School League is expected to release their plans for this school years sports on August 4th, so that question cannot be answered

yet. The summer sports that have been played have proven that it can be done safely, so don’t give up all hope and thank you fans for doing it right.

One of the options being explored is to play spring sports in the fall and fall sports in the spring. Why? Many of the spring sports are part

of the medium to low risk category according to the department of health. Football is considered a high-risk sport due to the close interaction of a larger number of players for longer periods of time. By the time you read this, the hope is that we will all know more! Look for a report on that next week!

Jarod Neuville makes a tag on the opposing Cottage Grove player on Tuesday night when both teams faced each other for a precursor to the 15AA tournament. Photo by Bruce Karnick