After a wild weekend at sub-state, the Hastings Raiders Legion Post 47 baseball team is headed to the state tournament. Hastings went 4-1 over a five-day qualifying tournament to punch their ticket to the Legion Division I state tournament in Rochester, MN July 27-30. The Division I tournament features 16 teams from around the region with the top two finishers competing at the Region 6 Tournament in Rapid City, South Dakota August 2-6. The winner of that eight team tournament heads to the American Legion Baseball World Series in Shelby, North Carolina from August 10-15.

The nationwide program operates under the title of “American Legion Baseball” where more than 3,500 teams participate from the US and Canada. Locally, the Post 47 team is financially supported by both the Hastings American Legion Post 47 and the VFW Lyle Russel Post 1210. The setup is that the Legion team is the varsity level players while the VFW team is the developmental or Junior Varsity team. This year, there were not enough players to fill the roster for both, all players are on the Legion roster.

The Raiders Legion team is made up of many of the high school varsity players, including the seniors that graduated this year. For the graduates, they can play the summer of their senior year as their last year for Legion baseball, which means they play against many of the same high school players from the school season.

On Wednesday, Hastings took down Red Wing 15-3. Jack Seleski led the offense going 3-for-3 with a triple and a home run while Tanner Anselment when 2-for-2 with a double. Mark DeNoyer was not going to let Seleski be the only one with a homer and his one hit sailed over the fence. Evan Nelson went the distance on the mound for the complete game with six strikeouts.

The Thursday night game was a bit more of a challenge, but Hastings came out on top 8-6 over St. Paul Park. Seleski led the offense again going 3-for-4 with two doubles and Johnny Teigland went 2-for-4. Gavin Odman shut the door for a huge save when he took the mound in the sixth with the bases loaded and no outs.

Friday’s game was moved to Saturday due to rain and Hastings grabbed the win 6-4 over West St. Paul, which was essentially St. Thomas’s school season roster. Teigland and Anselment went 2-for-3 at the plate with Anselment logging two doubles. Jarod Neuville crushed a huge two-out double in the bottom of the sixth to give Hastings the lead and ultimately the win. Odman started the game on the mound and Seleski shut down the West St. Paul offense for the save.

Hastings had to wait out the rest of Saturday to find out their opponent from the loser’s bracket for Sunday. That ended up being West St. Paul in the double elimination tournament. For Hastings to go to state, they had to win one game, while West. St. Paul had to win two. Sunday’s first game did not go as the Raiders planned and they lost 4-3.

Game two did go the way of the Raiders with Seleski starting on the bump for Hastings. Seleski went five innings with no earned runs and DeNoyer earned the save in the 10-4 win.

The Raiders will now travel to Rochester for four games of pool play in Pool 3 against (SS#= Sub State Region number) SS11 - Wayzata, SS12 - Sartell, and SS10 - Duluth. All the Raiders’ pool games will take place at Hudson Field in Rochester. Their first game will be at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, July 27 against Wayzata. Game two is immediately after the first game at 3:30 p.m. against Duluth and the third game will be Friday at 1:00 p.m. against Sartell. The winner of that pool is determined by the best record of the four teams. If there is a tie, then the head-to-head result is the first tie breaker, runs allowed divided by all innings played is the second, runs scored divided by all innings played is third and coin flip is the last tie breaker.

In pool play, it is pretty common to see the advancing team to be 3-0 or 2-1, so starting pool play strong is very important and that bodes well for teams who are deep in the bullpen and coaches that can manage their pitcher’s pitch counts early.

The winners of each pool plus the runners-up will advance to the bracketed play portion of the tournament. The winner of Pool 3 will play the runner-up of Pool 4 in the top portion of the eight-team bracket on Saturday at 10:00 a.m., and in the lower portion of the bracket, the runner up of Pool 3 will play the winner of Pool 4 at 1:00 p.m. both of the first-round games will be played at Dale Massey Field.

The Hastings American Legion Post 47 will be holding a sendoff for the boys on Wednesday, July 26 at noon from the parking lot of the Legion at 50 Sibley St. Everyone is encouraged to come down and celebrate this event for the first time in 24 years of Legion Baseball.