Report and photos courtesy of DW and softballcenter.com
The 2012 McQuades Classic featured huge crowds, 460+ teams in 15 different divisions, and showcased the Team USA men’s slowpitch and Future Stars national teams.
The tournament began on Friday night with an opening ceremony featuring a military flag corps, the national anthem, and the introduction of the USA Future Stars and the North Dakota military all-star teams. Then the two teams took to the field. The Future Stars made short work of the ND Military team and won in 5 innings.
Then Team USA was introduced as the crowd grew into the thousands and they played the McQuade All Stars who were a group of ‘A’ and Major players from some of the top teams. The McQuade Stars kept the game interesting early on but Team USA separated mid way through the game on some great defensive plays by shortstop Don Dedonatis Jr, second baseman Greg Connell, and an incredible leaping stab of a hard line drive by pitcher Andy Purcell. Team USA won the game but not without a fight from the McQuade all stars.
Following the exhibition games was the finals of the homerun derby. Brian Wegman put on a show, hitting 17 home runs on 3 “outs” including some crowd pleasers.
On Saturday at 11 AM the “Pool Play” began for the tournament’s top division ‘A’. Nordkap Construction hammered Reebok/LongHaul/TYJA 36-15 in Pool A’s only game. This is because the third team in Pool A, Sonny’s, did not make the trip. Those games against Sonnys were considered forfeit wins.
In Pool B, Annihilation Easton scored 26 runs in the first inning against Team Combat before Combat called on Bobby Nifong to pitch in relief. Bobby was working at the Combat sales trailer and had to put on his uniform. He came over to the game and put out the fire in 3 batters. The damage was done though and Annihilation/Easton run ruled Team Combat 38-8.
Team Combat then lost to O&S 23-22. O&S then played the last game of the pool play and beat Annihilation/Easton 25-20 behind good pitching by Andy Purcell and some good infield defense by SS Bubba Mack and middle infielder Kevin Bazat.
The double elimination started on Saturday afternoon with Reebok/LongHaul/TYJA losing to Combat after leading the entire game. Combat was down 6 runs going into the bottom of the 7th. With the wind blowing in from RF, left hand hitting Joey Smith went opposite field for a walk off grand slam homer and 28-25 Combat victory.
Easton then “annihilated” Nordkap by an inexplicable score of 21-1? Then O&S Cattlemen used some more stellar defense and pitching to drop a less than sharp Combat team 28-25 and then O&S captured won the winner’s bracket championship over Annihilation/Easton by the run rule 37-22 on Saturday night.
The loser’s bracket didn’t start until Sunday morning at 8:40 AM with Nordkap beating Reebok/TYJA 28-25. Nordkap kept on rolling as they hammered Team Combat 27-5 and made it to the loser’s bracket championship where they gave away a nice lead against Annihilation/Easton but still led by 5 runs going into the bottom of the 7th inning. Michael Melton for Annihilation hit a clutch 2 out, 3 run homer to tie the game and send it into extra innings. Brett Helmer pitching for Annihilation in place of Geno Buck who had to leave, shut down Nordkap in the top of the 8th when Nordkap was out of home runs, and in the bottom half of the inning center fielder Reggie Schulte won the game for Annihilation with a walk off home run.
This sent Annihilation/Easton to the championship game against O&S Cattlemen. They beat a fresh O&S team in the first game of the championship with a solid win, and the two teams decided that missed flights and a delayed Team USA bus trip wasn’t worth it and they finished as co-champions.
Bats were tested at the beginning of the tournament. The 52 core ball was fair for the conditions and didn’t’ take as many bad hops as expected although Bazat might think differently. The weather was perfect and the atmosphere at the tournament was top notch.
