Sorry its taken me a bit longer than usual to post here with this final game day update of the year… truth is, I’m burnt out a little… not on softball, but rather organizing softball, which got really tedious here at the conclusion of this season… I’m sure most of you are as sick of reading emails as I am of writing them… so thanks for hanging in there with me to the bitter end. It made a big difference towards keeping the train on the tracks.
For the second straight year, our Tournament Champion arrived at the Final Four having only given up 2 runs. The Tournament is inevitably about defense and Cannon Design exhibited that in spades this past Saturday. In fact, they gave up less runs in 5 games (10) than any other team did in 3 or 4 games… pretty amazing.
In the top of the 1st inning of our Final Four game, the Dogz started with a deep ball to left that had triple written all over it, Cannon’s left fielder ran it down with an amazing over-the-shoulder catch… next batter, a line shot at the pitchers head… which he snags… third batter hits a hard shot to the hole at short, a base hit against most other teams, Cannon’s fantastic shortstop sticks it and shotguns a throw across to their sure-handed 1st baseman. As an opposing Captain it gets you thinking ‘oh shit’… and that’s more or less how it worked out as Cannon dropped theDogz 10-5.
And then one last twist of fate to find out that the other Final Four game had ended with #9 Clune knocking off the #1 seeded Dobbins Group… No need to change fields, the 2-seed was now the trump card. Clune traveled the Upper Hutch diagonal crossing from Diamond 2 to Diamond 4 for the title game, which got under way around 4:30 with a bright sun in the right field sky. Clune looked a little tired from the outset, it’s a longer road to a championship game from the #9 seed. They advanced from their bracket at 2-1, which is always more stressful and then they switched diamonds to play a team that had won 16 straight. Lost in all of this was the fact that Clune hung the only loss on Dobbins Group they experienced this year… but that they did… for the right to take that long walk over to Diamond 4 and a shot at the crown…
They were a bit gassed though… and Cannon seemed cool, calm and on a mission… which was how it worked out… a valiant effort on the part of Design League vets Clune Construction, but in the end, this was Cannon’s day… Final Fours in ’06, ’07 and ’10… but here in 2011 they’ve finally reached the promised land and grabbed their 1st Design League Championship since the move to Grant Park.
Congratulations on a great season.
On a side note, from my own perspective of having had the Dogz lose to Cannon in the Final Four game, a chain-of-events revealed itself as I thought about it in the aftermath that seems to give weight to the importance of your regular season seed’s influence on your chances on Tournament Day. One scenario that’s quite possibly true is that Cannon Design was just unstoppable this year, regardless of what their path to a title ended up being. On the last day of the regular season though, Cannon (#2) dropped a 3-2 game to 11th place Gettys Group. That should have dropped them from the 2 to the 3 seed, however the Dogz (#3) ended up tying 15th place Kelso-Burnett, equally unlikely, yet still missing out on the opportunity to take the #2 from Cannon. Assuming that the Dogz and Cannon would both have advanced with flip-flopped brackets, how that translates two days later on Tournament Day was that in their Final Four game, the Dogz were both the visiting team as well as having to move diamonds for the game… the result could very well have been exactly the same, even with the situation reversed… but it still makes me want to work towards the highest seed possible every season. The #1 seed is the ace-in-the-hole, you just need to win 4 games before you truly get to use it.
One way or another, a great season ending in the crowning of a deserving champion in Cannon Design, 5-0 with 10 runs allowed and 48 runs scored, a fantastic day.
The (extremely loud at times) Mexican Parade aside, it felt like a pretty laid back Tournament day to me. The dire weather forecast never came to pass and I think everyone was happy to be back on Upper Hutchinson. The consensus seemed to be that the outfields were still a little rocky, but considering the entire park was a steamy stew of slop less than a month ago, I’m actually amazed at the job they did in getting it playable again in such a short time. My wife and I took a couple trips around the diamonds taking some pictures… many of these will be posting to the leagues Facebook page over the next week or two… so if you’re on Facebook and not yet a fan of the page… stop by here and get it done so you don’t miss those.
At the end of the day, after the sun had set on Grant Park, I looked around and saw my Dogz, Power Construction, VOA and theBuzz, flagship teams still with camps that were going strong, squeezing every last bit of time out of the annual event… got me thinking once again of the ‘tradition’ that’s been spoken of so much over the last month or so. It’s worth fighting for. Due diligence will be paid and we will return strong as ever next year to carry things on…
In the meantime, have a great off-season.
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