Town Ball

[Dave Borton]

Going over to Waconia to watch Class B games this weekend (loved C ball last year).

Question: How do they align a team with a class, ie who gets assigned to A ball, to B ball, C ball etc.?

TIA, db

[Dave Borton]

Took in two games of Class B at Waconia yesterday. Wasn't as competitive as I have seen in Class C in years past. Some very sloppy ball. Waconia has a delightful park for the games. https://www.waconiabaseball.com/page/show/1179984-lion-s-field, Attendance was poor.

Guy sitting behind me explained "class" assignments of 300 teams. MN leads the US in number of teams. How interesting that in this era of migration to urban areas, MN with a rural base, can field so many teams.

• Residency: Must live w/I 30 crow miles of team village/town/city ballpark
• Class C is pretty much assigned to teams from the smallest cities. No college ballplayers declaring univ address can be on C-rosters.
• Teams from Class C can advance to Class B based on series points awarded for tourney wins in past year
• Teams in Class A are defined by specific geographic roads in the Twin Cities..
• College ballplayers must declare parents' address of univ address.
• Mercy rules (10 runs) at 7 inn.

Care to read more? https://s3.amazonaws.com/scoremonsterclients/2/pdf/documents/MN_baseball_2015_FINAL_C.pdf

[bighat]

Thanks for sharing! I think a "town ball road trip" would be a fun summer excursion someday. 

[Dave Borton]

Just now, bighat said:

Thanks for sharing! I think a "town ball road trip" would be a fun summer excursion someday. 

Two more weekends. Invite a friend.

Schedules of the tourneys are here: https://mnbaseball.org

[Seth Stohs]

I love townball in theory. It can be that semi-pure baseball, where everyone plays because they love the game so much. And maybe at some point it was. 

I've seen the political side of townball, and so I am very much bitter to it. I've seen how people treat people who decide to play with a nearby local team instead of another. I've heard of parents getting harassed for decisions their kids make about where to play. I've seen teams push the envelope on the 'residency' definition. It should be fun.

And I played in 3 state tournaments. I think the first, I was 14 and playing for Corliss. Corliss is a township. The field was literally in a field. A farmer donated a corner of a field and we played there. All dirt infield. Snow fence for the outfield fence. The players were almost all farmers in the township. Most were between 33-38, grew up together, go to church together, it was a really fun team. And obviously pretty good. I still drive by that field once in awhile. It is now covered by corn (or whichever crop each year), but I have great memories. And now my beard is gray. Those older guys are now in their low-to-mid 60s. I'm old... but I do like nostalgia! 

I also played in probably the '96 and '97 state tournaments. Our team went to the final 8 that year. We had a good pitcher that was a catcher in college but didn't want to catch in the summers, so he played RF and caught. Those were a couple of really good teams. I think I batted ninth and his like .407 with 8-9 homers. 

Playing the game was generally fun. The outside drama and politics and attempts at bringing in ringers and such... no thanks!