BOYNTON BEACH - Another beautiful day at the Santaluces Complex in Boynton Beach, FL saw some highly intense moments throughout the day as elimination baseball was played in some key games.
Almendares Baseball has become a Cindarealla story of the tournament, as nobody expected the new team from Miami, FL to compete with some of the long established programs. Almendares pulled a big upset yesterday over tournament favorite the Florida Stars, and continued to knock off the defending runner up Gatorball today.
The big game of the night that effected a lot of seeding was the Game Time Academy vs the PW Futures. The game was 1-0 in favor of Game Time but lightning threatened late in the game and play was suspended. Lightning continued for 20 mins after the delay with it getting progressively worse, and instead of having everyone stay around until midnight to try and finish the game, our staff decided to let everyone go home and resume the game tomorrow at 9:30am.
That game time will effect the start time of all of the 4 quarter finals games, because official seeding will not be determined until that game is complete. The All American Prospects Red locked up the wild card spot and should report to the field tomorrow expecting to play at a start time of approximately 11:00am.
A very strange sequence of events took place in the South Florida Elite 2012 game and the Florida Hardballers. If you don't understand tiebreakers, this can be very confusing. The Hardballers came into the game with a record of 1-1, and the Elite were 2-0 in their bracket. A win by the Hardballers would make both teams 2-1, in addition to the Southeast Bluesox, and put tiebreakers into effect since all teams beat each other head to head. The Bluesox's runs allowed was a big number and they were out of tiebreaker contention - barring a small miracle.
The Elite had given up 1 run, coming into the game and appeared primed to own the tiebreakers, but the Hardballers lead 11-5 late in the game. That put the runs allowed at 12-11 in favor of the Elite still at this point between the Hardballers and Elite late in the game - in favor of the Elite. The next tiebreaker was runs scored and the Elite lead that tiebreaker by a large margin. So the Elite lead the tiebreakers. So all the Elite had to do late in the game was prevent the Hardballers from scoring anymore runs to keep that tiebreaker in their favor. With 2 outs and men on first and second, Connor Wentz of the Hardballers struck out swinging and the 3rd strike and 3rd out of the inning, but the curveball in the dirt hit the ground and was dropped by the SF Elite catcher. The catcher ended up throwing the ball over the first baseman's head and both runs scored, putting the Hardballers in front for the tiebreaker by a margin of 13-12 and sending them into the playoff round.
The playoff round begins tomorrow and we will report live from the single elimination quarterfinals.
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