All Stars 2008

All-Stars 2008 finished last night. I can't remember an All-Star tournament filled with more drama, battles, and heartbreak, and that doesn't even count the actual games.

First, the fun stuff.

One of the best parts of All-Stars is hearing your name called by the announcer to run on the field. Makes them all feel like the pros:



All the boys line up, say the Little League pledge, and we all sing the National Anthem.



Brady played mostly second base, but played a few innings at shortstop. He was outstanding at second base. Here he is catching a routine pop-up.



Long story short, they won the championship!!!



That was the drama on the field, anyway.



The drama off the field wasn't nearly as much fun. It's hard to say too much in a public forum, but in a nutshell, because they won District 16, they qualified for the state tournament. The tournament was supposed to be at the end of this week. Because of conflict with the hosting facility, the tournament was moved to the weekend of June 27th, which is also the weekend of the USSSA state tournament, which 8 of the 13 boys on the all-star team have been training for. If they skip the state tournament, they can't play in the USSSA world series in July, which we have been raising money for. As it turns out, the second place team we beat to win the championship can't field a team for sectionals either, because they have 5 players committed to the USSSA tournament. Unfortunately, when presented with the options of a reschedule the tournament (we offered to host it at MCLL) b)allow the 5 members of the MCLL all stars to move on and add other MCLL players without a conflict to the team so they can compete or c)send no representative from our district . . . the option chosen by the higher-ups was c. No representative from our district this year.

There was a lot more drama in all this, including some shoving matches between grown-ups with differing opinions (not me, you'll be glad to know), but I'll keep that out of the public forum. It breaks my heart that the 5 all stars who aren't on the Warriors won't be able to continue in the tournament, but we were very up front with MC about our commitment to the USSSA tournament, and we would have gladly played in the next level of all-stars if it had been held at the time originally scheduled. We would also have supported other MC players taking over those spots and competing if it had been allowed. It's all very sad . . .