I would like to extend best of luck wishes to the baseball-playing teenagers from both Adrian and Heron Lake-Okabena as they participate in the eight-team Southwest Minnesota Sub-State Senior American Legion Baseball Tournament at Redbird Field in Luverne, beginning Thursday (July 18).
Both squads qualified for Sub-State competition by playing well at last weekend’s district tournaments.
Adrian earned advancement through the West District by defeating Tracy (4-2) and finished third in the tournament following losses to Luverne (11-1) and Minneota (8-7). The top three teams — Luverne, Minneota and Adrian — each qualified to play this week at Luverne.
HL-O played four competitive games in the Central District at Springfield, winning three of them. After a closely-contested 2-1 loss to eventual champion Springfield last Wednesday (July 10), HL-O edged Jackson (2-1), defeated Mountain Lake (11-4) and held off Wabasso (5-2) to finish second in the six-team tournament, which also included Windom.
HL-O needed to beat Wabasso on Saturday (after outscoring both Jackson and Mountain Lake on Friday) as only the top two teams from the Central District advanced.
Qualifying from the East District are Blue Earth, Minnesota Lake and Wells.
First-round games on Thursday pit Wells against Springfield (at noon), HL-O vs. Minneota (2:30 p.m.), Adrian vs. Blue Earth (5 p.m.) and Minnesota Lake vs. host Luverne (7:30 p.m.).
The double-elimination tournament continues on Friday and Saturday (July 19-20) and concludes next weekend (Friday, July 26 and Saturday, July 27) with the winner qualifying for this year’s Legion State Tournament in Ely during the first weekend of August.
Eleven years ago, Adrian qualified for the 2008 state tournament and made the long trip to Ely — way up in northeastern Minnesota, more than 300 miles away.
This week, the Little Mites, Big Mites and Midgets of the Four-Star Little League (Fulda, Heron Lake, Lakefield and Okabena) are squaring off with their annual season-ending tournament at the Okabena City Park. Lucas Knutson, who has coached Heron Lake’s program for more than a decade, is the league commissioner and sets up the tournament each year.
There will be lots of local baseball action at Luverne’s Redbird Field in the coming days. Prior to the opening round of the Legion Tournament, the Heron Lake Lakers and Hadley Buttermakers will tangle Wednesday evening (July 17, 7:30 p.m.) in the first game of a best-of-three playoff series between the two amateur or “Town Team” baseball squads.
The game will be a home game for the Lakers, the fifth-seed from the First Nite League. Hadley, the fourth-seeded team in the Gopher League, will host Game 2 on Saturday (July 20, 2 p.m.). If a third game is needed, that will also be at Mahon Field in Hadley (July 21, 2 p.m.). The playoff winner will advance to the eight-team Region 13C Tournament, which will be seeded next Monday (July 22) with the first best-of-three series beginning next Wednesday (July 24).
Hadley has enjoyed lots of post-season success through its storied history as a perennial power in “Town Team” ball. The Buttermakers, coached by Hall-of-Famer Myron Bennett, have the league’s best fan following and are always a team to be reckoned with.
Heron Lake played an excellent game at the Irish Yard in rural Milroy last Wednesday night (July 10) and held leads of 4-1 and 7-5 on the mighty Milroy Irish before being nipped 9-8 in an 11-inning thriller. The Lakers hit the ball well that night and were just one out away from winning the game in the bottom of the ninth.
Last week, I mentioned that I was going to write next week’s column about living and working in 1969, the year of Apollo 11 (Apollo 10 and Apollo 12 also went to the moon in ’69 — more about the significance of those two missions later). But with the local baseball playoffs happening in the area this week, the memories of the Summer of ’69 have been put on the “back burner” for at least another week.
A big home stand is coming up for the Twins as they face the Mets (two games), the A’s (four games) and the Yankees (three games) over nine consecutive days. Winning two-out-of-three at Cleveland was a most positive way to open following the All-Star Game and stretched — rather than lessened — Minnesota’s lead on the Indians in the American League Central.
It’s Jimenez, not Jiminez. My apologies to Octavio “Chippy” Jimenez for misspelling his last name is last week’s column. Like in the Beatles, classic 1964 tune, “I Should Have Known Better.” As was written, Chippy Jimenez has accomplished much with his athletic talents and determination in a variety of sporting activities.
