Softball and
baseball’s favorite newspaper since 1987
Dudley Classic set to
rock ‘em
By
Don Bowman
With the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2
powerhouses, Resmondo and Dan Smith, accenting the
tournament bracket board, the Dudley/Budweiser Classic promises to be another
showcase of great softball this weekend!
Warren Bellm,
the event coordinator and tournament director, is known nationwide for putting
on the very best softball extravaganza in the land, and deserves all the
credit!
This year it would be very surprising
if the aforementioned Resmondo/Smith boys do not meet
in the finals, but you never know! Several other top-ranked clubs will be in
the mix this weekend to bring home some
Three of the more legendary names in
Dudley Classic “folklore” might not be in attendance this weekend due to
vocational commitments. Sadly, Rusty Bumgardner,
Jason Kendrick and Johnny McGraw might have job-related issues that will
prohibit them from playing. Between those three alone, dozens of championship
and all-tournament honors have been handed out at the
Entering the
Resmondo
is the team to beat this weekend at the
The men (and woman) in
red
Some of the best umpires in the land
will be officiating at the Dudley Classic, most local and a handful of imports
from the ‘Conference.’ Hopefully, our local lads (and lass) will get assigned
to some of the bigger games behind the dish this weekend. It was just a few
years ago, when one ‘national softball star’ got on the phone and complained to
the national director moments after he and a teammate got called out on strikes
in one inning – looking! Hopefully that wont be the
case this weekend, and hopefully there will not be very good cell phone service
near the Central North field this weekend either!
In one of the more thrilling state
championship games in recent history, the Burnsville Blaze nipped the North St.
Paul Polars 3-2, in the championship game of the AAA fastpitch finals in
Mr. D’s wins in
Albertville
Mr. D’s won the Friendly City Days
tourney in
Home run derby a hit
The event, filled with 48
participants, was a huge hit with softball fans once again in the Twin Cities
area, with over 32 contestants turned away.
The final results were not known when
this issue went to press, but defending Long Haul Bomber Champion and the
defending Dudley Classic Home Run Derby champion Denny Crine
(Dan Smith Softball), was back to defend his crown. Last year, Crine won a beautiful motorcycle courtesy of the Bomber
tour as the grand champion, but interesting enough it is teammate Geno Buck who has been driving the ‘hog’ around lately…hmmmm.
Hats off to Bill and Brownie who,
without compensation or fanfare, put this great derby on each year! It also has
to be one of the bigger nights of year for BeBops
cash registers too!
Where are the bat
testers?
Long-time reader Stu Podassel writes in: “Diamond
Don, I heard there are 150 brand new battery operated bat testing devices,
buried in an underground bunker, just outside of
Dear Stu, All I know is they weren’t used in
Target Field hosts
Bomber Tour
Add beautiful Target Field to the
list of stops of the 2010 Long Haul Bomber Tour after all! On Wednesday June
16, some of the greatest slow pitch softball stars in the land blasted mammoth
home runs out of the park in downtown
C&A Softball wins C/D World NIT
C&A Softball won the C/D World
NIT in
TC Longhorns lose a
pair
The TC Longhorns, another of the area’s
top C teams, lost a couple of top notch players when Mike Nelson and Scott Snodie jumped ship to other teams. The team plans to reload
and still be tough to beat down the stretch.