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| Oct. 11, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: SPA Winter Nationals Corky I suspect Roger and/or Mert will be at the hitting club Monday AM. We'll see. I've seen a guy wearing one of those "Antique Roadshow" jerseys. Might have been a week ago Thursday at Metro. If they are who I think they are, they should be a fair-to-middlin' ball team. Here's a thought. How about the guys who played in the 50 Comp spring league that folded? Heck of a lot of talent not playing senior ball! |
| Oct. 10, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: SPA Winter Nationals Corky There was some conversation, at the hitting club Monday, about the possibility that a team, maybe a 70s team, got moved up mid-tournament. I'll try to confirm that with the Mayor of Zionsville. |
| Oct. 8, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: They Can't Do That? taits We know the date 3/24/09 is not a typo because that was the date they showed for our AA rating. The only question is whether it's due to incompetence or an attempt to mislead somebody checking the ratings! |
| Oct. 6, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: They Can't Do That? I don't know if anybody else noticed but SPA has updated their rating of the Indy 60s team......sort of. We are now rated as AAA but they didn't correct the date of the rating. It still shows 3/24/09. Oversight, or just a lame effort to make it look like we were AAA all year? My money is on the latter! |
| Oct. 2, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: Expectations PT didn't say this but it's worth a thought. Get me once, shame on you! Get me twice, shame on me! |
| Oct. 1, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: Expectations I've cooled down, more or less, from the treatment we recieved from SPA at Dalton. I've read all the posts and have posted under the thread titled "They can't do that" and I appreciate the comments, pro and con, posted there. I've also given a lot of thought to the issue. I've been on teams which went to senior national tournaments for 13 years now. I've never gone to a tournament I didn't think we could win but have not had the pleasure of capturing a national championship. Not whining here, just setting the stage. I think the large majority of the teams who go to a national, believe they have a chance to win it, if they play well. And, make no mistake, you'd better play consistently well if you want to be national champs in any age group/division/association. That's as it should be. However, many of the teams who attend these tournaments not only need to play well, thay also need somebody else to not play well. There are always teams who stand out and there are always teams playing in any given division who are rated in a higher division. Whether this is because websites are not updated (unexcusable) or they are simply allowed to play down for some mysterious reason, who knows? It's been so rampant that I believe everybody has come to expect it. Which brings me to my topic, "expectations". What should we expect when we go to a national championship tournament. History tells us we can expect a few things as "givens": 1. We'll usually get to play 5 games. 2. We'll usually have decent umpires and decent playing conditions. 3. We'll play some serious competition. 4. We'll enjoy the comraderie on and off the field. 5. Most of us will go home disappointed that we didn't do better. I don't think we ask for anything unreasonable in return for our entry fee but we should also expect the following: 1. Every team in our division should be publicly rated the same as we are, at least by the association who accepted our entry fee. If the association can't handle that, they have problems. 2. Appropriate awards should be presented at the conclusion of the tournament. Not for sale. Not mailed out a week or two later. If you want to make rings, watches, whatever available for purchase, that's great but put something in the champions' hands beside directions to your next tournament. If the tournament directors can't handle that, they have problems. 3. When you have a controversy of major proportion, man-up, face the people involved, and DON'T LIE TO THEM! An association who fails on all counts of # 3 has problems. Particularly when the incident involves a decision made by the head of the association! The first set of "expectations" has been met in tournaments we played this year. The latter set have all been failures I witnessed this year. I don't care who's to blame. I just think it's a sad state of affairs and we, as teams, are being taken for granted. Somebody needs to pay attention! |
| Sept. 30, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: They Can't Do That? Corky, I think that's called voting with your entry fee. There should be a lot more of that going on. I'm certainly not the voice of our team but I know I won't be going to another SPA tournament. |
| Sept. 23, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: Tournament results Please bear in mind I don't have a dog in this fight but I'm wondering why they didn't apply the tie breaker rules they use in pool play. The idea of "co-champions" just doesn't work for me. |
| Sept. 22, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: SPA Take heart RV. SPA will mail you a certificate along with info on how you can buy All American "awards". At least that's what they did in 2008. I just went through a bunch of old papers on my desk and shredded it along with the other junk mail that had accumulated. |
| Sept. 21, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: They Can't Do That? Softball6, a TD eliminating a strong team from the division in which they are rated by his own organization in the middle of a tournament is not maintaining parity. It's called lowering the bar and it's not only unfair to the team which got booted but also an insult to the other teams in the division. |
| Sept. 21, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: Tournament results I understand that weather ended the 55 AA & AAA in Dalton. That's unfortunate but what can you do? The bracket indicates there were still 4 AAA teams in the winners bracket. Anybody know who/how/if winners were determined? I wonder if the team declared to be the champions will be get moved up. |
| Sept. 15, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: They Can't Do That? Just a word on the Indy 60s roster. We had 3 guys in Dalton who were not on the Lansing SSUSA roster. However, the roster we submitted in Dalton was identical to the roster used in 3 other SPA tournaments this year. SPA chose to ignore their own tournament rosters and tried to nitpick the Lansing roster. |
| Sept. 15, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: They Can't Do That? Corky, thanks for the kind remarks. How do you like that extended right field fence? I found a dozen balls outside it Monday. Somebody must have thrown them out there. taits, I agree with your assessment on sandbagging. We've all seen it happen and I suppose most of us have done something that could be considered sandbagging. The fact that we hit 14 guys in pool play and fewer in bracket games could be considered sandbagging, I suppose. If so, guilty as charged. However, our players play their positions and we try to win every game we're in. I know who you were talking about and the conversation took place elsewhere about infielders and outfielders swapping. In fact, one of the teams we beat in pool play mentioned they had players "flying in tomorrow". I wonder why you're even allowed to play guys in a bracket game who didn't play in pool games. New rule???? You are correct on the TOC. I've been informed that we will play AA if we got to the TOC and that our roster must match the Lansing roster. Thanks for the info, DM! |
| Sept. 14, 2009 DRob | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: They Can't Do That? First...... Congratulations to KC Thunder on their 60 AA win at Dalton. Wish we could have played them again. We split 2 games with them last year. Good guys, good team. Now, on topic: I play for the Indy 60s. We were in fact moved up to AAA after pool play. SPA went through a lot of gyrations trying to justify the move including calling another Indy team to ask if any of our players were on his roster. They weren't. We played 4 SPA tournaments this year (including Dalton) with the same roster except that we were missing 2 starting infielders at Dalton. We haven't exactly dominated so far. We won Shelbyville, IN after going to the "IF" game, were 2nd in South Bend, IN, and got beat up in Columbus, OH. I don't even know what our place was there. We are a good AA team and played exceptionally well in the pool games in Dalton. We hit the ball just as well in the AAA games but only won one of them against a team who shouldn't have been in AAA. It was pretty clear that we will not threaten many teams in AAA unless we pick up a few more good players. It was obvious that the 2 AAA teams who beat us played much better defense than anybody we saw in AA. Hitting the ball is one thing, scoring is another. As for teams playing in AA who were ranked AAA and Major teams playing in AAA, based on the rankings which were available online during the tournament..... that is true. Who knows what may have happened which is not reflected in the rankings but we printed them off after we got moved. As of this writing, Indy 60s is still ranked AA on the SPA website but SS-USA shows us as AAA, dated today. Strangely enough, we finished 2nd at Dalton last year and were never moved up while the 1st place and 3rd place teams were. I consider that just another example of how things go in SPA. I believe we were moved up during the tournament because we thumped some teams who just didn't play well and several teams whined to Ridge Hooks who simply folded. We requested Mr. Hooks meet with us after we were eliminated and he said he would do that. Surprise! He was unavailable and sent Layla, whoever she is. She had no answers or explanation and actually told us we had been moved up before the tournament. Of course we know that isn't true since we played AA pool play. She then hung her hat on the fact that we had won the SS-USA Northern Nationals in Lansing. As noted above, we were still AA acording to SS-USA until today. SPA had tried to use teh excuse that we had 3 guys on the Dalton roster who were not on the Lansing roster but all 3 of them were on the roster for every SPA tournament we played. They simply didn't go to Lansing and were left off that roster. They were on our roster for the May tournament in Indy. One is a good outfielder, the other two play part time at catcher and first base. Had we been moved to AAA prior to this tournament we would have no complaint and would understand the move, at an appropriate time, if we had EVER won a national championship under any association. Bottom line is SPA accepted our entry in AA, scheduled us in AA, then reneged. I can only tell you what happened. Draw your own conclusions. Sorry this got a little windy but it's not easy to set this table. A little venting is involved here, also. |
