Boys of Summer Wrap up

July 14, 2009

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July 14
Denmark, WI

Well another Boys of Summer has come and gone. First of all I want to
thank all of the teams again. Without you, we have don't have a product
and the fans don't get the show. It is much appreciated that you are
keeping this fine tournament alive! Congrats to the Midwest Stampede to
winning their first BoS title, winning 8-5 over The Farm in front of a
standing room only crowd on Sunday. We did have to cut the finals short to
5 complete innings due to some flight issues. The final game did start
about an hour late due to a high scoring, extra inning game in the
semi-finals. I believe we'll be moving the Sunday games up next year at
least a half hour to avoid a shortened final in the future. Crowds were
very nice on Friday and Sunday and trickled in and out on Saturday. The
Boys of Summer will return in 2010 the weekend of July 9-11.


The weather turned out to be very nice all weekend. We experienced about
a half hour delay on Friday night with a little lightning and rain but as
soon as it was safe the players got back on the field and finished out the
game. Other than that we had clear skies and warm temps with a bit of a
breeze the rest of the weekend.


An MVP award should have gone to Mark Loritz for all of the work he did in
the week prior and all weekend long. He did just about anything and
everything. Head groundskeeper, head grillmaster, facilities manager etc.
You name it he was on top of it keeping the behind the scenes of this
machine running. A big thank you goes to Karen Conrod for announcing and
marking every game at CT as well as sending in updates via her blackberry,
and two her two boys for helping out with the scoreboard. The Knights of
Columbus took care of the books, announcing, and scoreboard at the Denmark
diamond. Another thank you goes out to Hank DeWild and his understudy
Lance Card for loading all of the scorecards into the computers and
generating the box scores and play by play for all of the fans around the
world who read Al's Fastball. To parlay off of that, thanks much to Al
Doran for posting the updates and box scores diligently for all of those
who couldn't travel to NE Wisconsin. A thank you also to the grounds
crew, Justin Loritz, Josh "Critter" Leiterman, and Charles "Herbie"
Bonlander. As soon as the games were done they were out there chalking,
dragging, and watering to keep us on schedule as much as possible. Also a
thank you to the bartending and waitstaff at CT as well as Brock "Shift
Manager" Bisick, Bryan Lemmens, Matt Warpinski, and Steve Enz for handling
the beer garden sales.


Thanks to Hank St. Claire for taking care of the recruiting and scheduling
of the umpires, and to all of the blue crew for your service. I think we
all learned at least one thing this weekend as the rule book was pulled
out on a ball 4, ball flies over the fence out of play. You make the
call!?!


A big thanks also goes out to all of the fans that were in attendance.
Hearing your stories of past tournaments and ball in general makes all of
the work of this tournament all that more enjoyable. If you keep coming,
I'm sure Darren will keep doing it.


Finally, without Darren Derricks and the Circle Tap facility there would
be no tournament. His dedication to putting this thing together with the
small amount of people he has to work with is incredible. This tournament
has a very unique atmosphere, unlike you will find anywhere else. First
timers are always amazed and veterans always shake your hand and tell me
how much they love coming to this tournament.


We hope to see you here next year. Good luck to all of the teams the rest
of the way. We hope you had a good, safe time here in Denmark, Wisconsin,
USA.


Zakk
zakkflash(at)greenbaynet.com