Firecracker Classic local Legion baseball tourney hoping for good competition - and good weather

In most years, rain probably wouldn’t be a major factor in an American Legion baseball tournament scheduled for the first week of July in the metro-east.

But this isn’t most years and heavy rains have wiped a lot of games off the schedules of local teams battling not only opposing pitching, but some crazy wet weather as well.

The fourth annual American Legion Southwest Illinois Firecracker Classic wood bat tournament begins Friday at three local sites — Whitey Herzog Field in Belleville, Moody Park in Fairview Heights and Hopkins Field at Gordon Moore Park in Alton.

Local host teams are the Belleville Hilgards, Swansea-Fairview Heights Giants and the Metro-East Bears.

Each five-team pool will produce a champion that advances to Sunday’s semifinals along with a fourth team gaining entry via wild card status. The semifinals are set for 11 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. Sunday at Moody Park in Fairview Heights, with the championship scheduled for 3:30 p.m.

Weather permitting.

“We’ve played a total of two days at home all year, three games total,” Swansea-Fairview Heights manager and tourney organizer Craig Steiner said. “That’s it.”

“I can’t remember the last time we played a home game, it might have been one of the first two weeks of June,” Belleville manager Zach Rakowski said. “It’s supposed to rain a bunch on Thursday and if it does, Whitey’s not going to be playable.”

Bryant (Ark.) is the two-time defending tourney champ and also is coming off a state championship Legion season.

In fact, Bryant is one of three teams in the Fairview Heights pool coming off Legion state championships. Illinois champ Barrington and Jefferson City (Mo.) are the others. Fairview Heights and Festus (Mo.) each had third-place finishes at state last summer.

“That’s a pretty powerful group,” Steiner said.

The Alton pool is also strong with the Metro-East Bears and Mount Vernon.

Steiner is trying to come up with alternative plans with more rain in the weekend forecast. Those plans include gaining access to the artificial turf field at Blazier Field in O’Fallon.

“We’re trying to put rain plans together right now and come up with some alternative locations,” Steiner said. “It’s a tough call that we’re going to have to make on Thursday sometime.”

Steiner said the tourney continues to grow in popularity and geographical reach.

“It really has come to be one of the better ones in the Midwest,” he said. “We’ve had teams from Minnesota and West Virginia and Arkansas. We had a team from New Jersey that wanted to come out this year and we couldn’t accommodate them.”

Belleville is 19-4 overall and 3-1 in District 22 play. The Hilgards advanced to the 2014 tourney semifinals as the wild card, then lost to West O’Fallon (Mo.) in the semifinals.

In their three seasons in the tournament, the Hilgards have advanced to the semifinals twice.

“Probably the best thing about it is you see other teams that you don’t normally get to see,” Rakowski said. “You get to measure yourself outside of the normal landscape of teams that we play.”

Belleville’s biggest offensive weapons have been Sam Haudrich (.478, 17 RBIs, 27 runs), Spencer Piquard (.425), Matt Klosterman (.424, 20 RBIs) and John Dozier (.345, 17 RBIs).

The pitching staff has been led by Klosterman (3-0, 2.38 ERA), Wyatt Parker (3-0, 1.58 ERA), Austin Keen (1-1, 1.38 ERA), Josh Davinroy (2-0, 2.45 ERA) and Luke Vallandingham (3-1).

“We’ve gotten really good pitching and we’ve been consistent with throwing a lot of strikes,” Rakowski said. “It’s timely hitting, too. We’re not going to lineup and get a ton of extra-base hits. When we have opportunities to move guys along and get them in, we’ve got to do that. We’ve done a really good job of that so far.”

Rakowski likes being able to showcase his team’s home field, located in Citizens Park.

“Any time you get to play home games at a tournament, and we play at one of the nicer fields, it’s nice to be able to show that off to people,” he said. “You also get to play some high-level teams and bring them all to you. It helps you get ready for the playoffs with the intensity level that you’re going to need in those games.”

Swansea-Fairview relies heavily on returnee Kyle Boewe (.462, 18 RBIs), newcomer Derricke Rozycke (.383, five doubles, 12 RBIs) and Blake Deatherage (.255, 11 RBIs).

Pitchers Miles Brunk (3-1, 2.10 ERA) and Mitch Harlan (2-0, 2.41 ERA) have been sharp thus far.

“Any consistency is almost impossible right now with the weather,” Steiner said. “It’s hard to get your pitching rotation going and getting plenty of innings for kids to throw. At one point we had 16 straight games canceled over a 13-day period. With short seasons like we’ve got, it makes it really hard.

“I know we’re not the only ones going through it, everybody is.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Firecracker Classic local Legion baseball tourney hoping for good competition - and good weather."