Pittsburgh NABA Steel City Classic » Ben’s Blog

Steel City Classic 2009: Post [4] updated as of July 29th 2:13am

ben4 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:27:53 +0000

We have confirmed BWP bats as a sponsor; they will donate prizes for Championship MVP, and Slugger Awards. The prizes will be bats. We are still negotiating the exact number of bats, but at the very least they have been gracious enough to offer two bats per division. these bats will be much more functional than a plaque.

I am unsure if we are also offering plaques for individual awards.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are on board.

they are entering a team in the 18AA division.

Actually the organization is offering discounted tickets to all teams who register in time to get to the St. Louis Cardinals’ game at PNC Park on Friday at 7:05.

The Bucs-Cards game is also knit ski cap night – all fans in attendance will receive a free knit ski cap.

We are trying to lower the entry fee as you read this.

We will have an updated teams list by the end of the week.

More as it develops.

We are the only Labor Day amateur baseball tournament on the east coast providing the opportunity for free Pittsburgh Pirates knit ski caps.

Steel City Classic 2009 post [3.5]: More info…Updated

ben4 — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:27:46 +0000

The 2009 Steel City Classic is a wood bat tournament.

Out of town teams who are interested as of 7/16 at 2am:

Two 18A teams from Erie’s adult league
one 35+ from Erie-Buffalo
18A from Youngstown
Saxonburg of the Butler Eagle League has committed to play 18AA.

The Broadhead Bombers or the North County League will play in either the 18A or 18AA division
The Pittsburgh Rangers want to play 35+

***

We will have anywhere from 4-7 teams comprised of local Pgh NABA players to add to the 18A, 18AA, and 25A divisions.

So we have 7 non-Pittsburgh NABA teams, we’d like to at least double that and get some money into the pockets of the service industry workers in town.

We have sent out 100’s of emails and are going to start following up with phone calls.

The guys down at the league office have put our tournament on the national website

i still don’t see why our tournament is “regional” and not “national”, when we have a better product – better, at least, than the last tournament in AC, we’re making certain of that.

We even have a casino now.

We traveled the farthest of any of the teams in AC, so by my definition of regional, the tournament was just that.

the extra 35 or however many points towards the national rankings is what makes the AC Tournament national and ours regional.

The Pittsburgh Blues are ranked 16th overall, and 11th in the 18+ division – nationally.

we talked to the Pirates today and we are negotiating a deal for discounted tickets, then they tried to give us Freddy Sanchez – more on this as it develops.

After the way Pittsburgh handled the last Atlantic City Tournament, you’d think we’d get some more love.

I can’t imagine how much other shit they have to do at national besides cater to us, so whatever.

We appreciate their hard work.

Quack.

Steel City Classic 2009: post [2] Field info and Awards

ben4 — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:33:15 +0000

Where will we play and what do we get if we win?

Right now we have obtained the LaRoche College field, and Highfield Park fields #1 and #2.

We will add more fields of this caliber depending on how many teams enter the tournament.

We will award pool champion prizes, the division champions and runner us will also get awards, along with gold glove and mvp awards, this will include T-shirts, and a trophy/plaque of some kind that is sure to be mantle-worthy.

We are in the process of soliciting more awards/prizes from sponsors and we will have a nice package to offer the winning teams.

Steel City Classic 2009: Post [1]

ben4 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:27:40 +0000

Hopefully if you are reading this you are going to enter a team in the 2009 Steel City Classic over Labor Day Weekend.

Perhaps you are considering entering a team, and have been directed here by our league site, or the emails we’ve been sending that hopefully haven’t wound up in too many spam folders. Please allow me to introduce myself before i get into some tournament specs.

I am Ben, I have churned out 100’s of posts on this site . While I am a member of the Blues, I play first and foremost for the South Oakland Ducks (14-7), who will be fielding a team for the Steel City Classic.

It’s great to be in the midst of a pennant race, and to be involved in organizing the Pittsburgh NABA’s tournament hosting debut.

I have been named Team Liaison by The Commish. So I suppose I should be a bit more diplomatic than I am on my blog where I mostly try to incite riots with photoshop and satire.

My function as far as I can tell is to serve as the utility player of the Tournament Committee – I’m versatile, I can help in any number of ways, or I’ll find someone who can.

this is my picture (Photoshop me!)

I’ve played in the Pittsburgh NABA since its inception in 2003, I founded the Ducks, coached the team from ‘03 to ‘07, and I am still very involved with the organization. As soon as I handed over the coaching responsibilities the Ducks renaissance began. Along these lines, I acted as tournament director for the Pittsburgh Blues prior to the Blue Gray Classic, since no one else wanted to do it, and when i handed that off to Ben Sorosky the Blues promptly won the 2009 Atlantic City Memorial Day Tournament.

I am still involved with the Ducks and the Pittsburgh NABA. I’ve played on each of the four tournament teams our league has fielded, the first two unsuccessful teams in the early days before we became the Blues, and the last two teams that played very well, posting a 6-3 record including a championship over two tourney’s.

Our League has gotten a lot better over the years. If you are at work and want to kill some time read this it is a solid recap by Blues/Ducks OF Rob Swanger. He provides a great narrative of our league and how it has grown etc…

After a solid but disappointing showing by the Blues at the 2008 Blue Gray Classic, we got the idea to host a tournament, and started doing preliminary research on the logistics of running such an event in our city.

When the Blues won the AC Tourney, we figured it was time and when we made the decision to go through with this there was a Labor Day Tournament void created by the collapse of the Blue Gray Tournament, strike while the iron is hot, right?

We have played in four of these things and have had experiences ranging from frustrating to phenomenal.

We’ve tried to make everything as geographically-centralized as possible, and the fields we have acquired for our tournament are in fantastic shape. Short of the minor league parks and major league spring training fields we’ve played on, the fields we have acquired for the Steel City Classic are as good as any I’ve played on in my NABA tournament career.

The most non-baseball fun I’ve had at a tournament was in Phoenix, thanks in part to the atmosphere in at the bars surrounding ASU’s campus. We have many bars and many college girls in Pittsburgh.

Not a bar person? There are plenty of alternatives in our fine city.

It is worth noting here that I grew up in New Jersey, and Pittsburgh is significantly less expensive.

For instance, a tin of Skoal in Pittsburgh costs 3.50, whereas its over 5 in Jersey. Not that I advocate tobacco use, especially not by minors.

You can get a beer for a dollar in pgh, and we have a casino coming soon. So the down time in Pittsburgh will be much cheaper than in say Atlantic City, where we played over Memorial Day, and while we don’t have a beach, who wouldn’t want to spend a day swimming in one of our three beautiful rivers? – (now slightly less polluted than the Jersey Shore!)

Ideally, people will leave comments here, and we will address any concerns and answer questions, this post is just to get started really and to provide a forum for comments and feedback from our Tournament Committee, there are many things I’ve left unaddressed, so poke around on the site and if you can’t find an answer let us know.

Right now were in the process of finalizing sponsorships to try to get more free stuff for the teams that enter our tournament, and recruiting teams.

We promise fantastic tournament t-shirts!

Pittsburgh is a great city, and we have great amateur baseball here.

We look forward to beating seeing you at the 2009 Steel City Classic!

joe, mike, vinny – feel free to edit this – bg

What is Ben’s Blog, and Who is Ben?

jgraff — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:30:11 +0000

Rather than have a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page, we thought it would be best to allow to to interact with one of the original Pittsburgh NABA Players, and certainly its most proficient blogger, Mr. Ben Gwin.

Ben the Blogger

Ben is serving as a Team Liaison, and along with Ben Sorosky will be the primary contact persons during your stay in the Steel City. While Mr. Sorosky and the rest of our staff can provide all the concrete details you will need to ensure your stay is organized and well-planned, Mr. Gwin is best suited to provide the color to all things ‘burgh.

Although he was raised in New Jersey, Ben has been a resident of Pittsburgh since his college days, and is well respected in Pittsburgh NABA circles. He operates and writes for the Pittsburgh NABA’s most popular blog (www.southoaklandducks.com), and is known for his candor and insightful looks into the world of NABA baseball.

Please feel free to post comments for Ben to reply to, and check back often to see what topic our resident blogger will be musing on next. And of course, feel free to voice all your questions for everyone to see, and either Ben or one of our others on staff will be sure to reply.

Happy Blogging!