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