The Toledo Glass City APBA Baseball Tournament is in the books! On Saturday after the dust settled, Dick Butler and his 1969 Baltimore Orioles were left standing out of the 22 teams that participated.
I’ve gotten to know Dick pretty well in the last couple years and I can say that he one of the nicest guys in APBA. Well, done sir! Dick beat John Roels and his 1927 New York Yankees in the championship game by a close 3-1 score. Dick tells me that even shortstop Mark Belanger blasted a homer in the game.
Organizer Ron Emch does a great job of documenting these tournaments in video format. In fact, his YouTube channel has plenty of APBA related videos to watch.
Here were the Glass City tournament highlights of the day…
Ron even recorded the entire championship game between Dick and John. For those of you who don’t know John Roels, he has quite a fun, quirky sense of humor. It plays out during the video.
Congratulations to Dick Butler! I’m sure Ron is already planning Glass City III. He’s been doing a great job with this tourney. Keep up the great work, Ron!!
Tom, thanks, for your kind words! It was great to play John in the finals because he is a friend and we play together in a face to face league in Grand Rapids. He is a formidable opponent as he won the 2015 Michigan tournament and he has three of the last four World Series in our league in Grand Rapids. So I was very fortunate to win the championship game and I was fortunate to even make the playoffs given all of the great teams and managers, especially in our division (Norm Zavela, 1905 Giants; Joe Kaplan, 1976 Phils; and Ken Schulz, 1954 Indians). By the way, I think I misled you when I mentioned Belanger hitting a home run. That was not in the finals but it was earlier in the day against the 1905 Giants. I mentioned it because it was a good example of what a good day I was having with the dice which then continued through the finals. Also, when you out-homer your opponents 22-2 in 11 games and you squeak by Christy Mathewson (1905 Giants) twice in the same day, that’s just good dice. And John is a very funny guy.
Thanks for the kind words Thomas. You do a great job of promoting this hobby. BTW, it was 26 teams, not 22. That’s compared to 20 last year. I hope it keeps growing.