2002 ASA Super College Station, TX
They do big things in Texas, and in this tournament scoring runs by the bunch is just what Long Haul/Taylor Bros/Shen Corps/TPS did on route to this ASA Qualifier’s Championship, now making it two for two in 2002. Long Haul was led by MVP Jimmy Powers. Jimmy is truly amazing continuing to be one of the best hitters in the game and surely has been a great pick-up for the Long Haul squad. This looked to be a whole team effort as everybody contributed in their line-up. They played some of the games on fields with the wind blowing out. They also played some games with the wind blowing in. They did not hit that many homeruns in these conditions. This tournament was played on 300′ fields using a .40 core Worth gray dot ball. The conditions definitely helped with the high scores with the wind blowing out. It also contributed to a couple of low ! scoring games due to the wind blowing straight in, but it made no difference to the Long Haul bunch. Finishing in second place was a very, very good Class A team, Mountain Top/Advanced/TPS. This ball club will contend all season long and are capable of winning a NIT at the Super level. This bunch has a lot of talent who can play the game. This is another great merger that just made this team very competitive and able to compete with anybody. Getting the third spot was another good team Budweiser/Absolute/Team Experts/Worth. They came up short in a tough game against Mountain Top/Advanced/TPS. Make no mistake about it the Budweiser team is very good and will be knocking on the door all season. Finishing in fourth place was another one of those good A teams, Doc’s/Mizuno who also have some very good players. Sterling’s boys always find a way to win when it counts. We’ll see what happens this year. I have s! aid all season long that there are about 20 solid teams who can play every weekend and we wouldn’t know who would be the winner. If these 20 teams got together on a small baseball field with backed up bases, it sure would be a lot of fun watching. You can call these teams whatever you want AA, Major, A, I don’t care. To me there’s three super teams and the rest are A teams, just my opinion!
I would like to see this for one weekend; Budweiser, Chase, Team Mizuno, K&G, Twin States, Mountain Top/Advanced, Pov;s, WW Gay/Aubrey’s, Florida Heat/Joe Blacks, Doc’s, New, Smokes, Mid-South, Suncoast, C&M/Tommy Currid, Creative, O&S, Hudson/Taco Mac and more. This would make for one of a hell tournament. I know there are some of the teams I listed that may not be able to win , but they will be very competitive with anybody. Anything can happen and will happen playing in these conditions on baseball fields. One weekend without the Big 3, and let’s see what this would look like.