2002 Queenstown Classic
Welcome to Queenstown!
What's better than playing baseball with the backdrop of a mountain range that's literally called the Remarkables?
To continue the festivities of the All Star break, all 20 teams head to Queenstown for a rapidfire knockout competition before getting back to business.
The competition is randomly seeded so can offer up some cruel early matches as top teams knock each other out. The 39-36 Tasmania Tigers would have hoped to have stayed on longer than one round but got matched up with the 47-28 Bay of Plenty Steamrollers.
Meanwhile with less of an excuse, the 43-32 Otago Thunderbolts , the pseudo home team, was knocked out in the first round by the 33-42 Sydney City Sharks.
The two conference leaders met each other in the Quarter Finals, the Steamrollers and Zips fought out a tough game but the Steamrollers moved on 2-0.
As the competition wore on, we were left with three of the top performers from the season so far: the Canberra Power, the Auckland Aces, and the Bay of Plenty Steamrollers. Rounding out the Final Four was the Newcastle Ducks.
The Power annihilated the Ducks 7-1 on the back on two home runs from their superstar outfielder Domenic Redelius. Meanwhile, the Auckland Aces took out the Bay of Plenty Steamrollers 3-1 to become the other finalist.
The final was a tight back-and-forth affair as the Aces and Power took turns to hold the lead. They went into the ninth innings tied up at 4-all but with two outs on the board, Canberra Shortstop Jai Collingridge sent a walk-off home run into the crowd to give the Power the prize. A brilliant finale to a very successful tournament.
This isn't the complete tournament (OOTP is having trouble showing all of it) but the Quarter-Finals onwards.
