The 14th annual Best of the West Tournament is in the books now, with Team Rainey coming out on top for the third consecutive year. Chris Wright earned MVP honors with an 8-hit, 5 RBI Sunday, while Tony Peeples garnered Most Valuable Pitcher honors, on the strength of his 9 inning championship game win over Casa Trejo.
Casa Trejo’s Mark Bennett had a fine tournament as well, pitching 28 innings, going 3-1 with a no decision. Mark gave up only 3 earned runs in the entire tournament, and walked two, both in the final game. He gave way in the 8th inning of the title game, a bit weary for all the innings pitched.
The new facility at Winchester, CA (near Hemet) was a last minute replacement for the Soboba Sports complex, and got good reviews from those in attendance. (especially the concession manned by Ralph Trejo, Jr. whose culinary skills were on display) Kudos to David Blackburn for pulling this one off, under difficult circumstances, and spending a few hundred extra dollars for “field preps” to make sure the fields were in top shape for each game. The only criticism I heard was the long fences which stole a home run or three. (Didn’t prevent Ralph Salcido from going yard, or Keith Barker from reaching the centerfield fence on a fly, no easy feat). And that is easily remedied by portable fencing. The facility is new, but has modern clean restrooms and three good diamonds, making it tournament friendly. Once the trees around the park mature a bit, there will be shade as well. For this one, it was “umbrella city”.
One final note, was that we ran into an old friend we hadn’t seen in a while, Bob Otto. Bobby, as most of you know is a guest writer and photographer for Fastpitchwest, after giving up his duties as the official photographer for the ISC. (Maddy’s idol, as she often says.) Bob was kind enough to share some of his handiwork with us, which we have posted at the Best of the West pages. (click the title of this story, then the menu buttons at left) The photo collages he did for this one are some of my favorites.
Well, OK, I guess it was more than just one old friend that I ran into at Winchester…..it was good to run into an old Vista Bomber teammate of mine, Russ Snow, who is still winging it, in this tournament for the Edge. Russ spends most of his time on the other side of “the pond”, in England, where he and his family reside. He is still involved with fastpitch in Europe, and makes a few trips a year stateside, finding time to pitch in the Best of the West and the 45+ Nationals. Russ has played for the Vista Bombers, Long Beach Painters, Larry Miller Toyota and most recently, the California Painter team with another former Vista pitcher, Cary Weiler.
Next year will be the 15th Annual Best of the West.