Monday evening, fans at Ricketts Park saw the final two rounds of the Farmington Connie Mack City Tournament, a night closing out the most grueling and exciting week of New Mexican baseball each year (in this writer’s opinion).  Still left on the final evening were the Strike Zone Cardinals of Farmington, the Four Corners Thunder of Durango, CO, and Naataanii, an academy located in Gallup, NM.  These were the three teams most local baseball fans including myself anticipated being alive on the final night of the tournament.

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With the upcoming city league tournament set to begin Wednesday evening, tension around the Farmington baseball community is very high.  The team that wins city receives one of the three Connie Mack World Series berths not requiring a regional title.  It is basically the path of least resistance into the Series, and as a consequence locally based teams put everything they have into this single week of baseball.  In a typical year, only two teams have a realistic shot at winning the event.  Of these two teams, normally every kid on the field and a strong majority of the dugout will ultimately play collegiately somewhere in this country.  At least a kid in the league usually will be drafted each season.  Occasionally a kid will make it to the big leagues eventually.  The point I’m trying to make is that the caliber of the event is high on its own.  When the implications of a World Series berth are taken into account, it makes for the most exciting baseball event of the summer for practically every guy in the Four Corners region who has any remote ties to the sport.

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