The American Baseball Association’s inaugural season officially kicked off Saturday April 4 at 10:15am with the first pitch thrown by Bakersfield Elite’s, Zachary Dorlis. It was an awesome day for baseball at one of the most prestigious youth baseball facilities in all of California, the Northwest Bakersfield Baseball Complex.

On the first day of pool play in the beautiful 80 degree weather the top spot in the 12u under division came down to the wire with the Bakersfield Bulldogs and the Bakersfield Cubs both going 2-0 with only 8 runs allowed. A coin toss had to decide who would be the 1 and 2 seeds and the Cubs came out on top.

In the 11u division the Bakersfield Blaze cruised to the top spot going 2-0 with only 2 runs allowed. The rest of the division was a grind with 4 teams going 1-1 including the young guns from the 10u Bakersfield Blaze who stepped up to the challenge of playing in the older age bracket.

And wouldn’t you know it the young 10U Blaze kept on rolling right into the championship game on Sunday against none other than their older counterparts, the 11u Bakersfield Blaze. It was a Blaze showdown and the 10u’s got off to a quick start putting up two runs in the top of the first but a plethora of hits from the 11u’s surrendering 13 runs.

The 11u Bakersfield Blaze went 4-0 for the tournament scoring a blistering 57 runs while only giving up 6. Those 57 runs were due in large part to the three tournament Co-MVP’s, that’s right 3 tournament MVP’s all of whom batted over .800 for the tournament. Congratulations Cody Riley, Wes Bradford, and Patrick Renier for being the 11u tournament MVP’s and congratulations to the 11u Bakersfield Blaze for a dominating performance.

In the 12u division the Santa Clarita Bandits took down the powerful #1 seed the Bakersfield Cubs in the semi-final game in a come from behind win scoring 5 runs in the last inning to advance to the championship game against the Bakersfield Bulldogs.

Having already played 4 games and being up since 5am to make the drive up for an 8am game the Bandits were tired and down to the last of their pitching with a powerful and worthy adversary ahead of them, the Bakersfield Bulldogs.

But being tired meant nothing to the Bandits, the Bandits wanted to represent their city proudly and oh did they ever. The Bandits came out quickly and put up 4 runs in the first and never looked back. They scored 2 more runs in the 2nd and 5th inning in route to an 8-5 championship victory. Congratulations to the Santa Clarita Bandits for a hard fought 1st place finish.