Today the Michigan State Major Baseball tournament has been reduced from sixteen teams down to eight. The top two teams in each of the four pools have now advanced to the single elimination part of the tournament.

Yesterday's games had many rain delays with the final game of the day being called in the 5th inning because of darkness. District 9 Georgetown was playing District 5 Taylor NW but because Taylor had already been eliminated by having two loses in pool play, the outcome of the game wasn't going to change anything. Both teams agreed that it was best for the kids to just shake hands and call it a day. Georgetown advances with a 3-0 record. The other teams to advance are District 11, Marquette (2-1), District 6, Gross Point Park (3-0), District 4, Birmingham (2-1), District 14, Bay City SW (3-0), District 7, St. Clair Shores (2-1), District 16, Tecumseh Area (2-1) and District 1, Midland NE (2-1). Midland advanced because the other three teams in their pool also had a record of 1-2 and it came down to a tie breaker.

I am in the 6 PM game between Bay City SW and Birmingham and will be at First Base. My partner, Pat Griffin will be behind the plate and this will be a battle of undefeated teams. The weather shouldn't be a factor today with the forecast calling for partly sunny sky's with a possible isolated shower or thunderstorm. The highs should be 76 to 80 with West winds 5 to 10 mph. But as we say in Michigan, if you don't like the weather, just wait around 5 minutes because it will change.

By the end of the day today, we will be down to 4 teams and they will play tomorrow with the 2 winners moving on the Championship game on Wednesday. If I was a betting man, I would say we will see Bay City SW and St. Clair Shores in that game. They were the teams I had for the 8 inning game on Friday. But this Little League - and I am not a betting man!