Earlier this year policesoftball.com announced it would be naming its “All-Time” team. Essentially we have identified the players who we believe dominated the sport for an era. An era can loosely be defined as, “a period of time characterized by particular circumstances, events, or personages.” So we did not consider players with a short history in our sport. There are certainly some up and comers who will make a run at the “All-Time” team roster in in the future, but we focused on those who already have had a distinguished police softball career.

This weekend PoliceSoftball.com held its’ first Single Agency Tournament. The tourney was geared to be a fun one day event that gave agencies a chance to play with the officers they work with and also gave some local police departments bragging rights. The tournament was divided into “David and Goliath” divisions with David’s being under 300 sworn and Goliath’s being over 300 sworn.

Sin City Combo fought off some quality teams on its way to winning the 34th Annual Police and Fire Games, held in Las Vegas on August 12th-14th. The three day tournament concluded with a 18-6 Sin City win over Quake for the Gold Medal.

Quality, not quantity was the theme of the weekend in Sterling Heights, Mi this weekend. From the opening Ceremony that Honored the sacrifices of Fallen brother and sister Officers, to the final championship games, The weekend seemed to be as good as it could be for everyone that came to the enjoy the tournament.

The 2nd Annual Stanislaus-5.11 Weekday Classic Tournament was played on Friday, August 13th at the Big League Dreams complex in Manteca, Ca. 10 teams played hookey from work to compete on pristine fields against great competition. PS Top Ten West Coast teams West Coast Aftershock, with newly named Hall of Fame member, Jimmy Lemon, Direct Impact and Nor-Cal Choir Boys were on hand to take Concord Combo, Stanislaus 5.11, Combat/Syndicate, DVI, El Dorado S/O and Sac Probation. Rounding out the field was Team RTA, an All-Star team comprised mostly of So-Cal Alliance and HardCor members. In all, 7 out of the 10 teams are World Series bound.

After careful consideration, West Coast Hall of Fame Chairman Anthony Costanzo and his committee has announced the 2010 West Coast inductees for the PoliceSoftball.com Hall of Fame. The newest inductees are:

The chair person takes the top 10 vote getters and submits the names alphabetically with no scores to the committee and requires them to vote either “yes” or “no” for election to the HOF. This process is again confidential and the chair person counts the votes. If the nominee gets “6” or more yes votes out of 11 they are elected to the East Coast Hall of Fame. This year 2 of the HOF committee members were nominees in the process and were allowed to vote for their top 16 and the “yes” or “no” portion but were NOT allowed to vote for themselves. Therefore they needed 6 out of 10 votes.The entire process is completely documented with e-mail copies of votes and excel charts of the results saved by the chair person to prevent any allegations of wrong doings.

This year PoliceSoftball.com would like to recognize every team MVP during the Friday night festivities. Whether a team is the favorite to win the series or likely to go 0-4, they have that one teammate that really stood out above the rest this season either based on talent, play, heart, determination or effort. Many of these players do not get recognized properly for their team first mentality and PoliceSoftball.com would like to change that.

The Policesoftball.com/Easton Summer Classic was played on July 31-Aug 1 at the Big League Dreams venue in Mira Loma, Ca. The Inland Empire area of Southern California is usually very hot this time of the year, but as luck would have it, the conditions were fairly mild. This facility boasts 7 softball fields with a variety of dimensions ranging from the monster Pawtucket field (330-340-330) to the cozy Vero Beach (265-270-265). This tournament was one of two California World Series qualifiers which meant team rosters were strictly adhered to. Teams had to win or lose with their roster players and not ringers brought specifically to win a berth. And, once again this was a provided bat tournament courtesy of Easton Sports and Real Skilz president Armando Acosta. Once again, the provided bats meant there would be no allegations of shenanigans and everyone had the proverbial level playing field.

To commemorate the 2010 season and a new decade of LEO softball, PoliceSoftball.com plans on naming their All-Time Police Softball Team. This announcement will be made at or just prior to the 2010 World Series. It is PoliceSoftball.com’s intention to name one of these teams every 10 years as the passage of time will surely adjust the make up of the team. As when MLB named the All-Century team, there will be some great players and Hall of Famers left off the list. That is one of the biggest difficulties in creating this team. Another difficulty will be putting word of mouth, legend, myth and eye witness accounts into the proper context of ability. Because there are so many great players, this team may have some players playing out of the position they typically played in. For example, there may be two great shortstops considered and both of them may be better than the second baseman considered. For the purposes of this team, it will be comprised of what PoliceSoftball.com thinks the best All-Time team would be.Furthermore, great players of today in their prime may be overlooked or passed on because he will not have the breadth of a career that others may have. Those players will surely be considered when we do this again in 2020. To create this team, we have been scouting, listening, reading and taking in all the information we can. As this year goes on, we will be speaking to many people who we think can give us an accurate assessment of this team. We will continue to do this right up until the team is announced.We plan on documenting this team in the 2010 World Series area of the PoliceSoftball.com where it can be permanently viewed. In addition to naming the All-Time team, PoliceSoftball.com will revive their annual naming of an All-National team.

At last years World Series we asked that all Hall of Fame members in attendance come out on the field and welcome the newest inductees into that exclusive club. This year the World Series will be moving to Las Vegas Nevada and we are expecting the biggest turnout ever in terms of Hall of Fame members being present. To honor and pay homage to our Hall of Famer’s we are planning on a 4-5 inning Hall of Fame exhibition game between the East and West Hall of Fame Squads. All Hall of Fame members are invited to participate in the game. Coaching duties will be handled by our Hall of Fame committees and this game should be a great way to honor our Hall of Fame members and add some fun to our night.

As just announced, World Series VI will be held in Las Vegas Nevada. The Las Vegas Big League Dreams is a new facility with 6 replica fields versus the 5 fields (3 replica/2 minor league) we had in Palm Springs. The extra field will give teams the chance to play every game on a replica stadium, but it will also allow us the opportunity to start slightly later and end slightly earlier on most game days. A big change for World Series VI will be the Platinum and Gold Divisions. The Platinum Division will feature 39 teams and the Gold Division will feature 15 teams. Both divisions will play two games in round robin which will seed them into a double elimination format. Both divisions will also play all three days and the games will be intertwined so every player has a similar experience. What does this mean? This means the games just got that much tighter for the 39 teams in the Platinum Division. It also means it will be a dogfight for the 15 teams in the Gold Division. Nobody should plan on booking flights too early on Sunday because there will be a lot of teams slugging it out on Sunday morning/afternoon. Both winning teams will have their picture grace the home page of PS.com for the following year.