One of my favorite weeks of the year–every year–just wrapped up.  The 2010 UIL State Baseball Championship tournament came to a conclusion on Saturday evening in the glove of Mark Blackmar in mid-flight over the left center field turf at Dell Diamond.  Corpus Christi Carroll’s Blackmar went airborne to make a remarkable catch that robbed Evan Rutter of Klein of an extra-base hit, two RBI, and snuffed out any chance the Klein Bearkats would rally to capture their second state championship in school history.

That would be just the final fond mental snapshot I’d carry away from the 2010 tournament.  But it won’t be the lone one.

Perhaps because I love baseball more than any other, I enjoy the UIL baseball tournament as much or more than any other UIL event each school year. (Apologies to my daughters and the Cypress Falls band, but the UIL band competitions are a distant fifth for me.  Maybe if I could get a press pass a little more easily for them…)  And, maybe because I love the game so much, I’m happy to spend as much time in the ballparks as possible.  So even the games that can tend to bog down and drag on don’t really bother me.  (Wednesday of this past week would’ve been the exception to this rule; rain across central Texas delayed the games and made for a late night.)

Besides all that, there are always a steady stream of colorful characters you get to meet or reacquaint yourself with, from UIL officials to coaches to media types to stadium personnel.  Some genuinely make you happy to see them and catch up on what they’ve been up to for the previous weeks or months; others just provide a great show.

I love a great show!  Thanks to all of you (and you know who you are) who put on a great this past week, or gave me some new stories to regale my grandkids with in my old age.

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Here are just some of the observations/memories, on-field and off, from Disch-Falk and Dell Diamond…

On Wednesday, I renewed my long-lost appreciation for artificial-turf playing surfaces.  Disch-Falk is a 1970s-era field with the dirt cutouts around home plate and the bases.  Everything else is green carpet–er, FieldTurf.  While that type of surface mocks baseball traditionalists, it also makes for easier recovery from a deluge of rain, which is exactly what happened in Austin that morning.  So while the rain slowed us down a little, thanks to the layout of the field, and the handy blow torch the UT grounds crew used to dry out the pitcher’s mound, the UIL was able to avoid losing a day of play and scramble to reschedule (or relocate) the tournament games there.

On Thursday, I learned that ESPN trumps anything related to the UIL at Disch-Falk.  With the Longhorn baseball team hosting an NCAA baseball super regional, beginning Friday, ESPN production people descended on the stadium on Thursday to set up.  And they were allowed to move, prod and generally push around everyone else in order to get the stadium ready for Friday.  I’ve made a mental note that it’s an attitude I’ll have to correct when I run that place.

Also on Thursday, I saw perhaps the best matchup in a state championship game in any classification.  Giddings and Pleasant Grove hooked up for the Class 3A championship and held each other scoreless for eight innings before Pleasant Grove would push across a pair of runs in the top of the ninth and capture the crown with a 2-0 victory.

On Friday and Saturday, at Dell Diamond, the fact that the Houston area had two representatives at the tournament made things interesting.  And both the semifinal games were everything you could hope for, unless you were a Clements fan hoping for a win.  But the Rangers played a whale of a game that concluded a great season.

Each game came down to the final at-bat and each game saw a walk-off, game-winning hit.  One finished in a positive manner for a Houston team; the other was the most heartbreaking of defeats.  Clements gave up three runs in the bottom of the seventh inning and lost a 3-1 lead to Corpus Christi Carroll.

Carroll would ride that momentum to a state title over Klein the next day and celebrate a big victory as only high school kids can.  And the lights would go out on a very entertaining week.