We observed two surprising sports outcomes over a 12-hour period of Saturday evening into Sunday morning, one local and the other international, from the other side of the planet. Both results beg for some perspective beyond the final scores.
First off, a Johnstown entry, Mainline Pharmacy, won the AAABA Tournament title by besting traditional champion New Orleans, 3-2, in the Saturday night championship game at Point Stadium.
It was the 78th AAABA Tournament and only the second time a Johnstown entry had prevailed. The other title had come in 2018.
I’m one of many local fans who went from young to old rooting for Johnstown teams that couldn’t win this tournament. As a writer for the local newspaper, I covered many tournaments.
As a AAABA Hall of Fame inductee in 2015, I recall wishing aloud during my acceptance speech that a Johnstown team would win the thing once before I died.
It finally happened in 2018, but that – and Saturday’s win — don’t paint an accurate picture, at least regarding recent Johnstown strength.
There has been a Johnstown entry participating in six of the past seven title contests.
This year, two of the tournament’s final four teams standing were Johnstown entries.
How have we gone from being perennial also-rans to being arguably the most dominant league in the AAABA?
Are we that much better with our local league? Or has the tournament quality declined? Is it a case of not raising the bridge, but lowering the river?
The AAABA is not exactly flourishing. This year, it required two entries each from Johnstown, Altoona and Brooklyn to flesh out the 16-team tournament field.
Look at the history of this event and you will see domination by Baltimore (29 titles), New Orleans (18), Washington (10) and Detroit (7).
Only New Orleans keeps showing up, with the others long ago losing interest.
Part of the AAABA lore is the list of players who went on to play in the Major Leagues. For Johnstown, AAABA records indicate the last alumni to make it to the show from the host franchise were Michael Ryan (Sani-Dairy, 1995) and Mike Holtz and Keith Williams, who both played for the 1990 Pepsi-Cola team.
Going further back, Shawon Dunston, who is listed as playing here for Brooklyn in 1981, was the first overall pick by the Chicago Cubs in the next year’s amateur baseball draft. I can’t imagine the AAABA ever again will be able to claim that level of alumni draft success.
These tournaments used to be frequented by numerous scouts for pro teams. Today, not so much.
Growing up dreaming of a Johnstown title, I imagined a city that would be captivated by the quest. But official attendance figures for the showcase Johnstown games this year paint a different story.
Turnout declined from the traditional opener, part baseball and part social event, which claimed 6,444 paying customers. That was almost cut in half the next night, to 3,445 despite a Johnstown win Monday night.
By the title game Saturday evening, the crowd was reported at just 2,528.
A differing phenomenon was on display as our much-ballyhooed U.S. Women’s National Soccer team crashed and burned in the round of 16 of the World Cup, being hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
This, after we’d been bombarded by promotional ads in recent months how the U.S. women are unstoppable, how the world quivers at their mere mention, and how they epitomize all that is right and fair about sports.
Group play gave an early indication this U.S. team was more bark than bite. There was an unimpressive win over Vietnam, which is to international women’s soccer what Jamaica is to Olympic bobsledding. There also were ties with the Netherlands and Portugal, the latter a near loss when a late Portugal shot bounced off a goalpost.
And then the U.S. women went out in the first round of knockout play at the hands of Sweden, 5-4 on penalty kicks, after scoreless regulation and overtime.
Pockets of cheering were observed online. This U.S. team had more than one political opportunist player, mistaking some degree of athletic skill for the competence to lecture others on societal issues.
Chief among them, Megan Rapinoe, played a central role in the loss by blowing a penalty kick, missing the gaping goal entirely.
Between the politicization of the team, and the overwhelming social justice warriorism in and around it, the loss and the prospect of being spared more lecturing on matters beyond the sport, was a breath of fresh air.
Another aspect of the loss by the U.S. women, overlooked in the bombastic promotion, is that other nations now are taking women’s soccer seriously. This means that, unlike the AAABA, the competition is getting tougher.
I am reminded of the success in women’s basketball by tiny Immaculata College from eastern Pennsylvania, which won three consecutive national titles in women’s basketball in 1972, 1973 and 1974. These were the first national titles contested in the women’s sport.
What changed? Title IX, which passed in 1972, required the big schools to get on board with women’s sports.
UConn, the school with the record 11 national titles in Division I women’s basketball, didn’t field its first team until 1974-75.
Just offering some perspective.
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