FIRECRACKER TOURNAMENT: Wilder baseball welcomes Australians and looks to defend title

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 2, 2019

PORT ANGELES — This year’s edition of the 22nd annual Dick Brown Firecracker Invitational will have a distinct Australian flavor to it.

Three Australian travel baseball teams will be among the six teams at the tournament, which begins at 10 a.m. Thursday at Civic Field. There will be a total of 16 games over four days with the championship game being held at 6 p.m. Sunday.

The gate fee is $5 a day for adults ages 18 and older and there will be full concessions at the stadium every day.

Wilder Senior, which won the tournament in 2018 and 2017, is again the host and this year will be the only local team at the tournament. The Australian teams are Australia Red, Australia White and Australia Black. Other teams are Centerfield (from Woodland) and Lakeside (from Issaquah/Bellevue).

Despite heavy rain coming down on Tuesday, the weather forecast for the weekend looks promising with sunny skies on Thursday and a slight chance of showers Friday and Saturday.

Wilder comes in to the tournament with an outstanding 11-2 overall record, in first place in the Area 1 AAA American Legion league. Those two losses both came against Lakeside. Wilder has beaten Lakeside twice, however, as the two teams are nearly even.

Each team will play four seeding games and all of Wilder’s games are in the late afternoon or evening. Here is the schedule:

Thursday

10 a.m. — Australia Red vs. Australia White

1 p.m. — Centerfield vs. Australia Black

4 p.m. — Wilder vs. Centerfield

7 p.m. — Wilder vs. Lakeside

Friday

10 a.m. — Centerfield vs. Lakeside

1 p.m. — Lakeside vs. Australia Red

4 p.m. — Australia Red vs. Australia Black

7 p.m. — Wilder vs. Australia White

Saturday

10 a.m. — Australia White vs. Australia Black

1 p.m. — Australia Black vs. Lakeside

4 p.m. — Australia White vs. Centerfield

7 p.m. — Wilder vs. Australia Red

Sunday

9 a.m. — Consolation; No. 5 seed vs. No. 6 seed

Noon — Semifinal; No. 1 seed vs. No. 4 seed

3 p.m. — Semifinal; No. 2 seed vs. No. 3 seed

6 p.m. — Championship game; winner of Game 2 vs. winner of Game 3

The seeding games will have a tiebreaker if games remain tied in the ninth inning. During seeding play, a baserunner is put on second base to start each inning. The tiebreaking format will be dropped in Sunday’s games.