EDWARDSVILLE – The Metro East Bears will open the Illinois American Legion District 22 baseball playoffs at home next Tuesday.
The three teams in District 22 this season – Highland, Belleville and the Bears – all finished league play with 2-2 records, necessitating a tiebreaker to determine the seeding for postseason play. Highland, thanks to their 10-0, five-inning win over the Hilgards last Thursday evening, took the No. 1 seed, with the Bears getting the second seed and the Hilgards the third seed.
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Belleville will take on Metro East at 7 p.m. July 12 at SIU-Edwardsville's Roy E. Lee Field in the playoff opener; the winner will travel to Glik Park in Highland for a game Wednesday night, with the time to be determined. The loser of Tuesday's game will then meet the loser of Wednesday's game on July 14 in an elimination game at the higher seed's grounds.
The winner of the elimination game will take on the remaining unbeaten team July 15 for the District 22 championship at the unbeaten team's field; should the one-loss team win Friday, a winner-take-all game will be played July 16 for the right to advance to the Illinois Fifth Division tournament in West Frankfort running July 18-22. All games will be nine-inning games.
The Fifth Division winner moves into the Illinois State Tournament in Jerseyville beginning July 27 and continuing through July 30, with Jerseyville getting an automatic berth in the tournament under Legion rules. The Bears will host the Great Lakes Regional at SIUE Aug. 3-7, with the Illinois state champion and the Bears (as host team) taking part; the regional champion will advance to the American Legion World Series in Shelby,N.C., Aug. 11-16, with games televised on the ESPN family of networks and streamed on-line via ESPN3 and the WatchESPN app for computers and smartphones.
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