Twins host wood bat tourney

The Class AA Glacier Twins have ridden strong pitching, solid defense and some clutch hitting to a 6-4 start on the American Legion baseball season.

First-year head coach Ryan Hadfield wants the Twins' bats in full force before Western AA conference play starts next month, however, and success this weekend would build plenty of confidence.

Glacier is host to the Eighth Annual A and AA Invitational Wood Bat Tournament today through Monday at Memorial Park. The

tourney features eight teams playing four seven-inning games apiece.

"We want to be playing our best baseball, definitely," Hadfield said. "I really want to see us swinging a red-hot bat because we've proven our pitching can keep us in games."

The Twins are in the AA Division, along with the Libby Loggers, the Trail, B.C., Jays and the Rocky Mountain Bandits of Cranbrook, B.C.

The A Division consists of the A Twins, the Mission Valley Mariners' B team, the Kootenai Valley Rangers and the Salmon River, Idaho, Savages.

Teams play divisional opponents once during pool play prior to Monday's championship round. The AA Twins edged the Kalispell Lakers 4-3 in last year's championship contest.

"(Wood bats) change it up for the pitchers a little bit, and my experience is that when the wood-bat tournament is over, the hitters are ready to pick up their aluminum again," Hadfield said.

"Going from aluminum to wood is harder than going from wood back to aluminum."

The A Twins open tournament play at 5:30 p.m. against Mission Valley. The AA Twins battle Libby in the 8:15 nightcap.

Josh Schott (2-1) will pitch against Libby for the third time this season. The Twins beat the Loggers 16-6 in their season opener, but needed home runs by Dustin Von Feldt and Bridger Beach to rally to a 4-3 victory the following week.

"We've played 10 games, and six of them have been decided by one run, so in those one-run games we're 4-2," Hadfield said.

"The good news is, we haven't had one bad outing by our starting pitchers. The missing piece right now is hitting."

The tournament's night games will showcase Memorial Park's new $250,000 lighting system. The project began two years ago and was completed earlier this spring with all installation work performed by the Twins.