Berkley Dads' Club Summer Classic Baseball Tournament Celebrates Community

Berkley will be the destination this weekend for Little Leaguers in Michigan. Teams from all over the state are gearing up for the Berkley Dads' Club Sixth Annual Summer Classic Baseball Tournament.

The tournament is going to be the biggest it’s ever been with 40 teams from around the state of Michigan playing on and s Friday through Sunday.

“It’s obviously the most significant thing we do all year,” president of the Berkley Dads' Club Sam Veltri said. “We have teams throughout Metro Detroit and in many cases from other parts of the state coming to play.”

Veltri credits tournament director Steve Goedker for making the event something that teams now circle on their calendars.

“It takes lots of planning year-round,” Veltri said. “Steve works tirelessly putting this thing on.”

Goedker has run the event since its inception and remembers when he struggled to get 18 teams to fill the field.

“We had 18 teams the first year and it took us until the middle of June to get it filled up,” Goedker said. “This year, we have 40 teams and we were pretty much full around the middle of April, about two-and-a-half months before the tournament, a lot of that is word of mouth.”

Typically the Summer Classic features six divisions (9-and-under, 10-and-under, 11-and-under, 12-and-under, 13-and-under and 14-and-under) with six teams per age bracket. The interest for the 12-year-old and 13-year-old divisions was so great this year that they actually had to expand the field in both those age brackets to eight teams.

“Two of the divisions (the 12-year-old and 13-year-old) filled up 4 months ago,” Goedker said. “I threw it out there if we wanted to expand those divisions by two teams.”

All teams play at least three games and the tournament runs in a pool format. 

“In each division, there are two pools (with three teams each) and each team plays both the other teams in their pool,” Goedker said.

The top two teams in each pool move on to a semifinal round and the winners move on to play in the finals. There’s also a consolation game for the teams with the bottom records in their respective pool. Championship games will be played Sunday starting at around 1 p.m.

The tournament receives a lot of support from the community. The Berkley Dads' Club has about 80 volunteers lined up to help run things. 

People interested in taking in the action this weekend can just walk up to the fields. There’s no charge for attendance, but the Berkley Dads' Club will be running concession stands.

Goedker expects attendance for the event to run between 1,000 and 1,200 people. 

“The purpose was never to make a lot of money.” Goedker said. “We don’t have a gate. We do end up making money, but that’s not the primary thing. We want to give Berkley kids a tournament to play in locally.”