Unique postseason brought everyone together
One in a series looking back at notable individuals, teams and events in Western Pennsylvania high school sports.
Imagine if the PIAA took every team that qualified for the baseball and softball playoffs, brought them to one small area of the state, put the players up in college dorms and had a double-elimination tournament that lasted five days.
That might sound like a farfetched idea, but that’s the way the PIAA playoffs were played out one year.
This month is the 40-year anniversary of the wacky week that was the baseball and softball state tournaments of 1980. The PIAA had never run its baseball and softball tournaments this way before 1980 — and the PIAA never did it again.
In 1980, the PIAA had only two classifications for baseball and softball (Class 2A and 3A) and a total of 64 teams (16 in each class) qualified for the PIAA tournament. The PIAA brought all 64 teams to
Shippensburg and teams stayed in the dorms at Shippensburg University. Games were played on the college’s campus, but also at fields around town.
The tournament started on a Monday and concluded Friday afternoon. If you enjoyed watching high school playoff baseball or softball, this could’ve been your dream week. Five consecutive days of games.
The PIAA did away with the week-long, double-elimination tournament the next year. While the tournament was a great idea that many people enjoyed, the idea had many drawbacks, with money being one of the biggest problems. Schools paid their own expenses, including room and board at the dorms. If a team made it to the final day of the tournament, it had to pay for five nights in the dorms.
The baseball pitching rules of today would also make the tournament hard to pull off now. Softball wouldn’t be a problem because that’s a sport where a No. 1 pitcher works just about every game. North Hills won the Class 3A championship in 1980 and Leigh Curl pitched every inning of every game over five consecutive days.
But baseball was a different story. Although the PIAA didn’t have pitching rules for innings or pitches thrown back then, the tournament could be taxing on a team’s staff. By Thursday, some teams that were trying to fight through the loser’s bracket were throwing third-string outfielders.
Shaler won the Class 3A baseball championship in 1980 and one of the main reasons was because the Titans had a deep and talented pitching staff. Shaler is considered one of the greatest teams in WPIAL history. But consider the week of No. 1 pitcher Wayne Schuckert, who was a ninth-round draft pick of the Chicago White Sox the week before: Schuckert pitched an inning Monday, seven Tuesday and came back on two days rest to pitch seven more in the final game Friday.
Starting in 1981 and through 1988, the PIAA used a format where the tournament lasted two weeks and games were played around the state until the final four teams came to Shippensburg for the semifinals and championship. Since 1989, only PIAA championship games are played at one site.
So, looking back, there were never PIAA baseball and softball tournaments like 1980’s.