National Qualifier Gets Four Berths?

[Manny A]

This weekend I worked an 18 Gold territorial qualifier that ended up with four berths for the National tourney in OKC. It started with 23 or so teams on Saturday. Since the rule changed for 18 Gold where we couldn't use a time limit, we played every game to full completion. It made for a long Saturday.

The way the brackets were set up, Sunday had six teams remaining. I worked the bases for one of the two 8:00 am games (both games were winners' bracket games with undefeated teams). The losers of those games then had to play two other losers' bracket teams at 10:00 am, while the winners earned a berth. At noon, the winners of the two 10:00 am games were to play each other in a losers' bracket final, and the undefeated winners of the 8:00 am game were to square off as well. Then at 2:00 pm, the remaining one-loss teams were to play each other, and the remaining undefeated team was to play that game's winner at 4:00 pm, with an If game scheduled at 6:00 pm.

I was supposed to do the plate for one of the noon games. The problem was that all four teams remaining for noon time games would have earned berths for the National. So that made the two 10:00 am games the real do-or-die games of the qualifier. Our TD kept all eight of us umpires at the game site just in case, because nobody was sure if any qualifiying teams would stick around.

As it turned out, the two 10:00 am games ended the tourney. The undefeated winners of the 8:00 am games left the park right after their games ended without telling anyone if they would be back. And once the winners of the 10:00 am games also qualified, they said they didn't want to play each other. So, four (and possibly five) games never got played. A few of us umpires could have left early, but we had to stick around just in case.

How does a tourney get so many berths? Are there fewer qualifiers across the country this summer? I understand that there is one more 18 Gold qualifier up in Pennsylvania this weekend, and it also has four berths. What gives?