Let the frolic and games begin for the 61st installment of the Old Mission Beach Athletics Club (OMBAC) Over-the-Line championship, but with an asterisk.
\nThe city\u2019s asterisk: everyone attending or participating must be over 21.
\nThe two-weekend ball-and-bat\u00a0double elimination jousts begin the weekend of July 12-13 on the sands of Fiesta Island when contenders flex their muscles. Games start at 7:30 a.m. and continue until dark each day.\u00a0 \u00a0
\nSurvivors from the first weekend will pair up with seeded veterans who were excused from early competition.\u00a0That set of rounds take place July 19-20.
\nTournament veteran and champion Brent “Thorney” Thornton will arrive from Milwaukee to compete in the men\u2019s open division, with Stan Sutton from Arizona and local Mike Farrell to complete their team.\u00a0
\nPublicist Sonny Peterson said the field of close to 1,300 teams has been reduced by 15 to 20 underage entries.
\nPeterson said the 40-year-olds category features some of the most seasoned and skilled players in the tournament \u2014 some say its the toughest division of all.
\nBut there is plenty of action to go around in all categories.
\nCamille Medina, winner of 12 women\u2019s open-division titles and one Canalways division crown, and her daughter Marisa Tirri, winner of four women\u2019s open-division titles, as well as Barb Chaub, winner of two OTL titles, and her daughter, will be back.
\nThere are six men\u2019s and four women\u2019s divisions. All but the open division have age requirements. The first weekend\u2019s games are three innings only. The second weekend will stretch to four innings. \u00a0 \u00a0
\nFans this time will be restricted inside the playing area, now classified as the “beer garden.”
\nOver-the-Line is a public event and requires no ticket or entrance fee to watch the games and enjoy the tournament.
\nIt\u2019s billed as a world championship because teams from South America, Japan and Iceland have been entered in the past.
\n“There will probably be 100 teams from Arizona,” Peterson said. “Others have been entered from Nevada and Northern California.”
\nAgain, a beauty contest will determine this year\u2019s reigning Miss Emerson.\u00a0 Over -the-Line is a modified form of softball played on sand between two three-player teams with no base running. The team at bat furnishes its own pitcher.\u00a0
\nThe object of OTL is to hit a pitched ball “over the line” about 18 yards in front of the batter, with just the right stroke of something between a baseball and golf swing within the “foul” lines that roughly measure at 18 yards wide and extend without border.
\nIt is a one-of-a-kind event invented by “beach rats” and played by men and women up to even 70-plus years of age under\u00a0 rules dreamed up by men who lived at the beach.
\nPart of the tradition are the unmentionable team names that might also go “over the line.” \u00a0 \u00a0
\nMany have commented that this event is one of Southern California\u2019s last traditions that is pure and untouched by commercialism.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let the frolic and games begin for the 61st installment of the Old Mission Beach Athletics Club (OMBAC) Over-the-Line championship, but with an asterisk. The city\u2019s asterisk: everyone attending or participating must be over 21. The two-weekend ball-and-bat\u00a0double elimination jousts begin the weekend of July 12-13 on the sands of Fiesta Island when contenders flex […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":269021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"OTL swings into action for annual sandfest","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}