The Central Crew made their way to Bethalto, Illinois for the next stop on our summer road trip. We experienced our first taste of the Illinois wind, but it didn’t keep any of the young baseball players away from the field or the baseball youth tents. As the wind settled down, the excitement stayed high for all the cool Topps and Upper Deck baseball cards, thunderstix, posters, and stickers. Every tent was jammed packed. We couldn’t rent out the Louisville slugger bats fast enough so we sent a second crew member over to the Louisville Slugger tents to help move the line along. The highlight of the tournament was the Topps Attax battles that were taking place all afternoon. We have to admit that the kids won a lot more games than the tour members. John Michael won 8 straight games of Topps Attax and was the MVP of the day. You could look around at all the bleachers and notice a sea of green from all the thunderstix that parents and fans were using to cheer on their favorite players.

Every time the tour members turned around we had to fill up our buckets of Topps and Upper Deck cards. The parents seemed to be just as excited for their kids to get the baseball cards as the kids.
Even though we were in Illinois, people all seemed to stop and look at the St. Louis Cardinals hat at our New Era Cap booth. Bethalto, Illinois is a town just outside of St. Louis and we soon found out that many Cardinal fans don’t really like the Cubs or White Sox! They sure do take their baseball seriously.

Keep checking out baseballyouth.com to hear about our upcoming adventures.