By Derek Thompson | The Selma Times-Journal

Selma will host the Dixie Majors State Tournament for the 17-through-19-year-old ball players Thursday at Bloch Park.

“It’s a good thing for the city,” said Lebo Jones, interim director for the Selma Recreation Department. “The people coming in will be staying at our hotels and eating at our restaurants. This is the fifth or sixth year in a row we have hosted it, and we plan on hosting it every year. It’s a pretty big economic impact on the city.”

When Selma takes the field against Tuscaloosa at 7 p.m., the city will honor the late coach Elton Reece, who served as the director of the Selma Recreation Department for the last two decades, with a new centerfield wall that was built to replace the historic ‘Green Monster’ that was blown down by the wind 10 years ago, and replaced by a chain link fence.

“Dixie baseball had a real good relationship with coach Reece and our department in the past,” Jones said. “It will be a great thing, especially for the people who remember the old wall being up. They really like coming to Selma. A lot of people like to come and play on our historic ball field at Bloch Park. Selma is pretty centrally located in the state so it is just a good place to come and play baseball.”

Selma head coach Scott Gunter said his team is ready for the tournament after practicing hard for the last two weeks.

“They’ve been some hard practices,” Gunter said. “We’ve been working real hard and getting our pitching in shape and working on defense.”

Gunter got an idea of what his opponents are going to bring to the table at the tournament because he watched Tuscaloosa play in its district tournament.

“They look good,” Gunter said. “They bunt the ball real well and don’t make many mistakes and they got solid pitching and solid defense. The pitcher I saw was real good. They could throw it real hard and they had a lot of kids that played college ball.”

The tournament will be double elimination. There will be two games Thursday, three games Friday, two games Saturday and the championship game on Sunday.

The bottom bracket will be the home team until games 10 and 11. Home teams for games 10 and 11 will be decided by flipping a coin prior to each game.

If there are three teams after game nine with one loss each, the team that has played the most games will receive the bye.

“We’re looking forward to a great tournament and the weather is supposed to be nice,” Jones said.

“We’re looking forward to a good time. Hopefully everybody will come out and watch some good baseball.”