When it comes to youth baseball, New Mexico is growing, no question about it. For 18 years, Farmington has hosted the Connie Mack World Series, and for the last two years, Albuquerque and Rio Rancho have played host to the Don Mattingly World Series, a tournament for 17-year olds on the verge of becoming seniors in high school.

These tournaments are good for the state in more ways than one. New Mexico has proved to be an attractive destination for such events. The weather is generally pretty cooperative and these tournaments add to a growing tourism industry in this state, something more important than usual in these economic times. And the out-of-staters can get introduced to New Mexico delicacies such as green chile...not a favorite of mine admittedly, but there's nothing wrong with trying new things.

As for the Don Mattingly World Series, it's an outlet for high school seniors to be to showcase their skills to potential colleges looking for talent. If you have talent to play baseball and you can get a college scholarship to play, you can really make mom proud and dad happy in sending a kid to college and not having to pay for it.

And one other benefit to these leagues and tournaments...they keep kids active during the summer instead of doing things they shouldn't be doing, like getting into trouble. There's nothing wrong with exercise over video games.

So get out and support these tournaments. You just might see a future college or pro baseball star. Hey, they have to start somewhere.

I've been doing sports for over 20 years and I've never come across an unusual a day as we had Saturday. Here goes some of our 10 p.m. rundown of stories.

Manny Ramirez plays for Class A Inland Empire against Lake Elsinore and hits a home run in his first at-bat. Good for Manny, bad for Albuquerque because he couldn't do it here, and bizarre because Manny still isn't talking about his 50-game drug suspension from Major Leauge Baseball.

Former Moriarty High baseball standout Kyle Blanks shines for the San Diego Padres against the Texas Rangers. Blanks had two doubles and three RBI's. Good for Blanks, always good to see a local kid do well.

Albuquerque boxer Hector Munoz was to fight Demetrius Hopkins, nephew of Bernard Hopkins, in Atlantic City. Didn't happen. Demetrius got busted at his hotel room on a warrant for non-payment of child support. Hopkins didn't make the weigh-in and Munoz was left holding the bag. We'll call that bad for Munoz, even worse for Hopkins, and bizarre all the way around.

Former Lobo football star Hank Baskett marries Playboy playmate Kendra Wilkinson at the Playboy mansion in Beverly Hills. Good for Hank, hoping he finds the love of his life in Kendra, but bizarre too. Face it, Lobos don't marry Playboy playmates every day.

Other than all that, a pretty normal day. What will Sunday bring? That's why we do this in order to find out.

In case you haven't noticed, we in the KRQE Sports Department are a very busy bunch this week as it's state high school spring sports championship time.  Just to see how busy we are, check the schedule of events here on krqe.com under "news links."  It's up to us in the media to portray these events and it's quite a responsibility!  But it's a responsibility we plunge into with both feet.  If you get a chance check out one of these championships in person.  Odds are you'll find something you'll like, whether it's baseball, girls softball, boys and girls golf, boys and girls tennis, and boys and girls track.  You get to see some of the state's top athletes taking part in sport in its purest form, something these kids will remember for the rest of their lives.   In these championships, you can see drama and emotion that tops most anything you'll see on television.  And as for the kids, they're learning life lessons, namely that hard work and dedication to a craft pays off.  There may be winners and losers on the scoreboard, but ultimately all these athletes are winners just for getting to these championships this week.  They deserve your applause, they certainly get ours at KRQE.

The Championship game for the A.P.S. Metro Baseball Tournament was phenomenal Saturday.  I got there in the 6th inning, La Cueva down 6 runs to Rio Grande.  Not for long.  Two homers and 7 runs later, the Bears are up one, heading into the top of the 7th.  Not for long.  An unexpected, 2-run, Raven round-tripper later, it's R.G. up one run.  Meanwhile, with some questionable calls and some heated arguments, the Rio Grande manager is eventually ejected.  Plus, there was an awful lot of back-and-forth between fans of both schools.  To cap things off, in the bottom of the 7th, the Bears get a walk-off, game-winning single and take the big trophy home.  If this was a preview of the 5A State Championship game (as many people think), count me in.

And we got you covered!

Beginning Thursday look for the 2009 High School Basketball Championship coverage here: KRQE Preps Sports - with Adam Shadoff, Doug Strickland and Devon Armijo.

• Girls and Boys Brackets
• Extra video highlights from the games next week
• Photo galleries
• Extra reports from the games
• Daily blogs
• Live Chat - all day - on championship day Saturday March 14th

All your High School Hoops action right here!