Windom-Fairmont, Luverne-Jackson amateur baseball series to begin

The Windom Pirates and Fairmont Martins have already qualified for the Minnesota Class C Amateur Baseball Tournament, and the two teams will play a best-of-three series starting Wednesday night to determine their state tourney seeding.

Windom, ranked as one of the state's top squads, sports a 24-3 season record and rallied from a 1-game-to-none deficit to Luverne in their best-of-three state-qualifying series last week. They got the game three victory 9-3 on Sunday as Chase McDaniel led the offense with a 3-for-5 at the plate with two RBIs. Winning pitcher Drew Rothenberger also drove in two runs, and Quintin Tietz and Hayden Tietz both contributed multiple hits.

Fairmont also finished off its state-qualifying series with Jackson with a 9-3 triumph on Sunday. The Martins, who entered the Region 10C playoffs as the No. 2 seed, will now look to leap ahead of the Pirates for state. Windom entered the postseason as the region's top seed. Game 1 of the series is at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Windom's Island Park. 

The fourth-seeded Redbirds and sixth-seeded Bulls, meanwhile, will begin a best-of-three series Wednesday evening to determine the third and final team to represent Region 10C at the state tourney. Game 1 will be at 7:30 p.m. in Luverne.

The 2026 Amateur Baseball State Tournament is scheduled to take place Aug. 21-23, Aug. 28-30 and Sept. 4-7 in Chaska, Jordan, New Prague and Shakopee.