All-State Tournament: No. 6 Alabama vs. No. 11 Georgia

Previously on the All-State Tournament …

New York, behind the power of A-Rod and the steady excellence of Eddie Collins, took out Dizzy Dean and Arkansas to become the fourth team to advance to the Final 8.

The Empire State joins top-seed California, the Pennsylvania powerhouse and upstart Louisiana, which upset Maryland behind the brilliant pitching of Ron Guidry.

The fifth game of the tournament — between No. 5 Texas and No. 12 Illinois — was played on Wednesday, and it was a classic. The details are below our Alabama-Georgia preview in today’s post.

As always, thanks go to the amazing folks at Strat-O-Matic for simulating the games and turning this whole Battle of the States tournament idea upside down. If you’d like to follow along live, we’d love to have you: Here’s a nifty subscribe button.*

*And you should know — if you listened to the PosCast this week — that Mike Schur and I are cooking up another tournament. In this one, we’re putting together the best NFL teams made up from the top 16 colleges in the U.S. and having Strat-O-Matic play the whole thing out. That tournament might be even wilder than this one.

Preview: No. 6 Alabama vs. No. 11 Georgia

State: Alabama:
Seed: No. 6
Population: 5 million
Hall of Famers: 12

I mean — it’s Alabama vs. Georgia. What more could anybody possibly want?

You would obviously put the heart of Alabama’s lineup up against anybody’s. I mean: Billy Williams, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Willie McCovey? Yeah, that will play.

Alabama also has multiple options at leadoff. You could go with the great Ozzie Smith, who moved his way up the lineup as he improved his hitting through the years. You could go with Willie Wilson, who I think has a viable argument as the fastest player in MLB history (with Cool Papa Bell in another category).