While the rest of Hawaii was going gaga about balls being volleyed by boys in Virginia, I was immersed in my annual highlight of the sports calendar.

The Wally Yonamine Foundation State Baseball Championships returned to Oahu for the first time since 2018 and there has never been a tournament like it.

The proceedings began Tuesday morning when Kamehameha-Maui’s Ziah Chang flied out to Kailua right fielder Kaimana Burgo and ended late Friday night thanks to a walk-off triple by Kamehameha’s Jace Souza. But it was what happened between those moments that kept me grinning ear-to-ear even when I rose at 8 a.m. for the next contest.

NCAA men’s volleyball is played at a high level, the guys are so good that dig, set, spike is rarely interrupted by silly mistakes that occur in prep baseball. Every batted baseball is an adventure at that level, and grounders or pops that little leaguers would consider routine are anything but for these teens. Even tough it seems that a third of all defensive plays could be called errors by a good scorekeeper, another third is occupied by spectacular plays that remind you of Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s brilliance for Mid-Pacific long before he blessed the bigs with the same skills.

It seemed like a lot of the best hitters copied their heroes in Major League Baseball and forgot how to work a count or go to the opposite field. That led to the lowest scores in the history of the tournament and brought drama until the last out. A towering homer is a marvel, but a shutout is a masterpiece.

Because every batted ball is an adventure, putting the ball in play is the primary objective for hitters in the bottom of the order. There were 26 bunt attempts in eight games on the first two days of the tournament, led by Mililani’s six, and Waiakea even had its No. 9 hitter bunt a runner to second with one out in the final inning and down two runs in a park that rarely yields a home run to a schoolboy. Giving up one of your final two outs to gain 90 feet doesn’t make any sense on any level other than high school, and the Wildcats nearly made it work when the next two batters singled to put the tying run on second and winning run on first. The No. 3 hitter lined out to left to end the game.

That’s prep baseball right there. If you wanted the three true outcomes (home runs, strikeouts and walks) that changed MLB you could go across the street to the state softball tournament, but aging Les Murakami Stadium is where you wanted to be if you liked constant chaos.

Waiakea is not alone in heading home with a thousand “what-ifs.” This tournament is different in that six of the 11 games were decided by one run — the most ever, beating the five in 2011 — and four of the seven Division II games had the same slim final margin. The biggest blowout was Baldwin’s 8-2 win over scrappy Leilehua and only one other game had a margin over three runs. How I managed to find my mouth with my ballpark hot dog is a mystery, it was nearly impossible to take your eyes off the field. It was everything Major League Baseball has scrapped its rule book to become.

As perfect as the state tournament is, I couldn’t help but lobby the HHSAA for some minor improvements like wood bats and finding a way to play it on real grass (what is up with that turf at Murakami Stadium? I remember hating it when it was new, and it certainly doesn’t look new any more). But my main request was my most radical.

How about holding the tournament over 162 games beginning in the fall and ending in the spring? We know from the small crowds for the Hawaii Islanders and the wonderful Hawaii Winter Baseball that I might be the only one here with an appetite for baseball every day, but a boy can dream. We would have to worry a little bit about young arms falling off, but given that adults in charge have no problem keeping kids playing ball and riding buses past midnight on a school night I think we have already agreed that their well-being is not the top priority, especially when television is involved.

The ILH hosts the tournament next year, do yourself a favor and go see the true best form of baseball.