For 23 years, America’s Finest City Softball League (AFCSL) has hosted the Autumn Classic, one of the largest gay and lesbian softball tournaments in the Western United States. Traditionally, the event is held in early October, right as fall nestles in. This year, however, Autumn has come early – smack dab in the middle of August.

The 24th Annual Autumn Classic will be held Aug. 11-13 at Kit Carson Park in Escondido, the Poway Sportsplex and at Hourglass Park in Mira Mesa.

The reason for the change is simple. A one-time scheduling anomaly has nudged the tournament up the calendar a few months to make way for the Gay Softball World Series, an invitation-only championship tournament held in a different city each year, but always in August.

This year’s World Series will be hosted in Phoenix, and as San Diegans know the weather is so damn hot there in the middle of summer that even Zonies flee the state. So the organizers have elected to hold the championships in October, when players are less likely to melt.

Sympathetic to the scheduling change, for this year and this year only, the organizers of the AFCSL tournament offered to swap calendar dates with the series.

Even with the change, organizers of the San Diego tourney expect the maximum number of teams to participate.

The Autumn Classic is limited to 72 teams, more than 700 players. It is so big, it monopolizes play at three different softball complexes for two solid days, using 13 total fields and at least that many umpires.

Because the organizers of the tournament place a premium on order and organization, they have been careful to not have more teams than they can manage. As a result, the Classic remains one of the most popular stops on the West Coast tournament circuit.

The format calls for two round-robin games on Saturday, with teams set against random opponents. Seeds in the double elimination tournament are determined by the margin of a team’s wins or losses in round robin.

The format guarantees each team at least four games, making the effort and expense worthwhile. And there’s a guarantee: no matter how teams perform Saturday, eliminations won’t take place until Sunday, so teams have a chance to rebound from a poor performance.

In years past, nearly as many teams have come from outside California as have come from throughout the state. This year, however, all but nine will be from either San Diego or Los Angeles. Four of the nine out-of-area teams are from Phoenix, and one is from Tucson.

Whether it is with locals or a smattering of athletes from across the country, every Autumn Classic I’ve played in has been memorable.

In my first year as a player-coach, for example, my team was sponsored by Gary Gilmore Goldsmith, a quality custom jewelry designer in Ocean Beach. As is often the case, my team took on a nickname, the Golddiggers.

That year the Golddiggers played poorly in our first three games on Saturday, making a horrendous 27 errors on our way to losing 8-2, 21-3, and 14-5. We were so bad, three players chose not to show up on Sunday, for what would assuredly be our last game, and likely the end of my short coaching career.

The first team we played on elimination Sunday was sponsored by San Diego Realtor Ken Pecus, who is a heck of a player, too. His team had beat us up during the regular season, but managed to find itself playing us in a sudden-death elimination game at 8 a.m.

Then, something strange happened. We didn’t make any errors that morning, and we squeaked out a 5-4 victory. I don’t remember much after that, because it ended up being a pretty long day. We went on to play eight more consecutive elimination games without a break, and we won them all. A pleasant surprise came when many of the teams we eliminated showed great sportsmanship and stuck around to root us on during our improbable run.

That year, the Golddiggers battled out of the loser’s bracket to play in the championship game against a team that was undefeated in the tournament and had blown out each of its opponents. Of course, they walloped us, 21-1, winning the tournament handily.

After being demoralized and abandoned by some of our own teammates on Saturday, the rest of us came together that “reprieve Sunday,” played as a unit, and started having a lot of fun. Second place never tasted so good.

But we weren’t second best for long. As it turns out, the team that won the championship, a group of players from Seattle, was found guilty by tournament organizers of “stacking” its team. We took possession of the first-place trophy some weeks later, and with great satisfaction I took a picture and mailed it to our three teammates who left us for dead with a note that read, “Never give up.”

I never heard back from them.

Though my teams and sponsors have changed during the years, one thing remains the same. Although we may have terrible Saturdays, there’s always Sunday to look forward to.

You might think I’m bragging. You’d be right. And I’m hardly the only coach with this story. There will be nearly 70 teams at the Classic this year, and all of them will have a story to tell.

Just in case you’re wondering, that was my only Autumn Classic championship, though my teams have finished second and third a few times over the past 10 years. This year my team, sponsored by Flicks, asked to play in the highest, most competitive division. This will be my first tournament managing at this level, but I’m backed by a terrific group of athletes.

While I’ll admit I’m a bit nervous, I take comfort knowing that if things get rough on Saturday, we will not give up. Sunday, anything can happen.