The 1937 Claxton Shield was the fourth annual

Claxton Shield The Claxton Shield was the name of the premier baseball competition in Australia held between state-based teams, as well as the name of the trophy awarded to the champion team. From the summer of 1989–90 until 2001–02, and again since 2010 ...

, an Australian national

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...

tournament. It was held at

Unley Oval Unley Oval (also known as Wigan Oval under a naming rights agreement), is a multi-use stadium in Unley, an inner southern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. It is used for lower-grade South Australian Grade Cricket League matches, but its ma ...

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater A ...

from 7 to 14 August, the second time Adelaide had hosted the Shield.

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

won the Shield for the first time.

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to ...

joined the tournament for the first time, becoming the fourth state to be represented. The other participating teams were

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

and hosts

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

Format

With the introduction of a fourth team to the tournament, changes were made to the format used in the three previous years. The four teams played a round-robin schedule, meeting each other team once, with two competition points were on offer in each game. The points were awarded as follows: * Win – two points * Tie – one point * Loss – no points At the end of these preliminary games, the top two teams played each other to determine the champions, while the remaining two teams faced each other to determine third place. In the event of a tie between teams in terms of points, the

tiebreaker In games and sports, a tiebreaker or tiebreak is used to determine a winner from among players or teams that are tied at the end of a contest, or a set of contests. General operation In matches In some situations, the tiebreaker may consi ...

used would have been the net runs for and against, with the team achieving the greater value placing in the higher position. This became a factor in the final preliminary game, between South Australia and Victoria. If South Australia had won, they would have tied with New South Wales and Victoria on points. Given the previous results in the tournament, South Australia needed to win by four or more runs to overtake Victoria on for and against, and therefore meet New South Wales in the championship game. Leading 1–0 in the bottom of the ninth inning, South Australia intentionally allowed Victoria to score a run to tie the game, and force

extra innings Extra innings is the extension of a baseball or softball game in order to break a tie. Ordinarily, a baseball game consists of nine regulation innings (in softball and high school baseball games there are typically seven innings; in Little L ...

. The plan failed though, as neither team was able to score any further runs, and the game was called after 14 innings because of the light. As a result, Victoria and New South Wales contested the final.

Format

Results

Preliminaries

Finals

Third place final

Championship game

References

Bibliography