FORT MYERS, Fla. – It was back in late December of 1997 when Perfect Game Founder and President Jerry Ford first loaded up his car and made the more than 1,400-mile drive from his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to this Southwest Florida city that sits in Lee County and nestles up against the state's Gulf Coast.

The reason for the trip was strictly business, although any kind of reprieve from the dead of an Iowa winter is always welcome. Ford arrived in Lee County with a skeleton crew of PG associates to stage the first Perfect Game World Showcase. The event was created to provide top high school-aged and draft eligible prospects an opportunity to perform in front of Major League Baseball front office and scouting department personnel.

On Saturday and Sunday (Jan. 7-8, 2017), 100 prospects from the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Brazil will gather at venerable Terry Park near the historic downtown riverfront district to participate in the 20^th annual Perfect Game World Showcase.

The 2017 PG World Uncommitted Showcase and PG National Underclass East Showcase will be held at Terry Park the same two days, bringing to 270 the total number of showcase participants this weekend.

Exactly half of this weekend’s World Showcase class of 2017 prospects are ranked in the top-600 nationally, including 2016 PG All-American Cash Case from Mount Dora, Fla., a Notre Dame signee ranked No. 68. Top prospects remain a top calling card at the event.

The first five PG World Showcases (1997-2001) were held Dec. 28-30 in their respective years before the sixth one (2003) was moved to early January. The event has run uninterrupted for 20 years although the official record books will show there was no World Showcase during the 2002 calendar year.

There were about 115 prospects at the first PG World Showcase in December 1997, all of them from the United States. Over the course of the next 18 World Showcases, players arrived in Southwest Florida from all 50 states, Canada, Japan, Australia, Latin America, South America and Europe. It was the dawning of an era.

“This will be the 20^th holiday season I have spent in Fort Myers and at the World Showcase,” Ford said this week. “You could say that the first World Showcase was the event that put Perfect Game on the map. There are just so many great memories of watching great players back when they were young high school kids.”

Nearly 790 PG World Showcase alumni have been drafted beginning with the 1998 MLB Draft. That number includes 38 prospects selected in the first round and another six that were first-round compensation picks; 121 World Showcase alumni have already made their major-league debuts.

Ford cites Los Angeles Dodgers’ outfielder Carl Crawford (1998 PG World; 2^nd-round 1999 Draft) and Houston Astros’ shortstop Carlos Correa (2011-12 World; No. 1 overall pick 1^st-round 2012 Draft) as two of many young prospects who enjoyed breakout performances at the PG World Showcase, talent displays that opened scouts’ eyes and greatly enhanced their draft standing.

That first World Showcase in December 1997 also set in motion what has become a mutually beneficial business relationship between Perfect Game and the offices of the Lee County Sports Development department. Jeff Mielke, the Executive Director of Lee County Sports Development, said this week that PG’s Ford and Lee County Sports Development Director of Business Development Gary Ewen got the ball rolling with constructive conversations in the late 1990s.

The two men soon made the decision to work together to bring amateur baseball scouting events to what were then the under-used MLB spring training fields and stadiums in Fort Myers.

“We’ve just always had a great relationship,” Mielke said of the PG-Lee County partnership. “We’ve tried to get (PG) whatever they’ve needed when they’re here, and we’ve tried to make sure the kids and the parents and the scouts have everything they can possibly want from a community. In turn, (PG) continues to evolve as one of our best business partners when it comes to sports tourism in our community.”

Over time, the number of events increased from the stand-alone PG World Showcase to other showcases and ultimately to dozens of summertime tournaments. The PG Baseball Championship Series (BCS) Finals anchor that summer schedule with the PG World Wood Bat Association (WWBA) Underclass World Championship held every October serving as the flagship tournament.

The prestigious PG National Showcase and PG Junior National Showcase have been staged at jetBlue Park for the past three years and return there again in June for what amounts to a 10-day run. PG Series events, PG Super25 tournaments and the first 14u PG Select Baseball Festival held over the Labor Day weekend have also helped fill the schedule. And it all started with the 1997 PG World Showcase.

One of Lee County’s top draws is its 39 county-managed playing fields at sites like Boston Red Sox’s jetBlue Park Player Development Complex, the Minnesota Twins’ CenturyLink Sports Complex, the Player Development 5-Plex and the Terry Park complex; jetBlue Park, Hammond Stadium and City of Palms Park stadiums are all first-class. The fields are maintained at MLB standards, and the young players clamor for any opportunity to perform on them.

“Baseball is our business and we’re incredibly proud of our facilities,” Mielke said. “We don’t look at them just as spring training facilities, we look at them as 365-days-a-year baseball facilities that we can generate sports tourism business with.”

Earlier this week, Mielke provided PG with numbers from 2015 (and into the first week of 2016) that illustrate conclusively just how important Perfect Game's relationship with Lee County is, without forgetting that the relationship is very much mutually beneficial.

The 2015 PG National Underclass Showcase-Main Event (Dec. 28-30) and the 2016 PG World Showcase, PG Uncommitted World Showcase and PG National Underclass East Showcase (Jan. 2-3) generated 2.445 hotel room nights and $829,356 in direct visitor spending. During the entire 2015 calendar year (the most recent year complete records are available) PG hosted 31 events in Lee County that generated approximately 62,000 hotel room nights and $26 million in direct visitor spending.

“Perfect Game is more than a business client to us. They’ve kind of become part of the Lee County family a little bit,” Mielke siad this week, noting that relationship was conceived in late 1997, before the inaugural PG World Showcase. “We’re excited to expand into all sorts of different realms; the Perfect Game relationship is really very special to us.”

Over the last 20 years, Perfect Game has organized other showcases that have exceeded the World Showcase in terms of its prominence as a national scouting event, but the country’s scouting community will never take the World Showcase –and its international flavor – for granted. And Perfect Game will never take Southwest Florida’s contributions for granted, either.

“Fort Myers and Lee County have been such great partners for the past 20 years,” PG’s Ford said. “We couldn’t ask for a better relationship and we are so thankful. Also, we greatly appreciate the large number of MLB scouts that attend the World Showcase each year; many of them have to been to well over a dozen of them.”

Added Mielke: “Many of the (young) major-leaguers today – the rookies and college graduates and the draftees – know Fort Myers, and it’s because of Perfect Game and our relationship with them. We’re absolutely proud of that and we’re glad that we’re on the map as a baseball town and as a great tournament and showcase host.” This weekend at Terry Park, the tradition continues for a 20^th straight year.