Cowboys hoping to ride into Battle Creek
May 18, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
At least once a week, former longtime Detroit Western International baseball coach Ziggy Gonzalez stops in to Cowboys practice to offer a taste of the program’s history.
“Big Dad” coached the 1972 team that fell 3-1 in the Class A Final and the 1973 team that advanced to the Semis. Among his former players was the late Todd Cruz, who earned a World Series ring as part of the 1983 Baltimore Orioles.
“I tell these guys, we don’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been,” current coach Juan Carlos Sanchez said.
Detroit Western is attempting to go somewhere a Detroit Public School league team hasn’t been in a while – and hoping to accomplish a feat no PSL school has attained before.
The Cowboys, recipients of this week’s Second Half team High 5, are 22-4 heading into this afternoon’s PSL Semifinal matchup against Detroit Cass Tech. Western hasn’t lost a league game in at least five seasons – but took that success to the next level last season when it came within an out of advancing to the MHSAA Division 1 Semifinals at Battle Creek’s Bailey Park.
Western led Temperance Bedford 2-0 in their Quarterfinal before falling 3-2 and ending the season 18-13 overall. Remembering that day, the Cowboys break huddles now with “3-2, Finish!”
“It’s been their focus and drive all year,” Sanchez said. “They’ve been determined to get back, and once I explained the magnitude of making history like that (as potentially the first champion from the PSL) … that’s something they want to be a part of.”
And the Cowboys have a number of reasons to anticipate this final month of the season.
Of 16 players, 14 were on the team during last season’s run. They are led by a strong core which will be back in 2013 as well – juniors Hector Gutierrez Jr. and Jose Ramon Morales, and sophomore Luis Chapa, the team’s top three pitchers and 2-3-4 hitters in the lineup. Gutierrez and Morales man the middle of the infield for the second straight season.
Their only losses this season were to No. 10 Macomb Dakota during spring break and then to top-ranked Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice. Sanchez purposely has tried to fill the schedule with strong competition, and the Cowboys should get a look at more top teams at Saturday’s Warren Mott Invitational.
They put in the work. Sanchez said he got texts all offseason from players asking for the key to the school’s batting cage. Seniors and juniors have led conditioning on off-days.
And they’ve got tradition and support. While the state rankings are filled with teams from suburbs and small towns, those from the state’s biggest cities frequently struggle. But southwest Detroit is a baseball community. There’s a thriving men’s league, and Sanchez – who grew up there, attended Detroit Catholic Central and played baseball at the University of Detroit – said it’s common to find pick-up games on Saturdays and Sundays.
"(Baseball) is something bred in us,” he said. “It’s passed down from generations, not just from dads but moms as well. It gets fed to them every day.”
Before last season, the Cowboys had come close to breaking through to the season’s final week during Sanchez' decade coaching in the program – and last season’s run sent the players’ confidence soaring.
Next month, they hope to take another championship step.
“We set the expectations high early,” he said. “We’re not just content to be a good city team. We want to win statewide.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Sophomore Tratez Henton stands in against a Detroit Martin Luther King pitcher this season. (Middle) Coaches speak to the team after its win over King. (Photo courtesy of the Detroit Public School League.)
St Mary's Completes Championship Climb
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
June 15, 2019
EAST LANSING – By the time the final weekend of the baseball season came around, Orchard Lake St. Mary’s was a juggernaut.
The young but incredibly talented Eaglets showed that by defeating their final two opponents by a combined score of 18-1, including an 8-1 victory Saturday against Grand Rapids Catholic Central in the MHSAA Division 2 Final at McLane Stadium.
But after a 7-9 start to the season, what seemed inevitable by the end looked far from certain.
“That Ohio trip (on spring break), we really just kind of bonded closer,” St. Mary’s sophomore second baseman Alex Mooney said. “We said, ‘Enough is enough, we’re not losing anymore,’ and that’s actually what we did – we haven’t lost since. You see all the talent, you see all the (college) commitments and stuff, and it’s like, ‘Why aren’t we winning?’ Then it finally just clicked, and everything just came together.”
St. Mary’s (34-9-2) finished the season 27-0-2 over its final 29 games to claim the fourth Finals title in school history, and first since 2015.
"It’s good putting it all together,” Eaglets coach Matt Petry said. “At the beginning of the year while we were struggling, we would get good pitching and we wouldn’t swing. Or we would swing and we wouldn’t get good pitching. For the last two months, we’ve kind of put it all together and we’ve won every type of game possible, and the guys were just really confident coming into this weekend.”
That confidence was evident Saturday, as the Eaglets were always in control against the Cougars thanks to strong hitting and a stellar pitching performance from freshman starter Brock Porter. In six innings of work, Porter struck out seven while allowing five hits, three walks and one run.
“I definitely have confidence in Brock,” Mooney said. “He’s no normal freshman, so I don’t think the stage ever gets too big for him. He’s going to be a stud.”
Senior Dillon Kark closed the game, allowing one hit before forcing a double play ball to end the seventh inning.
Petry said he had complete confidence in Porter, despite his age, but he also knew he had the full strength of his deep pitching staff at the ready thanks to a complete-game outing from Thursday’s starter Logan Wood.
“Brock has thrown great for us,” Petry said. “That was his first start in the playoffs, but he had three wins prior to today in relief. We really couldn’t make a bad decision, whether we wanted to start Brock or Anthony Fett or Mikey Gall, we were confident in all those guys, but we went with Brock. It started with Logan Wood on Thursday going a complete, that way we had the whole rest of our staff available. Some very talented guys and guys with experience. After Brock we had Dillon Kark closing it out, which was very valuable.”
St. Mary’s bats wasted little time getting going, as they scored two runs in each of the first three innings to jump out to a 6-0 lead.
Senior catcher Harrison Poeszat opened the scoring with an RBI single, and Kameron Arnold, who came in to run for him, made it 2-0 with some heads-up play. After he stole second, the throw went into the outfield and Arnold took advantage of the confusion to run home.
Mooney drove in a pair of runs with a single in the second inning, and the Eaglets added two more runs on an error in the third.
Catholic Central (27-11) got on the board in the fifth inning with a sacrifice fly from Kyle Tepper that drove in Nate Trudeau.
Jack Mooney put St. Mary’s up 7-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning with a sacrifice that scored Grant Henson, and an RBI triple from Nolan Schubart in the bottom of the sixth closed out the scoring.
“We looked at their lineup before we played and we saw that the bottom of their order, 7-8-9, were seniors,” Catholic Central coach Tim MacKinnon said. “When you have seniors hitting 7, 8 and 9, you have a pretty decent ballclub, and we knew that. We had seen them play Thursday, and we knew that they would come out swinging the bat, and they did. We didn’t get the results we wanted, but we got a good effort out of Joe Collins. But a couple of balls got left up, and they tattooed them a little bit and got some runs early. Then we had to fight back from there.”
Mooney led the way for St. Mary’s with three hits, while Schubert had two. Cole Sibley added an RBI.
Brenden Leonard led Catholic Central with two hits.
“We had a great season,” MacKinnon said. “We ran up against a really nice ballclub. Matt Petry does a good job with his team, and they played all aspects of the game very well. Porter did a great job, they hit the ball extremely well today and played good defense. After the game, I told (my team) they had a good season, and you don’t throw one season into a situation where one last game means everything for the season.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Orchard Lake St. Mary's Brock Porter makes his move toward the plate Saturday during the Division 2 championship game. (Middle) The Eaglets' Cole Sibley (9) slides into second base as Nate Trudeau awaits the throw.