Monroe High Memories Remain Rich for Michigan's 1987 Mr. Baseball

By Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com

July 22, 2024

WHITE LAKE – Dan Hilliard’s time came before Twitter, before computers were part of everyday life and almost before there was such a thing as Mr. Baseball.

Made In Michigan and Michigan Army National Guard logosBut he fit the bill perfectly.

As legendary Monroe Evening News sportswriter Bill Brenton once wrote about Hilliard’s Monroe High School baseball career, “a complete list of accomplishments would overload this word processor.”

Hilliard was an outstanding pitcher at Monroe High School during the late 1980s. He never lost a game his junior and senior seasons on the mound. He was an all-state choice and after his senior year was named Mr. Baseball, the second recipient of the award that has been handed out by the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association since 1986.

Scott Salow, the head coach at Homer High School when the Trojans won 75 straight games and his sport’s national coach of the year in 2005 by the National High School Coaches Association, was a high school teammate of Hilliard.

“He was absolutely dominant,” Salow recalls. “Our best overall player. He could hit and run as well.”

Hilliard was as surprised as anyone to learn he was Michigan’s Mr. Baseball after his senior season.

“I didn’t know there was any such thing as Mr. Baseball,” Hilliard said.

After going 9-0 with a 1.42 ERA and a .506 batting average in 1987, Hillard was invited to play in the MHSBCA All-Star Game at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. At a pregame dinner, one of the board members pulled him aside and told him they were going to call him up to the podium and introduce him as Mr. Baseball.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, OK,’” Hilliard said. “I didn’t really think baseball had that award. I didn’t really think of it.”

Hillard was a pitcher-outfielder for Monroe. For his career, he went 27-2 as a pitcher and had 57 stolen bases in 60 attempts.

“To me, I didn’t think I did anything super crazy,” he said. “I was part of a really good team. We put together a lot of wins. To me, I was just a part of the team. I didn’t think I stood out more than anyone else. It’s humbling to think back on those times.”

Longtime Blissfield coach Larry Tuttle – who has the most wins of any high school baseball coach in Michigan history – coached Hilliard in American Legion ball. Tuttle’s Blissfield team won the prestigious Monroe Auto Equipment Co. Baseball Tournament during Hilliard’s senior season, but Hilliard received the Most Valuable Player Award.

“He was very deserving of that honor,” Tuttle said. “He was a great pitcher, the best around. We recruited him to play summer ball with us.”

Tuttle was on the Mr. Baseball selection committee when the award began.

“We met and talked about it and decided we needed to do something to honor the best player in the state,” Tuttle said. “Dan was no doubt deserving after the season and career he had.”

Hilliard headlines in the Detroit Free Press on June 18, 1987. (Hilliard grew up in Monroe, near the shores of Lake Erie, playing recreation baseball during the week and on a travelling “all-star” team that a few parents would organize on the weekends. As a youngster he played in the famed Monroe County Fair All-Star Tournament, which dates back to the early 1960s and is still going strong.

At Monroe, he couldn’t play high school baseball until his sophomore season.

“Back then, the high school was only sophomores through seniors,” he said. “I wasn’t at the high school as a freshman.

“I was a little intimidated at first,” he added. “It didn’t take long for me to realize I did belong up there on the varsity. I was the youngest guy on the team, so a few guys took me under their wing. I had a great time.”

Hilliard went 4-2 as a sophomore hurler for Butch Foster’s Trojans. His junior year is when he shined the brightest, going 14-0 on the mound with a 0.69 ERA and 155 strikeouts. He easily was picked as the player of the year by the local newspaper. He followed that up with another undefeated senior season and then joined Tuttle’s Blissfield-based American Legion team for the summer.

“I put together three pretty good years,” he said. “That was that.”

He made the short drive to Blissfield one afternoon for a game.

“It was my night to be on the mound, so I was in the bullpen warming up and Coach Tuttle came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I need to talk to you.’ That’s when he told me I was picked for the East-West All-Star game. I thought, well, that’s pretty cool,” Hilliard recalled.

Once in Detroit, the all-star players got together for a workout, then went to a banquet where Hilliard was announced as the statewide player of the year.

“A lot of the guys there were guys I had never heard of or never played against,” he said. “They were from different parts of the state.”

Hilliard went to Central Michigan University to play baseball, but never donned the Chippewas uniform. When his sophomore season rolled around, he transferred to Spring Arbor University near Jackson, where his older brother and Salow were playing baseball.

“I thought it was a better fit for me,” Hilliard said. “It ended up being great. I loved playing college baseball.”

It was at Spring Arbor where a teammate introduced him to his future wife, Elizabeth. They moved to White Lake soon after where they still live and have raised three children, ranging in age from 20-28. Sports remained a big part of Hilliard’s life. His two daughters both played volleyball in college, and his oldest daughter is now a coach at a university in Illinois. His youngest daughter plays college beach volleyball in North Carolina. His son was a three-sport athlete in high school who studied turf management at Michigan State University.

Hilliard works for an electrical supply house in Waterford.

“Things are going good,” he said. “It is a very nice place to live. There are a lot of lakes around here.”

His Mr. Baseball plaque hangs on the wall in his basement, right next to a photo of him at Tiger Stadium with the rest of the East-West all-stars.

“It pops into my head every so often,” he said of his high school days. “I pay attention to the local high schools up here and see who’s playing well. I think about those times a lot. I don’t talk about them often, but I think about it.”

He doesn’t have video clips of games he pitched, but the memories are strong.

“In this day and age with internet and YouTube and all these videos, you see a lot of great players in the state,” he said. “I wonder what it would have been like if I would have been in this modern day.”

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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Dan Hilliard pitches for Monroe High as a senior in 1987; at right, he holds up his Mr. Baseball Award that continues to hang on a basement wall. (Middle) Hilliard headlines in the Detroit Free Press on June 18, 1987. (Top photos courtesy of Dan Hilliard. Clipping courtesy of the Detroit Free Press.)

Pitchers Provide Offensive Sparks Too as Algonac, Bridgman Advance

By Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com

June 15, 2023

EAST LANSING – For Algonac junior pitcher Josh Kasner, his bat proved to be the perfect medicine for what was ailing him on the mound during a Division 3 Semifinal against Lansing Catholic on Thursday.

Kasner labored through the first three innings of his start, but then new adrenaline on the mound came after what he did at the plate in the bottom of the third inning at Michigan State’s McLane Stadium.

With two outs, two strikes and two men on base, Kasner launched a 3-run home run just to the right of the foul pole.

Kasner settled down on the mound after that, with the home run and his pitching being the difference for Algonac in a 4-1 win over the Cougars that earned the Muskrats their first appearance in a Final at 11:30 a.m. Saturday.

“It was a fastball inside,” Kasner said. “To be honest, I was sitting on fastball and adjusting to off-speed. It was my pitch, and I got it inside the foul pole. I knew that once I got that home run, we were up 3-1, I settled in and I was going to be fine.”

Indeed, as Kasner didn’t allow Lansing Catholic much of a threat after he threw 55 pitches, walked three and hit two batters through the first three innings. 

Kasner makes his move toward the plate. Over the last four innings, Kasner didn’t walk anybody and allowed only one Lansing Catholic batter to reach second base. 

“I think he was stressed a little bit,” Algonac head coach Scott Thaler said. “You get to this point, I think the zone is where it should be as opposed to sometimes where it is during the season. He got the idea of what a college zone is like, which should help him out in a couple of years.”

After Kasner’s blast, Algonac added another in the fifth inning when junior Matt Rix reached on a bunt single, stole second, took third on a sacrifice bunt and then scored on a passed ball to give the Muskrats a 4-1 lead.

Lansing Catholic scored first in the top of the third inning, grabbing a 1-0 lead on an RBI single to right with two outs by senior Drew Burlingame. The Cougars later loaded the bases with two outs in the third, but Kasner got out of the jam with a strikeout. 

Sophomore Drew Tolfre allowed just four hits in a complete-game effort for Lansing Catholic (23-6.) 

“He had two strikes on (Kasner), but he kind of missed his spot a little bit,” Lansing Catholic head coach Randy Farlin said. “But you can’t fault him. He pitched a helluva game. We just didn’t have the bats. One run is not going to do it for us. We just didn’t put it all together today.” 

Click for the box score.

Bridgman 3, Standish-Sterling 2

Bridgman didn’t get a hit until the seventh inning of its Semifinal against Standish-Sterling.

But all Bees (32-9) needed were two hits during that set of at-bats to move on to their first Final since 2011. 

With the score tied 2-2 and a runner on second base, freshman Cooper Allwood delivered the game-winning single to left with one out, scoring junior Alec MacMartin to give Bridgman the victory. 

MacMartin started the inning with the first hit of the day off of Standish-Sterling sophomore starter Sam Briggs, and then was sacrificed over to second. 

“We were just having fun and getting comfortable in the situation,” Allwood said. “Just never giving up. We’ve been in games like this before. Nothing new.”

Bridgman’s Alec MacMartin delivers a pitch during the day’s last Semifinal.After neither team collected a hit through the first three innings, Standish-Sterling got something going in the top of the fourth.

Junior Cooper Prout led off with a double, and then sophomore pinch runner Brecken Stokoszynski scored on an RBI single by senior Brayden Schabel. 

In the bottom of the fourth, Bridgman put runners on second and third with two outs after an error and a hit batter, but a flyout ended the threat. 

In the fifth, Standish-Sterling took a 2-0 lead when a fly ball by Briggs just eluded the Bridgman left fielder down the line, scoring sophomore Brock Bartlett. 

The Bees answered in the bottom half of the fifth, tying the game at 2-2 without registering a hit thanks in large part to three infield errors by Standish-Sterling. 

An RBI groundout by Allwood made it 2-1, and then Bridgman tied the game at 2-2 following another error with a runner on third and two outs. 

The score remained that way until Allwood’s single in the seventh.

“We were just missing that timely hit,” Bridgman head coach Justin Hahaj said. “We finally got it.”

MacMartin got the win on the mound for Bridgman, allowing four hits, walking one and striking out six in a complete-game effort. 

Briggs lost for the first time this year, striking out eight for Standish-Sterling (29-15), which fell in the Semifinals for the second-straight season.

Standish-Sterling head coach Ryan Raymond said it was more than just four errors that cost his team. 

“We didn’t hit in the right spots either,” Raymond said. “We had some opportunities to get some hits and knock some more runs. It’s a team effort.”

Click for the box score.

PHOTOS (Top) Algonac’s Josh Kasner rounds third base during his home run in Thursday’s Semifinal win over Lansing Catholic. (Middle) Kasner makes his move toward the plate. (Below) Bridgman’s Alec MacMartin delivers a pitch during the day’s last Semifinal. (Photos by John Castine/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)