Orchard Lake St. Mary's, Grosse Pointe North Follow Aces to D1 Final
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
June 17, 2022
EAST LANSING – For the final time during his high school career, the Brock Porter show did not disappoint.
There was a lot of anticipation for the second Division 1 Baseball Semifinal between Orchard Lake St. Mary’s and Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern on Friday. Casual baseball fans, other teams, and of course professional scouts were in attendance at McLane Stadium to get a look at Porter, a senior pitcher for St. Mary’s and possible first-round pick in this summer’s Major League Baseball Draft.
In his final high school appearance, Porter tossed a no-hitter to help lead the Eaglets to a 9-0 win.
St. Mary’s (43-0), which won the last two Division 2 championships before moving into Division 1 this year, tied a state record for most wins in a season, and will look to set the record and finish this spring unbeaten in Saturday’s Final against Grosse Pointe North.
Porter didn’t blow away Forest Hills Northern (24-12) with strikeouts like he has so many other opponents this year, recording only six. But he walked just two and didn’t allow much hard contact.
“I kind of knew it was coming along once I was pitching a little bit,” said Porter, who has committed to play in college for Clemson, pending his draft situation. “I was just trying to go out there and give everything for my team.”
St. Mary’s opened the scoring with two runs in the first inning when senior Jack Crighton stole home on a double-steal play and senior Ike Irish hit an RBI single up the middle.
The Eaglets tacked on another run in the second inning on an RBI single by Crighton to make it 3-0 before delivering a crushing blow in the fourth.
With the bases loaded and two outs, senior Nolan Schubart blasted a grand slam over the fence in right field to give the Eaglets a 7-0 lead.
“That was a huge hit for us,” St. Mary’s coach Matt Petry said. “It’s a 3-0 ballgame, and to make it 7-0 gave us some breathing room and some room for error.”
St. Mary’s added a single run in the sixth inning to round out the scoring.
Scubart, Crighton and Irish all finished with two hits to lead an eight-hit attack for the Eaglets.
Forest Hills Northern coach John Dolce praised his players for getting the program to the state’s final four for the first time. But Porter was just too much.
“Obviously he’s an incredible pitcher,” Dolce said. “He gets every pitch across. He’s a competitor, and we just ran into an incredible baseball team today. I told our players
it’s not life and death and to just enjoy the experience. We enjoyed the opportunity.”
Grosse Pointe North 8, Battle Creek Lakeview 0
North coach Kevin Shubnell said his team lost the coin flip that determined whether it would be home or away for the first Division 1 Semifinal against Lakeview, but he wasn’t all that disappointed.
“Our philosophy the whole tournament has been to be the visiting team,” Shubnell said. “We’ve won the toss a few times and chosen to be visitors because we felt like our lineup could put up a run or two and give our starting pitcher a little cushion.”
The Norsemen did just that, scoring two runs in the first inning and five runs in the second to jump out to a big early lead.
Grosse Pointe North (23-7) advanced to its first Final since winning it all in 2006.
After getting staked to a big lead, North junior ace Jordan Arseneau – who entered having allowed just one earned run all year – was able to pitch relaxed the whole game.
“It puts a lot of pressure off of me,” Arseneau said. “It puts me into a good mindset that I just have to do my game, throw the ball over the plate and let my defense make plays.”
Arseneau finished with a five-hit shutout, striking out five and walking two.
Grosse Pointe North loaded the bases with nobody out in the first inning on two walks and a hit batter, and then made it 1-0 when senior Luke Babcock walked with the bases loaded.
North then took a 2-0 lead on a sacrifice fly by sophomore Brennan Hill.
The Norsemen took advantage of more Lakeview pitching miscue in the second inning, taking a 4-0 lead on a passed ball and a bases-loaded walk to senior Jake Tedesco.
Babcock drove in another run on a fielder’s choice to make it 5-0, a lead which grew to 7-0 following a sacrifice fly by Hill and an RBI single by senior Bryan Carney.
Grosse Pointe North added another run in the fourth inning on another bases-loaded walk.
“We didn’t play terrible, but we didn’t play great,” Lakeview coach Kyle Kracht said. “It was a tough time for us to not play our best baseball, but these kids have nothing to hang their (heads) on. They did a great job and had a great season.”
PHOTOS (Top) Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Brock Porter makes his move toward the plate during Friday’s second Division 1 Semifinal. (Middle) Grosse Pointe North’s Drew Hill tracks a fly ball during his team’s Semifinal win.
Baseball Remains Front of Tuttle's Mind, Close to Retired Coach's Heart
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
June 29, 2023
BLISSFIELD – Larry Tuttle jogged out of Tuttle Dugout onto the artificial turf at Adrian College and took his spot in the third base coach’s box, looked in at the batter as he approached the plate and clapped his hands.
It’s like he never left.
For more than 50 years, Tuttle occupied the third base coach’s box for the Blissfield Royals. He is the winningest high school baseball coach in Michigan history and one of the winningest prep baseball coaches in America. It’s been two years since Tuttle last coached the Royals, but when the Lenawee County All-Star Game came around this year, and Onsted coach Matthew Randall was named a head coach of one of the teams, one of his first calls was to Tuttle.
“To see him coach third base again for two innings of that all-star game was nothing short of amazing,” Randall said. “I love that man and everything he has taught me.”
Tuttle and Randall faced off about 40 times over the years.
“There’s a lot of respect between us,” Tuttle said. “I was happy to do it.”
Tuttle, 79, is a Morenci native who played baseball and graduated from Adrian College, coached for one year at Temperance Bedford and five decades at Blissfield. He spends a little more than half of the year in Florida these days in a house he owns in The Villages, a retirement community about an hour north of Orlando.
This past spring, Blissfield took a spring baseball trip to Florida and Tuttle was able to come out to the field and watch a few practices.
“That’s the best time,” he said. “I always enjoyed those first practices of each season. People will ask me, ‘But what about the cold? It’s always so cold in Michigan that first week.’ The first 10 days or two weeks or so inside, that’s where we formed our whole season, working on the fundaments and the strategy, getting the kids mentally ready for the season. That was a fun part of coaching.”
He returns home to Michigan each summer to spend time with his kids and grandchildren, including a freshman-aged granddaughter who is showing good things in softball. His roots are in southeast Michigan, and he has every intention of keeping it that way.
Tuttle’s career at Blissfield was nothing short of remarkable.
He coached Blissfield for 54 seasons. It would have been 55, but the 2020 season was canceled due to COVID. The Royals won 1,332 games during his career. They won 33 District titles, 23 Regional championships and seven Finals crowns. Blissfield also won 40 league titles, including in his final season of 2021. His No. 18 jersey was retired by the school district.
In 2015, Tuttle was an easy inaugural choice for the Michigan Baseball Hall of Fame.
This summer, Tuttle returned to Michigan in time to see Blissfield play a few regular-season games and was there when his beloved Royals played in the Division 3 District tournament. He wore his familiar Royals gear. When the Lenawee County All-Star game was played, Tuttle was in his full Blissfield uniform. It still fits perfectly.
“I still enjoy the game,” Tuttle said. “It’s my energy level that just isn’t what it used to be. That’s why I stepped down. I still love the strategy of the game.”
When he’s watching a game, he still goes through every play in his mind and what he would do if he was calling the shots.
“You’re always coaching even though you might a spectator,” he said. “It may not be the right way, but it’s my way. That’s baseball. I love thinking about what to do on this count or that count, to take a pitch or not.
“I see a lot of coaches these days who had played in college. Young coaches coach the college way, but you are dealing with high school kids who may not have a real firm understanding of the game itself. You have to teach high school baseball to college kids. You don’t teach college or pro ball to high school kids.”
Tuttle, who has battled some health issues the last couple of years, misses being in his role as coach.
“I miss the players and the relationships I had with umpires and the other coaches,” he said. “It’s hard to replace that.”
Tuttle is an icon in Lenawee County. When he goes to a game, people gather around him to talk. He still follows the area teams and has a relationship with several coaches and ex-players.
Tuttle enjoyed monumental success at Blissfield. The Royals’ last sub-.500 season was in 1971.
“I know that because I have the records,” Tuttle said. “The closest we came was we were 8-8 one year in the 1980s.”
Tuttle has been a stickler for stats his entire career. Some coaches have a hard time remembering how their team did two years ago. Tuttle knows. He kept intricate stats on every team he’s coached at Blissfield and to this day has them organized only a few steps away from his kitchen table at his home in Blissfield – which is just across the street from the high school and a long home run away from the baseball field that is named in his honor.
“I have a file cabinet full of files from each season and I have the scorebook from every year I coached at Blissfield, starting in 1968,” Tuttle said. “Stats were always important to me, not the wins, but the stats. Baseball stats tell you so much about the game.”
Since stepping aside, Tuttle has had time to reflect on his career.
“I would have never believed I would have coached that long,” Tuttle said. “Then, I sit back and think, ‘That was a lot of wins, wasn’t it?’ I don’t mean that in a bragging way. I think more about it when I go to a game.”
Randall recently announced his retirement from Onsted after 13 years as head coach. Onsted is in the same conference as Blissfield, the Lenawee County Athletic Association, so he had a close-up view of Tuttle in action.
He now has a memory of the last game he coached at the All-Star Game at Adrian College.
“I credit a lot of my coaching philosophy to this day to him,” Randall said. “Our relationship has really grown over the years. I wanted Coach Tuttle to be with me in my final game. That’s why I asked him.”
PHOTOS (Top) Retired Blissfield baseball coach Larry Tuttle coaches third base during the June 26 Lenawee County All-Star Game. (Middle) Tuttle’s jersey is retired during a 2021 ceremony. (Photos by Doug Donnelly.)