Pitcher Saves Best for Team's 1st Final
June 15, 2013
By Andy Sneddon
Special to Second Half
BATTLE CREEK – Connor Foley saved his absolute best for last, much to the delight of longtime Bay City Western coach Tim McDonald.
Foley put on a gutsy mound performance Saturday in pitching the Warriors to a 1-0 win over Birmingham Brother Rice in the MHSAA Division 1 Final at C.O. Brown Stadium in Battle Creek.
“Best game I’ve pitched in my life, and I couldn’t have picked a better day to do it,” said Foley, who went the distance in limiting a formidable Rice lineup to six hits while striking out four and walking one. “Every single pitch – if I wanted it on the outside corner, it was going there; if I wanted it on the inside corner, it was there.”
It was the first MHSAA baseball championship for the Warriors and the first for McDonald, who is 564-198-7 in 21 years at the school. He was recently inducted into the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
“We wanted to get him his first ring,” Foley said. “He just got inducted into the hall of fame, so we wanted to give him something else to be happy about.”
Western got the game’s only run when senior Grant Bridgewater drew a two-out walk in the top of the sixth inning. Bridgewater, Western’s catcher, gave way to courtesy runner David Fegan, a sophomore, and Fegan was balked by Rice’s Dalton Greyerbiehl to second – the first of two costly Rice miscues in the late innings. On the pitch after the balk, senior Brendan Harrison smacked a solid single to center, and Fegan slid home well ahead of the throw.
The confident Foley did the rest. And, as is the case with any good pitcher, he got some help from his defense.
“Once I got that run, I knew,” he said, “I knew we were getting it.”
Foley allowed a one-out single in the sixth, but the courtesy runner was doubled off of first after a long flyout to center fielder Briton Ott to end the inning.
“Throw to contact,” Foley said of his pitching philosophy. “I’ve got a great ‘D’. I knew to throw to contact and they’d take care of it. Before the game I was telling the guys we’d probably need four or five runs because, you know, I’m pitching. But all we needed was one today. Inexplicable.”
The Warriors also had their ace in the hole, literally, with University of Michigan-bound lefthander Brett Adcock – who pitched the Warriors to a 2-1 Semifinal win over Sterling Heights Stevenson on Friday – warming up in the bullpen.
After Foley surrendered a two-out single to Bobby Cross in the bottom of the seventh, McDonald went to the mound to speak with his pitcher, but he didn’t replace him. The next hitter popped out to end the game.
“(Rice) had a left-handed hitter coming up in a couple batters, but to be honest, I don’t think I could have pulled the plug on Connor,” McDonald said. “He didn’t throw a lot of pitches. He deserved to close out a state championship.
“Adcock gets a lot of attention, (and) he deserves all of it, but Connor Foley’s been equal to the task. He’s a great complement to Brett and anybody who knows Connor will tell you you know exactly what you’re going to get. He is a gutsy kid, he’s confident and he’s got a little swagger to him, maybe, but it’s all about him wanting the ball. He wants the big game.”
And for Western, there were plenty of them this year. Saturday’s win was its 35th consecutive. Rice finished 32-8-1.
“I told the guys last night, if we had to play (Rice) in a seven-game series, we might not win,” McDonald said. “But we just had to play them once and beat them once and I’m beyond proud.
“I’ve been proud of every team I’ve coached and I’ve coached some incredible teams. But this team separated themselves. They set the bar. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to coach, but I’m not sure if we’ll ever do the things we did this year. … Maybe people can put it into perspective for me, but I don’t know what else to say about what we’ve done.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Bay City Western sophomore David Fegan slides into home for the Warriors' deciding run in a 1-0 win Saturday at Bailey Park. (Middle) Senior Connor Foley threw a complete game in earning the win on the mound for Bay City Western. (Click to see more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Latest Scheurer Earns Place in St Pat's Fame
May 17, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
PORTLAND – Hopefully Brandon Scheurer always remembers his most thrilling five minutes in high school baseball like they were five minutes ago.
Two years ago, just a sophomore but already playing shortstop for the second time in a Division 4 championship game, Scheurer awaited the ground ball that could clinch Portland St. Patrick’s first MHSAA Finals title.
“There was a runner on first, two outs, and I got hit a ground ball right at me. I'm not going to lie; (I was) a little nervous there and I kinda came up on it a little bit, almost booted it, but I got it in my glove, flipped it to our second baseman and he got the force out at second for the last out,” Scheurer recalled this week. “Honestly, after that it was like blacking out a little bit. I heard the cheers and the roar after we got that last out. We all went and jumped on each other, and after coming out of the pile and kinda coming back down to Earth a little bit I saw my dad and just went over and gave him a huge hug and then saw my Uncle Bryan and gave him a huge hug.
“He's like, all that, everything we’ve done, has been working towards this moment right here.”
Brandon Scheurer wants to enjoy that moment one more time.
Sports, St. Pat’s and Scheurers have been synonymous for three decades. And Brandon, the second-oldest of this next generation of Scheurer Shamrocks present and future, has more than propped up the family tradition.
Scheurer is finishing his fourth varsity season manning shortstop for what is again the top-ranked team in Division 4, and is signed to continue his career at Saginaw Valley State University. Uncle Bryan is in his 15th season as varsity baseball coach, and the team has won nearly 75 percent of its games under his leadership. Dad Mark is Bryan’s forever assistant, plus just stepped down after 19 years coaching basketball including the last 12 guiding St. Patrick’s boys varsity.
Mark Scheurer won nine letters at St. Patrick before graduating in 1989, then walked on at Central Michigan University and played himself into three seasons as a starter. Bryan also was a three-sport standout graduating from St. Patrick in 1996, played on a national championship baseball team at Grand Rapids Community College in 1997 and then starred at CMU while becoming an Academic All-American in 2001.
The family athleticism extends farther than dad and uncle. Brandon’s mother Jill was a gymnast at CMU. Cousin Dylan Carroll played football at Grand Valley State and recently signed a free agent contract with the Chicago Bears. Cousin Chase Fitzsimmons is the Shamrocks’ catcher, and cousin Nathan Lehnert a top pitcher. Both of Brandon’s younger sisters are three-sport athletes. The lone older cousin, Mallory (whose dad Jeff is Mark and Bryan's older brother), was a three-sport athlete at St. Patrick and graduated a year ago.
“I hoped he’d never have that pressure, but some comes with (the name),” Bryan Scheurer said. “But he’s a better high school player than Mark or I were. Mark was just OK, I had more over-the-fence power, but I didn’t have the arm (Brandon) has in high school.
“He’s just a coach on field, just a complete player with all the things he can do to help us win.”
Brandon, like Bryan, was a quarterback growing up but stopped the sport after a broken left femur suffered on a tackle in eighth grade led to three months in a cast with 8-inch pins holding things together. Instead, Brandon spent one fall season as a sophomore running cross country, and all four winters with Dad on the varsity basketball team. Brandon scored more than 1,000 points with an MHSAA record book-qualifying 201 3-pointers over 81 games.
On the diamond, he's a two time all-stater and academic all-stater. This spring, heading into Thursday’s doubleheader against Fulton, Brandon was hitting .569 with 12 doubles, three triples and 29 RBI while leading off, plus had stolen 23 bases. He’d also struck out 43 with just four walks in 21 1/3 innings pitched, and hadn’t given up an earned run mostly serving as the team’s closer.
He’s been around sports since before he could walk. Mark used to hire a student to watch Brandon in his car seat as an infant during basketball practices, and Brandon has been every kind of ball boy and had his dad and/or uncle as coaches in everything going back to at least seventh grade.
A son of two teachers, academic prowess also doesn’t fall far from the tree. Scheurer is ranked second in his graduating class with a GPA over 4.0 and will study mechanical engineering at SVSU. He was a finalist this winter for an MHSAA/Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete Award, given to only 32 seniors statewide.
“We’ve always told him lead your own life, lead your own path, and you’ll be judged accordingly,” Mark Scheurer said. “He’s always been driven by numbers, by academics, wanting to be the best.
“For me and for Jill, it’s just been an awesome ride watching him and being able to be a part of it as a dad and as a coach. People ask me about the stress of it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Brandon’s Scholar-Athlete application essay focused on how Mark taught him at a young age to win with humility and lose with grace, and Brandon said he’s learned most from his dad and uncle how to be a leader and what leadership really means. “There's a lot of things that go into it,” Scheurer said. “The leader isn't just the guy that leads stretches and the guy that's the captain of the team. From the worst guy on your team to the best guy on your team, you have to know how to address every single person and what everybody needs to hear.”
With St. Patrick also finishing Division 4 runner-up his freshman season, and then going 20-8 a year ago before falling in its District, few players in the state have enjoyed as much success or experienced as much at tournament time.
The seeds were planted early, but Brandon especially remembers when he and Bryan – his confirmation sponsor – watched “Remember the Titans” together as part of Brandon’s prep. They were supposed to find and discuss aspects of faith in the movie. They both also remember watching the ending when T.C. Williams High School wins a Virginia state championship, and discussing how it would feel to be part of something like that together.
A few months later, they experienced it themselves at McLane Baseball Stadium.
With some star power plus the deepest bench and pitching since Bryan Scheurer has been coach, they are on track to give it another shot. St. Patrick is 23-1 and opens play Monday in the Capital Diamond Classic against Division 2 DeWitt, before facing Division 3 top-ranked Pewamo-Westphalia for the Central Michigan Athletic Conference championship next Friday. Both should serve as valuable preparation for a run at Division 4.
“I think it's a good start; I don't want to say it's over yet,” Brandon Scheurer said. “This is definitely a good start to the kind of year we wanted to have, especially after last year. (Finishing) 20-8 for a lot of teams is really good – it's a great year. But for how we played the two years before that, 34 wins back to back years, it's just kinda how we got used to playing.
“We want to try to make that run into June again. That's a goal this team has and that I have personally – I want to get back there. I want to try to win another state championship, because that was one of the coolest things that's ever happened. Especially seeing my dad and uncle afterward, the hugs we gave each other, that's something since I've been really little that we've always worked for and tried to work towards.
“They came really close, and to actually get them that was awesome. But I'd love to do it again.”
Geoff Kimmerly joined the MHSAA as its Media & Content Coordinator in Sept. 2011 after 12 years as Prep Sports Editor of the Lansing State Journal. He has served as Editor of Second Half since its creation in Jan. 2012. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for the Barry, Eaton, Ingham, Livingston, Ionia, Clinton, Shiawassee, Gratiot, Isabella, Clare and Montcalm counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Brandon Scheurer in 2017 picks up the grounder that led to the final out of the Division 4 championship game. (Middle) Scheurer, with his parents and sisters, celebrates reaching the 1,000-point milestone this past basketball season.