Pointes' Pride Instilled by Longtime Leaders
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
May 31, 2017
GROSSE POINTE – Neither Frank Sumbera nor Dan Griesbaum were raised in Grosse Pointe.
But no one, at least at the high school level, has done more to enhance and promote baseball in the Pointes than this long-serving pair.
Sumbera, 69, is in his 45th season as coach at Grosse Pointe North and Griesbaum, 64, is in his 34th season at Grosse Pointe South. In this sport the rivalry that exists between Grosse Pointe’s two public high schools is as good as it gets. Sumbera holds the upper hand in MHSAA Finals titles, 2-1, and Griesbaum has the edge in District titles, 23-14.
This last statistic is notable in a sense that the two programs are often paired in the same District, as they are this season. South will host North in a Division 1 District Semifinal at 10 a.m. Saturday.
This season there is an added twist to the much-anticipated community showdown. Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett, for the first time, will compete in the Division 1 tournament lined up on the other side of the bracket from North and South. University Liggett will play Detroit East English in the other Semifinal at 11:30 a.m. The winners will play for the title approximately 2 p.m.
University Liggett won four MHSAA Finals titles the past six seasons, two in Division 4 and two in Division 3, including last season in the latter. Coach Dan Cimini, knowing he had a strong team returning, petitioned the MHSAA to opt up to Division 1 for this season and 2018.
So far the Knights have proven they can hang at the Division 1 level. They are ranked No. 2 in the latest poll released by the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association.
And Cimini’s group received a break in the draw as it won’t have to defeat both North and South to win the District title.
This is Cimini’s 14th season as head coach, and he tips his hat to the job Sumbera and Griesbaum have done in laying the groundwork.
“Frank has been there forever,” Cimini said. “Dan has been there a long time. I feel old, and I’m 48. I’ve coached 22 years. No doubt about it, those guys have set the standard.”
Cimini grew up in Grosse Pointe and competed in the city’s strong Little League program. He played for Griesbaum at South and played four years in college, two at Macomb College and two at University of Detroit Mercy. He was part of the 1987 South team that reached the MHSAA Semifinals for the first time in school history.
Cimini said the quality of baseball has remained strong in the community over the years but noted there have been some changes.
“The Little Leagues are phenomenal,” he said. “The Federation ball is phenomenal. But there aren’t as many kids playing. Now there are seven teams playing in the (Little League) majors. Back when I played there were 13 of 14. I miss those days. If I could take myself back, that’s where I’d go.”
At least in the modern era, one must point to Sumbera as the person most responsible for the quality of baseball being played at the high school level.
Sumbera played three sports at Chesaning High – baseball, basketball and football – and then went on to Central Michigan where he played basketball.
Upon graduation Sumbera went looking for a job and received a tip from a college roommate. Sumbera was told that Grosse Pointe High would be splitting into two schools, North and South, and that they needed teachers, and, naturally, coaches. North opened for the 1968-69 school year, and Sumbera was hired as an assistant junior varsity football coach. In 1973 he became the assistant varsity baseball coach, and the next season he took over the baseball program.
“We won the District that year,” he said. “I’ll never forget it. We beat (then Detroit, now Warren) DeLaSalle, 2-1, in the final.”
Sumbera has coached some of the best teams in the state. His 2006 Division 1 championship team was 38-1. His 1980 Class A championship team was probably his best. Five players on that team were selected in the Major League Baseball amateur draft including Bill Babcock, one of the top pitchers on that team. Babcock’s son, Luke, will enter the ninth grade next fall is expected to enroll at North and play for Sumbera.
That’s the way it is in the Pointes. This large community that borders Detroit’s eastside is infectious. It’s common for someone who grew up here to remain in the area and raise his or her own family.
“A lot of the kids I coached in the 80s, I’m coaching their sons,” Sumbera said. “They play a lot of baseball here. As they grow through the ranks to high school, (Griesbaum) and I have to make cuts. You might have 250 at the Little League level, and by the time I get them we have like eight.
“The North-South rivalry is as good as any around. I coach football, and it’s intense every year. In baseball it’s as good a rivalry as there is in the state. It’ll be the fifth time we will have played South (this season). In our last doubleheader we won the first, 12-6, and lost the second, 3-2, in eight innings. That was a crusher. It’s big. The kids know it. The families know it. They all go to church together and play against each other during the summer.”
Griesbaum, a graduate of St. Clair Shores South Lake and Central Michigan, where he played baseball, said the level of competition is remarkable especially when one considers the schools do not have open enrollment. The only way one can play for North or South is to live in the school district.
Griesbaum got his start as an assistant under Sumbera (1980-83) before going to South in 1984.
“There’s nothing like a North-South game,” he said. “Our rivalry is one of the best. It’s a baseball community. My 6-year-old grandson plays T-ball. You look at what North and South have accomplished. There’s the (Grosse Pointe) Farms and City (Little League) teams. Then there’s the success of the Redbirds that (former Detroit Tiger) Dave Bergman ran. We run a (Christmas) Holiday hitting camp. We have 75 kids the first day and 75 more the next. It’s for the second through the sixth grades. We want to expose baseball at an early age.”
Some have expressed displeasure that all three Grosse Pointe schools are in the same district. Cimini scoffs at that thought. He said there are many districts throughout the state that have more than their share of quality teams.
The last two seasons North and South were in separate Districts, and they won their respective Districts both years. In 2015, they met in a Division 1 Quarterfinal, and South won. It was the Blue Devils’ seventh trip to the Semifinals, a record (tied with Saline and Grand Ledge) for a public school in Division 1/Class A.
Cimini said he’s looking forward to seeing what his team can do against the established powers.
“I can’t wait,” Sumbera said. “The whole thing is, come June 3 you have to be ready to play.”
Tom Markowski is a columnist and directs website coverage for the State Champs! Sports Network. He previously covered primarily high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Grosse Pointe South's Dan Griesbaum, left, and North's Frank Sumbera both have led their respective programs for more than three decades (Sumbera for more than four). (Middle) University Liggett coach Dan Cimini played for Griesbaum at South and has built a top program in the community as well. (Photos courtesy of the Griesbaum family, C&G Newspapers and the University Liggett baseball program.
Mullaly's Devotion to Local Sports Burns Brightly with Scoreboard Donations
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
April 11, 2023
HILLSDALE – Sports have always been a big part of Bill Mullaly’s life.
In high school, he played on the 1975 Hudson football team that set a national record with a 72-game winning streak.
He coached an Arizona high school team to back-to-back state softball championships in the 1990s.
And the 63-year-old Hillsdale resident has spent nearly three decades as an MHSAA-registered official in basketball, volleyball, baseball, and softball.
Now, he’s giving back to multiple communities and school districts in southeast Michigan by purchasing and donating scoreboards for use at recreation and high school fields.
"Bill is a great example of everything that is right with sports,” said Pittsford athletic director Mike Burger. “He has so much enthusiasm and love for the game. I have known him a long time and can honestly say he is one of the good ones that I have had the good fortune of meeting along my journey.”
Mullaly decided to start his scoreboard campaign a couple of years ago and, so far, has donated a total of 15 scoreboards to seven communities in south-central Michigan, including four in his hometown of Hudson.
“It’s to make the games more fun and more enjoyable,” he said. “I’ve been to two places this spring where they have scoreboards, but they aren’t working. It’s frustrating. It improves the whole game. It’s for everybody, the coaches, the players, the fans. It helps everybody.
“I’ve got a lot of positive feedback. People are grateful.”
Mullaly said he is fortunate to be in a position to help out the communities. His donations have all been to either recreation fields or high schools to which he has a connection, whether it be where he’s from ( Hudson), where he is a substitute teacher (Litchfield) or where he hosts baseball youth tournaments (Concord).
One of the scoreboards in Pittsford is in memory of his mother, Beverly, a 1948 Pittsford graduate.
“Someone said to me a couple of years ago, ‘What’s your legacy going to be?’” Mullally said. “I started thinking about what I can do to make a difference.
“I saw a lot of recreation fields that do not have scoreboards. Most of them don’t. A lot of schools don’t have a scoreboard, in fact. I looked into the price and what it would take to get them and came up with this thing that I’m going to donate scoreboards to parks. I saw a couple of schools that needed them.”
Mullaly purchases the scoreboards, then leaves it up to the school district or community to install them, which sometimes has been a hangup. In Hudson, he enlisted the help of a friend, Bruce Isenhower, and his son, Ryan, a former Hudson quarterback who now owns a construction company. They’ve put up all four scoreboards Mullaly has donated to Hudson.
“It’s more than just buying it, it’s getting it put up,” Mullaly said. “They have installed them, completed the wiring and it’s great. It’s great to have a working scoreboard there. I’m just trying to give back and make a positive difference.”
His first donation was to Concord, which went to the town’s recreation organization.
“They have five fields and three scoreboards,” he said. “It just adds to the game, the experience. Everyone wants to know the score at these games.”
In Hudson, two went to Memorial Park and two to Will Carleton Park, which is home to Hudson’s middle school and junior varsity softball teams.
Last winter his donation went to North Adams-Jerome for a varsity softball field.
“I’ve been there before,” he said. “The thing barely worked, and you couldn’t see the numbers. I wanted to help them out.”
Pittsford has installed one of two scoreboards Mullaly has purchased for the district for its baseball and softball fields. Quincy and Litchfield are using scoreboards donated by Mullaly. He has also donated a scoreboard to Union City.
“A guy was building a new complex two years ago. I said, ‘If you build it, I’ll donate the scoreboard.’ He said, ‘You will?’ I thought it was great what he was doing, and I wanted to be part of it,” Mullaly said.
Most of the signs include the moniker, “Donated by Bill Mullaly – For the Love of the Game,” which is something he and a friend thought up.
“My main focus was to do it for parks that the rec teams play on,” Mullaly said. “They don’t have a booster club or a budget. That’s how it began, but then I started going around to high schools and noticing they need scoreboards too.
“I get some satisfaction looking out there,” he said. “I feel blessed that I am able to do it. It’s neat when you are umpiring a game and you look out there.”
The first scoreboard Mullaly purchased in 2021 cost less than $3,000. They are now running a little more than $4,000 each.
“It’s useful and practical and can last for years if they take care of them,” Mullaly said.
After college, Mullaly lived for 15 years in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., where he taught and coached softball. He makes a return visit annually to that area and manages to get on the high school softball umpiring schedule while in town.
He retired as a teacher at Homer Community Schools in 2010. In addition to being a substitute teacher at Litchfield, umpiring and working as an official in other sports, he writes about sports for the Hudson Post-Gazette and Homer Index, two weekly newspapers. He’s done that since 1996. He also is a historian for the Hudson football team and area athletics.
He’s never far from some aspect of sports.
“I’m just trying to give back to the communities, to the sport,” Mullaly said. “I wanted to do something positive.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) A scoreboard donated by Bill Mullaly stands tall at Pittsford High School. (Middle) Mullaly, middle, stands last July with Jo Ann and Watson Clark in front of a scoreboard he donated to Will Carleton Park; the photo was taken during the 22nd David Clark Memorial Baseball Tournament. (Top photo courtesy of Pittsford High School; middle photo courtesy of Bill Mullaly.)