As Time Marches On, Tuttle's Blissfield Success Sets Record Pace
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
May 24, 2021
BLISSFIELD – Larry Tuttle spends a little more time in the dugout these days.
The Blissfield coach, 76, says that is his daughter’s idea.
“My daughter tells me she didn’t want me out there,” Tuttle said. “My reaction time isn’t what it used to be.”
Tuttle not coaching third base is something new. However, not much else has changed with the Blissfield baseball program since Tuttle arrived more than five decades ago as a budding baseball coach.
He was an assistant coach at Temperance Bedford who wanted to be a varsity head coach. Blissfield gave him that opportunity, and he never left.
“They asked me if I wanted to coach track,” Tuttle said. “I said, ‘No, I want to coach baseball.’”
Earlier this month, Tuttle’s Royals beat Hillsdale, on the road, in front of a large contingent of former players, parents and community members who made the trip to witness history. With a 15-0 win in the opening game of the Lenawee County Athletic Association doubleheader, Tuttle passed former Grand Ledge head coach Pat O’Keefe to become the winningest high school baseball coach in state history.
Blissfield is up to 27-3 this season, giving Tuttle 1,324 career victories. O’Keefe compiled 1,315 wins during 1968 and then between 1970 and 2019 before stepping down. Both are in the Michigan Baseball Hall of Fame.
“Pat and I go back a long way,” Tuttle said. “We’ve known each other a long time. We were both active in the coaches association as board members. He is a good man. This record has been between he and I for many, many years.”
The secret to Tuttle’s success is that he treats today’s games pretty much the same way he did when he took over the program in 1968.
“The expectations don’t change,” Tuttle said. “That’s important. It is the same today as it was with all my teams. You set that expectation early on. The kids have been great.”
Tuttle has had enormous success at Blissfield. This week the Royals clinched the LCAA tittle, the 40th league title Tuttle has won during his 53 seasons. Also during that span, Blissfield has won 32 District, 23 Regional and seven MHSAA Finals championships. His most recent Finals title came in 2003, which, at the time, was his third in four years.
He has coached several baseball players that went on to play in college, several at the Division I level, and around a dozen who were either drafted or signed as free agents with Major League Baseball organizations. A couple of them have made it to the Major Leagues, and others have remained in professional baseball as coaches or managers at one level or another.
Steve Babbitt moved to Blissfield in the late 1980s when he was hired as a teacher, and became Tuttle’s assistant coach. He eventually became Blissfield’s athletic director. He was in the district for 30 years, and has retired – and Tuttle is still at it.
“He already was the head coach for 20 years when I got here, and now I’m retired and he’s still coaching,” Babbitt said. “It’s remarkable. … For somebody to be as passionate as Larry and to do it as long as he has, for more than 53 years, is unbelievable.”
Babbitt said Tuttle might have mellowed a little bit over the years, but, to his credit, he’s adapted his coaching style while keeping the expectations the same.
“Once you cross that line and get on the field, nothing has changed,” Babbitt said. “The expectations are the same. He loves the game.”
Tuttle coached third base up until this season, when he decided to turn that duty over to assistant Eric Schmidt, one of his former players. Tuttle not only coached Schmidt, but Schmidt’s father as well. The Royals have several coaches, all with various duties.
“Eric is doing third base this year and doing an excellent job,” Tuttle said.
Matt Ganun and Matt Jones – both former Royals baseball players – take turns coaching first base. Another former Royal, Jeff Jackson, helps relay Tuttle’s calls from the dugout.
“Jackson and Ganun were on the 1992 state championship team,” Tuttle said. “They know the game.”
Having so many coaches in the dugout is a blessing, Tuttle said.
“I’ve got a lot of great coaches with me,” Tuttle said. “Everybody knows their responsibility and it just falls into place, much better than anybody thinks. If someone look at us, it looks like we are stumbling over ourselves. That’s not the case at all.”
Tuttle has heard from several of his former players and community members since setting the wins record.
“I’ve had a number of players who have contacted me, some over the internet, some have phoned. It has been very exciting from that standpoint and very rewarding to hear from them,” Tuttle said.
“I heard from Brad Fischer. He has been in pro baseball for 43 years with various teams, Major League teams. … He made a comment to me that really hit home. He said, ‘Coach, if it hadn’t been for you, my career in baseball would never have happened.’ That really hits home when someone tells you that. Then I know maybe I’ve had an impact on some lives.”
Blissfield is enjoying one of its best seasons in years, led by five seniors – Nolan Savich, Ty Wyman, Zack Horky, Scott Jackson and Gavin Ganun. Ganun and Horky have signed to play at Bowling Green State University next season.
Tuttle’s goals have been the same pretty much every season for years – win the league, win the District, and make a deep MHSAA Tournament run. This year’s team is ranked No. 6 in the most recent Division 3 coaches association poll.
Breaking the record also brought a lot of attention, from newspaper and television stations to Bally’s Sports Detroit doing a segment on Tuttle and the team for a Detroit Tigers pre-game show.
“It’s been exciting,” Tuttle said. “It’s been good for our whole community and the school system. In a small town, the school system is a major part of the community.”
Tuttle lives across the street from Blissfield High, not much more than a long fly ball from the Royals’ stadium. Most days, especially this time of the year, that is where you will find him, working on the field.
“I don’t do as much as I used to because I have a lot of people helping me,” Tuttle said. “Some of the other coaches won’t let me now. But I’m over there almost every day doing something, because usually there’s something that has to be done to keep it looking like it does.”
Some things never change.
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) Blissfield coach Larry Tuttle poses for photos with his team after setting the MHSAA record for baseball coaching wins this month. (Middle) Tuttle’s 1992 team was among his Finals champions; he is standing back row, far right. (Below) Tuttle with this season’s five seniors. (2021 photos courtesy of Joe Flaherty. 1992 photo from MHSAA files.)
Cardinal Mooney Confidently Building on Newfound Success
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
April 20, 2021
Rocco Comito could see signs of good things to come during his freshman season on the Marine City Cardinal Mooney baseball team.
He just didn’t know how good.
“I didn’t see this at all,” said Comito, now a senior. “I thought we were going to be good eventually, but not where we’re at now.”
Comito and his teammates won the school’s first Regional title since 1997 during the 2019 season, and after the 2020 season was cancelled, they’ve come back looking for more. Mooney is the preseason No. 2 team in the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association Division 4 rankings, and has started 5-1.
“Honestly, it feels amazing,” said Comito, who was an all-state selection at catcher in 2019. “Just to be part of it all.”
Comito and classmates Anthony DiGiuseppe and Tommy Gill, who are the lone seniors on this year’s team, did have some success immediately, as Mooney won a District title in 2018. That was the school’s first since 2010, though, and when Mike Rice had taken over the program before the 2017 season, the Cardinals were struggling to put enough players on the field let alone make any type of postseason run.
Eight players came to Rice’s first tryout, forcing him to find athletes roaming the small Catholic school’s hallways to fill out a roster.
“It was an eye opener,” said Rice, a 1994 graduate of Harper Woods Notre Dame, who himself played in the Detroit Catholic League. “Personally, for me, I love the teaching part. A kid came up to me and said, ‘How do I bunt?’ in the first practice. I didn’t get mad; I actually liked it. I like teaching baseball.”
Now, Rice has no trouble filling the roster. This season’s tryout featured 36 players, and for the second consecutive season, Mooney has been able to field a junior varsity team.
“I’m so proud of it,” Rice said. “I moved them into the upper division in the JV this year. We have a good coach there that kind of treats it as a developmental, minor league program. It’s just about getting better. That way, they’re ready when they come up.
“It’s a quote-unquote program now. Coach (Michael) Hunt runs his practices the same way I run mine. When they come up to my team, it’s the exact same thing.”
As the program has grown, so has the depth of talent on the roster. Rice said this year’s team is the deepest he’s had.
“I have about eight pitchers now on this team,” he said. “We’re fully loaded up as far as position players go. We’re a more complete team from top to bottom, including the bench. We have, in my opinion, four top-notch starting pitchers, not including relievers.”
Gill struck out 22 batters over his first two starts of the season and carried a no-hitter through 6 2/3 innings of the opener against Lutheran Northwest. Nathan Super no-hit Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes on Mooney’s second day of action, and Blake Lutzky struck out six over 2 1/3 innings in his first appearance.
The Cardinals have also shown off their depth in the lineup, with everyone from leadoff hitter DiGiuseppe – who is 5-for-5 at the plate to start the year – to junior Nick Garcia – a home run from the nine hole – getting in on the act. Comito has a pair of hits in each of the Cardinals’ past two games, while sophomore Trent Rice (six hits), junior Tom Rice (five RBIs) and sophomore Ryan Trombley (five RBI) also have had strong starts to the year.
“We have a super strong team of athletic guys this year,” DiGiuseppe said. “We have the most athletes on this team than all the other teams I’ve been on at Mooney. Everybody knows their role, and it’s cool to have those guys on the bench we know can come in and do their job.”
Gill added that the depth of the team gives the players confidence each time they step onto the field.
“I think confidence is key,” Gill said. “If you’re confident, you can almost beat anyone.”
Mike Rice said the growth of the program is all about the players on the field. Gill, though, said his coach should be taking a lot more of the credit.
“He’s a great coach,’ Gill said. “His attention to detail is very, very good. It helps us all get better. He’ll see a little thing that’s wrong and corrects it, something that most people wouldn’t notice. He sees the really fine details that make you a great player.”
The recent success of the program has also caused a growth in confidence among the players. The 2019 Regional title was the second in school history, and their Super Regional defeat came against eventual Division 4 champion Petersburg Summerfield, which gave the Cardinals an up-close and personal look at what an MHSAA championship team looks like.
“They looked like a college team,” Gill said. “They looked like a (Division II) college team.”
The success also makes the Cardinals believe that their lofty ranking is justified, and rather than ignoring it, they’re embracing it.
“It’s different, but we love it,” Rice said. “Our kids have a good confidence, but not an arrogance. I want the target. I want these kids to understand that all of us worked our butts off to get here. People say rankings don’t mean anything, but for me, I think they do. I think it’s helped build a little bit of confidence. The expectations are definitely different. It feels different, and I think it’s helped the boys say that, ‘Hey, we’re not this small school in Marine City that nobody knows.’”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Marine City Cardinal Mooney pitcher Tommy Gill makes his move toward the plate during a game this spring. (Middle) Anthony DiGiuseppe gets his lead off second base during a 2019 game. (Below) The 2019 team celebrates its Regional championship. (Photos courtesy of the Cardinal Mooney baseball program.)