Classic baseball as it ought to have been played

One thing was absolutely sure: Santa Fe College's baseball team was going to the Florida region Division I junior college tournament at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland. The Saints had won the Mid-Florida Conference regular-season title.

The question now was: Who else was going to represent the conference?

Three teams -- and myself -- arrived in Sanford for the weekend-long tournament involving College of Central Florida, host Seminole State, and the team I was there to watch, St. Johns River State.

If he were still around and had his faculties about him, my boss, Andy, would have gladly jumped in his car and headed south to Sanford for this event. The relationship he had with longtime Vikings coach and Palatka native Ross Jones was simply stupendous.

With myself in the role of sports editor since Andy had retired the previous December, it was now my turn to cover the Vikings' baseball team. I certainly didn't have the lattitude that Andy had because as much as I appreciated the work my new assistant, Anthony, had done, he was not me. I could lay out a whole sports section for Andy. Anthony wasn't me and I had to cover this basebal team when I could.

But we had no Sunday paper ... or Monday for that matter. So it gave me some free time to go down to Sanford and see the fate of the Vikings in this magical weekend. I arrived just mere minutes at Seminole State's field and quickly got to the field and scribbled both lineups down before the noon first pitch.

First up was St. Johns River against Central Florida. The winner was going to get Seminole in a best-of-3 series. The Vikings left little in doubt for this game, blasting the Patriots, 11-2, aided by home runs by Tripp McKinlay, Daniel Labrador, and two home runs by all-conference catcher Jakob Runnels.

Rumor had it that the air conditioning was not working properly in the Central Florida on the way down to Sanford. Well, now they could open the windows wide again for the uncomfortable trip home.

With the Patriots gone, the Vikings were now set to face off with the Seminole Raiders, who had beaten the Vikings three out of four games in the conference season. And as the second game began, I started wondering why I'm not feeling comfortable. Turns out temperatures were sizzling in the low 90s on this day.

Now I was just hoping to survive from my perch on top of where the scoreboard operator and public address guy were situated in comfortable climes.

Game one in this three-game series was no contest as Seminole pitcher Rese Brown retiring the last 19 Vikings hitters he faded and striking out 11 batters in a victory for which he threw 107 pitches in the complete game. He allowed just two hits. One of the hits in the 5-1 victory was a home run by Ramses Cordova.

That was it for the first day. St. Johns went back to Palatka and the Vikings were down 1-0 in the best-of-3 series. Since I did not have enough money on me to take a hotel, I, too, drove back to Palatka and got a halfway decent night's sleep.

By 10 a.m., I was back in the car and back on the road to Sanford for the second game ... maybe game three. The Vikings needed a better performance at the plate to have a shot at this or else Seminole was celebrating a championship.

They more than responded on yet another hot day in Seminole County. The Vikings blasted Raiders pitching to the tune of 13 runs on 10 hits, but two swings generating seven of the 13 runs. J.J. Sousa hit a three-run home run, then it was Runnels delivering a grand slam to end the 13-4 game.

This was set up the deciding third game ... and become an all-time classic.

Seminole starter Cameron Carter was looking like Brown did in the first game. He had the Vikings eating out of his hands through six innings as the Raiders held a 2-0 lead. Then came the seventh.

Runnels doubled to get things going. And Cordova once again proved to be clutch as he blasted a two-run home run to left field to tie the game up.

Starter Zane Stephens had done yeoman work for five innings to start, allowing two runs, then left Tanner Bauman came in and relieved Stephens and went four solid innnings of shutout ball.

The 10th inning arrived. Connor Morgan, struggling with three strikeouts on the day, hit a slow roller toward left reliever Garrett Hester. Hester had a hard time picking the ball up, then threw a strike to first baseman Edgar Alvarez as Morgan slid into the base.

He slid in safely. The first-base umpire didn't see it that way. Jones went ballistic as he stormed out of the dugout to argue his case.

"It's not even close," Jones told me afterward. Then he added, "I should have gotten thrown out for that. That was a terrible, terrible call that changes the conplexion of the inning."

In the bottom of the 10th, it was Seminole's turn. Bauman walked Jaylen Youngs and Marcos Sevillano. Bauman was about out of gas and Jones knew it. He took Bauman and brought in reliever Jordan Wimpleberg to keep things going. But Wimpleberg walked Corey King to load the bases.

Load the bases with no outs. The last rites were being administered to this Vikings team that kept fighting and fighting and fighting all throughout the weekend. It was simply one batter at a time and Wimpleberg had Alvarez up first. He got a comebacker for which he threw to Runnels at the plate to get Youngs. Then Wimpleberg struck out Zach Levenson for the second out. He got out of trouble by getting Luke Hatcher into a forceout at second.

Problem was the Vikings couldn't get anything off Hester in the 11th. Suddenly, they were back to having to defend in the bottom half of the frame.

Christian Webb put a perfect bunt down that third baseman McKinlay could not get to for a base hit.

I suddenly had this "Uh-oh, these guys want to end things now" feeling.

Hunter Noblitt walked and when Wimpleberg attempted to pick off Webb at second, the throw sailed into the outfield to move Webb to third and be the winning run nd Noblitt to second. It was only the second error of the three-game series between the teams.

Yes ... two total errors. Both teams played baseball the way it ought to have been played.

Marcerio Allen hit a grounder to sure-handed second baseman Chase Malloy, who looked Webb back to third, then threw to first for the first out.

That brought up Youngs, the team's steady catcher. Wimpleberg got ahead at 1-2 on Youngs. Then he got too much of the plate on his next pitch.

Youngs stroked a shot between the diving McKinlay and Cordova into left field to score Webb and win the game and spot in the state tournament in 11 innings, 3-2.

Vikings players walked off the field slowly as Raiders players charged the field behind them to jump on Youngs for the winning hit. And after about 10 minutes, Vikings players stopped lingering on the field and headed onto the bus to head back to Palatka.

But I wanted to talk to Malloy, whose dad was a longtime scout with the Philadelphia Phillies. Malloy reminded me of another fantastic Vikings player, Myles Straw, who made it to the Major Leagues. He may not have had quite the talent, but Malloy had the heart and determination to lead this team.

"It's been a battle ... a dogfight .. between us all year," he said of the rivalry with Seminole. "And they came out on top. Things fell for us in (Game 2), but they didn't in this (last) game. That's just baseball."

You could see he was disheartened. Malloy stayed a third year at SJRSC after COVID-19 shut the 2020 season down a month or so into the season. Now the dream of going to the state tournament was gone.

A tired Jones chose to wax philosophically after the deciding game.

"There was a lot of baseball in the last 31 hours," he started. "They never stopped competing. That's the thing to me I was proud of. We had good at-bats. We hit the ball hard, just right at people. Just one of those games where you ask, 'What do you do?'"

Turns out they couldn't do any more than they did in four games in a two-day period. I wished coach Jones a safe trip back and headed to my car. Because I got to sit inside the protected area with the scoreboard operator and the PA guy on this Sunday, I didn't get lobster red like I attempted the day before.

 I drove away from Jack Patelias Field up College Road to Lake Mary Road and heading toward I-4 to go home. Before 7 p.m., I arrived at the McDonald's near the I-4 entrance way and stopped for dinner. That gave me a chance to eat and reflect through my notes the greatness of this game I just covered most recently.

I knew it was the best baseball game I covered at either high school or college level. The Vikings had their opportunities, but in the end, the Raiders took advantage of the last one that mattered.

By the next day, I woke up that morning and had written 37 inches -- or over 1,100 words -- on my laptop on the weekend games. I got red from the first day, but I was entertained by the end.

Baseball as it ought to have been played. I came to that conclusion one last time.

One more footnote to that weekend: I had taken a lot of pictures of the four games, but this one stands out the most. It's Wimpleberg coming off the mound dejectedly while Seminole players were rushing on the field to jump on and celebrate with Youngs.

I submitted this photo for the Florida Press Club annual contest for best action shot in my division.

I won. It was the first time I ever won with a photograph I took.

Guess I'm not the complete hack I claim to be.

Our Super Tuesday of softball and baseball

Part of the job as a sports editor is being part showman, whether YOU think the ideas that involve the job are goofy or not.

My late boss Andy was keyed up for this day 17 years ago here in Putnam County. It was as if EVERYTHING important in the county was happening on this Tuesday afternoon and night. And looking back, I now understand the hype since we never have lived up to this particular day again.

On the docket for Tuesday, April 24, 2007: State tournament softball games for both Palatka and Interlachen. District tournament baseball games for Palatka and Interlacchen where, with wins, the teams would qualify for the state tournament.

Then there was the case of the St. Johns River Community (now State) College softball team, coached by Toni Willis, a former Vikings player under Toni Thompson. Never in the program's fastpitch history had the Vikings made it to the state tournament. And with a win in a neutral-site game at Santa Fe College in Gainesville against Lake City Community College this afternoon, the Vikings were going to play in the state tournament as a fifth-place team in the challenging Mid-Florida Conference.

So my day started at 1:30 p.m. with a trip up State Road-100 from my home and onto SR-26 and then SR-222 into Gainesville and a straight shoot right to Santa Fe. It was a beautiful afternoon for the Vikings and Timberwolves to play this tie-breaking matchup.

Willis' plan was to start Keystone Heights High graduate Marian McCall in the circle and eventually switch to Williston High product Roxzanne Rawls. But it wasn't going to be easy since the Vikings had lost three of four in the regular season to the Timberwolves.

Upstairs in the press box overlooking the field, I sat for most of the game next to Santa Fe's coach at the time, Chris Ahern. The game was scoreless going into the fourth with the Vikings hitting. Rachel Torres, who was the Vikings' top hitter all season, led off with a bloop hit that she hustled into a double. Stefanie Hunt sacrifice buted her to third, bringing up Chelsi Garner.

"They need to get this run now," Ahern would tell me. "They can't let this situation go. They've done a nice job of holding (Lake City) down."

She was right -- this was "the" opportunity for the Vikings. And Garner delivered with a single to left field to make it 1-0.

But McCall, fighting stomach issues all week, ran into big-time trouble in the fifth. I'd seen this script before and all good things normally came to an end in a bad way for the Vikings. Opposing pitcher Shelly Law singled for Lake City's first hit of the game. Stacey Bardroff walked and both moved up a base on a sacrifice.

Stephanie Schellhorn tried to squeeze bunt Law home, but McCall got to the ball quickly and tossed to catcher Torres, who made the tag on Law for the out. But it wasn't over yet: Kayla Hamalainen walked to load the bases and the next hitter, Jane Gordon, was at 2-0 in the count when Torres went out to talk to McCall. After the game, I asked her what Torres told her.

"Less thinking, more throwing," she said.

On the next pitch, Gordon flied out to end the threat.

The Vikings added to their miniscule lead when Katie Shannon -- affectionately known as "Tater" on the team -- blooped a single to left field on a 3-2 pitch from Law to score Kim Turvey and Palatka High product Megan Harris to make it 3-0.

Lake City put a runner on base against Rawls in the seventh with one out, but Schellhorn hit a hot smash liner right at third baseman Hunt, who snagged it, then fired across the diamond to first baseman Garner to complete the double play and send the Vikings into celebration mode.

For the first time, the Vikings were state-tournament bound! Willis, who like Harris played her high school ball at Palatka High, realized a dream she had since taking the program over in 2003: "When I took this program over, I wanted to make it a program in which we would go to the state tournament every year. It's a dream come true."

I got out of there and found a local coffee shop down the road with Wifi for which I can type my story and boxscore in. That was 5 p.m. Thirty minutes later, the story was done and I was having dinner with a dear online friend named Lisa who didn't live far from where I was in Gainesville. We had Chinese food and after saying our goodbyes, I was off to Interlachen for the Rams' state tournament game at home with Mount Dora.

The problem is there was no "direct" route to get to Interlachen High. You can't go in a straight line with so many bodies of water in the way. So I had to go back the way I came and it took about 45 minutes to do so.

It was 7:15 and the game started at 7. I had quite a bit of catching up in recording Interlachen's first state tournament game since 1999. I can't tell you how helpful coach Ron Whitehurst was that day.

The Rams were 20-3 and coming off a district championship the week before at Pierson Taylor. The Rams had a dynamite lineup that included Whitehurst's daughter, Brittani, Jessica Byrd, Kim Traxler and Sam Loder, just to name a few.

But Mount Dora had a young lady in the circle named Ce Ce Dail. And she was wild ... but wildly effective. As Whitehurst told me after the game, "She was wild within the strike zone. We got our first two runs via third-strike drops."

Dail's performance was far from a thing of beauty -- she threw 150 pitches in going the distance with eight walks, but 12 strikeouts.

Two run-scoring singles -- Dail's one-run single and Natalie Hodges' two-run safety -- against starter Katy Jordan gave Mount Dora a 3-0 lead in the first inning.

True to form, Dail got in trouble in the bottom of the first inning on walks to Courtney Lewis and Traxler and a single by Byrd. But Dail struck out Whitehurst and Loder and got Seana Crane on a comebacker.

As coach Whitehurst mentioned before, the Rams got their two runs on dropped third strikes that scored Caitlin Hagan and courtesy runner Lindsay Kurtz. And Interlachen went for more: With Byrd on third and two outs, Traxler walked ... and just kept going. The Rams were trying to catch the Hurricanes off guard.

It didn't work. Dail was not fooled in the circle. She simply threw the ball to second to nail Traxler and end the inning.

"I don't believe I just saw that" was my reaction as I momentarily put my hands over my face.

Afterward, I asked Whitehurst what got into him to try that play. He said, "We've beaten people with our legs this year. We're not changing the way we play. It was worth taking a shot."

And it was -- you don't get to 20-3 with smoke and mirrors. Plus Whitehurst was looking at Dail, this wild card in the circle, and looking to be aggressive since you didn't know what to expect from her.

Hodge, who was 4-fof-4 with four RBIs, singled in a run in the third to make it 4-2. Then an error by the Rams in the fifth on a play at third base allowed another run to score to make it 5-2.

But Interlachen made it interesting. The Rams loaded the bases in the bottom of the fourth down 4-2, but Traxler hit a comebacker to end the inning. They made it interesting in the sixth when Byrd boomed a triple to the left-center field gap to score Christina Andrews and Byrd to make it a one-run game.

They had Traxler at the plate in a big moment with one out. You can feel the momentum turn in Interlachen's favor and just like almost every game that season, the Rams would find a way to win. Traxler could not hit a ball any harder than she did.

It was directly at shortstop Jordan Bixler for the second out. Then after striking out Brittani Whitehurst twice already, Dail struck her out a third time to end the threat.

Hodge's fourth hit scored Dail in the seventh to give the Hurricanes a 6-4 lead, then Dail shut the door on the Rams in the seventh. Dail owned the middle of the Rams' lineup as Whitehurst, Loder and Crane -- batters four through six in the lineup -- were a combined 0-for-11 with a walk and nine strikeouts.

And it was over -- *I* went 1-1 for the day in covering our local teams. Interlachen would repeat as district champion the next season, the last district title for the program since.

I got back to the office and Andy got there the same time. He had covered BOTH the Palatka softball and baseball games in town that night. (Here's the thing: Palatka softball, for which he went to, won in a quickie over Crystal River, 3-0, in the state tournament, then he left from the high school to head to the famed Azalea Bowl to cover the "other" Palatka game, Palatka's 8-0 win over Menendez in the District 5-4A semifinals that automatically qualified the Panthers for the state tournament. I wouldn't have put a byline on that story since I got there later, but them's not my rules.")

I wrote my Interlachen story after he had gotten my SJRCC softball game story via email earlier in the day. While I finished up my second story and began working on the scoreboard page, I also had to call Jeff Finch, Interlachen's head baseball coach. The Rams were in Keystone Heights to face Union County in the District 6-3A semifinals and if the Rams had won, they were going to the state tournament for the second year in a row.

It wasn't to be as the Rams lost, 7-2.

By the time Andy got his two stories done and he had all my work, he was able to lay out the front page ... and he made a special look with the five games we had all starting on the front and jumping inside to page 3B.

Oh, the joys of a 1 a.m. deadline back in the day. How I miss thee.

To review: PHS baseball and softball won, IHS baseball and softball lost and SJR State softball won and was heading to the state tournament for the first time in fastpitch program history.

What a day. By the time the paper began to print, there was a sigh of relief, then a moment of silence that, yes ... we had just had a special day in Putnam County that rarely comes along.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 WAS a special day. So many postseason dreams were seen or died that day.

I learned to cherish them ... they only come so few or often. Goofy or not.