PURE BASEBALL JOY: Blues Are State Champions!

Click the thumbnails to see photos and videos, and click the AUDIO buttons to hear post-game comments from Isaac Sarles, Easton Miller, Owen Cardinal, and Indians Manager Joe Darmogray.

MARQUETTE---The Post 44 Legion Blues won the third state championship in program history on Saturday, outlasting the Gladstone Indians, 4-2, in the Class A tournament title game before a large crowd at Marquette's Haley Field.

The Blues won the state championship for the third time on Upper Peninsula soil, last winning in 2021 on the home Haley Field. The other win came in 2015 in Escanaba in a watered-down state tournament that saw only one downstate team make the trip for the tournament.

But this one, no, there was nothing watered down about it. The ten games that were played over the three days were all greatly competitive, and the Blues took advantage of the host team spot on the six-team bracket by winning all three of its games, and never trailed in any of them.

And when first baseman Nick Pantti caught the pop up to get the final out on Saturday, it set off a celebration that made these teenagers look like little kids. In other words, pure baseball joy.

"Unreal feeling," said longtime second baseman Easton Miller, who also played through a 42-game college baseball season at Bay College. "We've played each other multiple times. We knew we had to win each inning, put up more runs than them in each inning, hold them to as little as possible, and take away the small ball."

"Just keeping this team together," said veteran pitcher/catcher Isaac Sarles, who will play at Saint Norbert College in Green Bay this fall. This is such a great group of guys. I just love each one of these guys, and we're a family. We do what we need to fo to win. You saw it today. Everythng was clicking."

"I was a little nervous," Blues winning pitcher Owen Cardinal of Negaunee said. "But I remembered back to high school and I pitched against them and I did well. I just had the mentality in my head to do as good as last time, and I did all right! This doesn't even feel real. It's amazing. Shout out to the crowd for being so electric and helping us achieve this goal of winning a state championship."

Indeed he did, throwing six innings of three-hit ball, allowing only one run. Braiden Noskey, also a Negaunee boy, got the save by throwing the final inning.

But from the Gladstone side, the Indians made the trip back home feeling that they had been robbed. The biggest play from the Indians' point of view came in the first inning, after Cardinal walked Casey Alworden and hit Aedan Creten with a pitch. With two out, Cooper Sanville hit a pop fly near first base, and the two infielders got tangled up along the foul line.

The ball landed in fair territory and the first base umpire indicated as such, and Alworden scored to seemingly give Gladstone a huge 1-0 lead. But it appeared that the second base umpire had raised his hands indicating a foul ball. After a discussion between the umpires, the call was overturned, and it was a foul ball, wiping a run off the scoreboard.

Seconds later, Sanville was out on a called third strike, and Gladstone was fuming. Indians Manager Joe Darmogray was not shy about saying that he felt that call cost his team a win.

"Just a huge momentum change," the veteran manager said. "I mean, the kids were excited, the crowd was cheering for us. Then, all of a sudden, BOOM! They changed it. That just knocked the wind out of us. I don't know how you can have four umpires and not get it right. It was plain as day. Then, all of a sudden, they're all mad, and I'm trying to settle them down. Then, I've got parents screaming. Everybody was screaming, and I don't want to see that."

Then, in the fourth inning, it got worse, and the Indians felt robbed again. Johnny Soderman had bounced a grounder to Carsen Belanger at third base, who threw to first baseman Nick Pantti for the out. But the call was that Pantti had pulled his foot, so Soderman was called safe.

After Blues manager Mark Pantti came out to question the call (he had a good view as the Marquette dugout was on the first base side), the umpires got together and eventually changed that call as well. Soderman was ruled out, and the inning was over.

"Same situation," Darmogray said, still upset well after the game had ended. "Another call that was changed. I don't know. I love this game of baseball. I love coaching. I've coached all these kids since they were little kids. Fifteen years, at least. It's disheartening. I don't want to embarrass myself and get kicked out of games for arguing with umpires. So, maybe it's time for me to step away (from coaching)."

And hard as those two calls were for Gladstone to stomach, the fact remains that the Indians just could not hit the ball effectively against neither Cardinal nor Noskey. And even though the Indians did not get the run that they thought they deserved in that first inning, Gladstone did get a run in the third inning when a pair of Bay College teammates hooked up with a rally.

Tyler Darmogray, who scalded the ball in the second half of the tournament, led off with a ground rule double. He scored on a solid base hit by Norse teammate Aedan Creten, who also had a lively bat in this tournament. That tied the game at 1-1, after the Blues had scored a run on a Cardinal base hit and yet another triple by Munising Mustang Blake Walther.

Then, in the bottom of the third inning, it was Miller's turn to keep the Bay College fingerprint on this championship game going. Miller's Bay College teammate Logan Peterson was hit by a pitch, and Walther got his second hit of the game to put two men on. Miller brought both of them home as he took an Austin Pepin pitch into the left field corner.

"It felt good," Miller said. "It was kind of like my first at bat when I got a little on top of it and hit it down the third base line (and he was robbed by third baseman Cooper Sanville). I went up there with the approach of trying to hit it over that third baseman, and thankfully, it stayed inside the (foul) line, and it scored two big runs."

The two-run double gave the Blues a 3-1 lead. And then Gibby Jezewski broke out of his recent batting slump with a base hit to right field, bringing home Miller, making it a 4-1 game.

After that Jezewski hit, Pepin did not allow a base hit the rest of the game, retiring 11 of the final 13 batters he faced. Pepin walked one and another man reached on an error.

"He was always that real timid guy who needed to come out of his shell," Joe Darnogray said of Pepin. "I tell you what. I started to see a glimpse of it in high school season, and all of a sudden, here in Legion ball, that boy has stepped up. He's gonna be a stud next year in high school, and I can't wait for it."

The Indians, who had won three games in the loser's bracket just to get to this game, just could not hit Cardinal. They had a huge chance in the fifth inning when Darmogray had an infield hit, and Cardinal walked both Alworden and Creten to load the bases with just one out.

Cardinal dug deep, striking out Cooper Curtis and getting Isaac Ketchum to pop up, ending the fifth inning with the 4-1 Post 44 lead still intact.

"I was mainly just throwing my slider," Cardinal said. "Then I worked in a few fastballs to keep them off-balance. I've been waiting for this my whole life, and it finally came true."

"It's been a really long path to get here," an emotional Sarles said after the game. "Since Reds, probably, seven, eight years ago? Just climbing up through. This is a dream come true. I just...I'm just so happy for all of us."

Gladstone finishes its season with a 15-11 record, and as state runners-up for a second straight year. But Coach Darmogray says his team accomplished a lot.

"They battled," Darmogray said. "They never had any quit. We've had some times where we couldn't get that key hit that we needed. I'm proud of them. To me, we might not have a state champ trophy in our case. But guess what? We have the U.P. championship trophy in our case, and that's what means a lot to me."

The tournament Most Valuable Player was Walther, the Munising boy who dominated at the plate for the Blues all weekend. After starting the tournament with three outs at the plate against Gaylord, Walther was 6-for-7 the rest of the way, with a home run, two doubles, one triple, two singles, six runs batted in, and five runs scored.

It was a moment to remember for Coach Pantti, who put this team together two years ago by combining the Negaunee Diamonds and Marquette Blues into a powerhouse team full of kids who were committed to the program from Day One.

Under Pantti's leadership, the Blues program expanded to four total teams, with 67 players, much more than any other in the U.P.

The playing conditions on Haley Field drew raves from all of the downstate teams who played in this tournament, and it was Pantii and his group of parents and coaches who made sure it was in that condition. In fact, several games this weekend started late because Pantti was so focused on making sure that every blade of grass was in the proper place.

Also, the fact that his son, Nick, caught the final out, was a storybook ending, and an emotional one for everyone on the Marquette sideline. Nick Pantti will move on now to play college baseball at Lakeland University in Wisconsin.

The Blues had massive advantages of playing on their home field, with way more players available than any of their opponents, and a six-team bracket that was set up to benefit the host team.

Post 44 did not play a single inning of baseball on Thursday before one other team had already played 14 full innings of baseball, and the other four teams had played seven.

But Pantti had also toughened up his team's schedule, heading down to Wisconsin and Lower Michigan to play in tournaments against teams with larger rosters.

Post 44 finishes its season with a 19-10 record.

Sarles, the emotional leader of the Blues team, summed it up this way:

"This is the second year we've played together (Marquette and Negaunee guys), and we just have bonded, and we are all just baseball players," he said. "We bond over baseball, and we're friends outside of the field. Hanging out all the time. It's just a great group of guys. It just all clicked."