SAGINAW, Mich.---The Negaunee Major Little League All-Stars (age 10-12) are now one win away from a state championship.
The boys battled Southern Grand Rapids in the state semifinals under the lights Tuesday night in Saginaw and pulled out a 1-0 win to advance to Wednesday's championship game. Callen Johnson had the game winning double with two out in the sixth inning to deliver the only run of the game.
“I feel pretty excited to have the game-winning hit again,” said Johnson, who also delivered as walk-off hit against West Branch in pool play. “In that at-bat, I was just thinking to drive the ball. The balls were coming in a lot slower than the first pitcher. I saw the ball come down the middle and I just had to turn on it.”
Which left his teammates excited, too, because Negaunee had stranded ten baserunners throughout the game.
“That was just an amazing hit,” Negaunee left fielder Maddox Halamka said. “We needed that so bad, and he just came through. I was just sweating like as much as I've ever sweat. But, I don't know, the adrenaline kicked in and everything.”
Negaunee Manager Joe Dost said his guys kept battling even after not getting those previous base runners home, stranding ten of them throughout the game.
“That was a grind,” he said. “I'm so proud of that team. It is really, really difficult to go out for six innings, and grind out at-bats, and not have a ton of success. But, still, keep grinding. They went up to the plate with the right approach. The pitches that they did swing at were in the zone. That's the reason we were able to force an early exit (for Southern pitcher Dax Martin, who reached 85 pitches in the fifth inning).”
The fact that Martin had to leave, and Tom Robinson had to come in, was a huge factor because the Negaunee hitters, even if they didn't get on base, used up enough pitches to get the top of the batting order up in that key sixth inning moment.
“We flipped our line-up over, and I had all the confidence in the world that those guys would put in a run,” Dost said.
And that's what happened, when Nate Harvala got a one-out walk, went to second on a wild pitch, and scored on Johnson's double. That turned out to be the only run that Negaunee needed because of how great Harvala was on the mound, and how great the defense was behind him.
“We go as he goes,” Dost said. “I mean, the kid was dynamite. He was so efficient. He induced weak contact. He threw outs. And that's the name of the game. Man, he had two more innings (of allowable pitch count) left in him.”
Harvala struck out eight batters and did not walk a batter. He was overpowering at times, moving the ball around the strike zone to keep the Southern batters off-balance. But after the Miners scored their run, Harvala needed some help from his friends, and he got it.
In the bottom of the sixth, Alex Petrozoc led off with a single, just the third hit that Harvala had allowed. The next batter, Ethan Brower, made a bid for a base hit, but Evan Cardinal got to the ball, touched second base, and threw to first for a 6-3 double play.
Then after Tom Robinson got a base hit to again give Southern a chance, Harvala got lead-off batter Will Hamlin to bounce it to short.
And Cardinal, the Negaunee vacuum cleaner, scooped the ball and threw to first to end the game, setting off a wild celebration.
“It was pretty exciting,” Cardinal said. “I was just thinking, I'm gonna get the ball and twist it!”
And it took everybody at one point or another. In the fourth inning, Southern clean-up hitter Finn Williams sent a Harvala pitch to deep center field. Tanner Thompson went back to the deepest part of the ballpark and made the catch.
“It was kind of weird because as I was going back, I didn't know if I had any more room,” Thompson said. “I wasn't at the warning track yet, so it felt good.”
“I feel amazing,” Negaunee third baseman Wyatt Dost said. “We had to stay locked in the whole time. You had to be ready every pitch because you didn't know what was coming at you.”
And so it will be a Cinderella-type match-up for the state championship on Wednesday, with a spot in the Great Lakes Regional on the line. It will be Negaunee and Plymouth-Canton, two leagues looking for their first-ever state championships.
Plymouth-Canton, from the Detroit suburbs, lost two games in pool play and were on the brink of elimination. But they shocked the world by beating South Portage, 6-0, and then eliminating favorite Taylor North in a wild extra-inning quarterfinal game, 9-4.
So, what many people thought would be the usual Grosse Pointe-Taylor North battle will now be, instead, a game between two overlooked teams: Negaunee from the northern Upper Peninsula, and Plymouth-Canton, from suburban Detroit.
“They're a scrappy team, and they don't go away,” Coach Dost said of Plymouth-Canton. “Hats off to Plymouth-Canton for fighting out of 1-2 (pool play record) and win a couple of huge games. We're excited to see them tomorrow. I have a lot of confidence in our guys to get to done tomorrow.”
Wednesday's state championship game will be broadcast live on FM-100.3 The Point, and on-line at www.radioresultsnetwork.com.
