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Bottom of the seventh.
Do or die for the Trojans trailing 3-0 and on deck.
Oh, strike three, and with the curve.
And he pushes one to centerfield,
back on the ball is.
His hit is good! And Milan can celebrate.
Well, the record-setting 1998
Sturgis Trojan baseball season is now history.
♪ For the land of the free ♪
♪ And the home of the brave ♪
He swings and drives one deep
to rightfield and that is gone!
Off the roof out there in right center,
a grand slam for Ricky Hart,
his team leading 12th of the season.
Around second and looking to make it
a three-bagger is Maravolo.
Bill Whitely's gonna wave Scheske around!
Survive that with Keim in centerfield
time-out in the fourth, reaching up, making a running grab.
The windup by Vercler.
2-2-6 and the Trojans are in the final four!
The world looks much different now
than it did a half century ago,
but even though many things have changed
over the past 50 years,
Roth Labs isn't one of them.
Welcome back to C.O. Brown Stadium
in Battle Creek, the Trojans being introduced.
Their starting lineup along the third baseline,
Sturgis will be the home team today
and will man the third base dugout.
I've never seen this angle before.
Oh, nice vantage point right there.
We knew this team was coming.
We knew that there were a group of kids
that were gonna be seniors in '99
and juniors that same year that were coming.
And I remember talking to Bill Whitely
during that next year, leading into the season of '99
and just kind of asking him, "Bill, how-- how's the team?"
He goes, "I think we could be special this year."
What are you guys thinking right now?
Well, we're just trying to relax.
We haven't done it yet. You know, we got seven innings.
We want to play a good baseball game and, uh, you know,
we came here to win this thing and that's our goal.
We'll be disappointed if we don't. We're gonna
-play this thing to win it. -I got goosebumps.
He's the best coach I ever had. Hands down.
And he's probably the most uncomfortable coach
I have ever played for.
You know, we're a little bit more jittery
than we were yesterday, and we need to get through
this first inning, this first inning is huge, you know.
We just gotta make sure if we make a mistake earlier
that we don't compound it with more than one mistake.
Bill Whitely, oh, man, um...
Bill could be a real SOB when he wanted to be.
Um, I say that in a fun way,
'cause that's kind of the way Bill comes across,
especially if you don't know him.
Probably the most influential coach
outside of Ryan Scheske
that I've had in my life.
You know, these guys work their tails off,
they do everything they're asked to do,
their attitudes are fantastic, you know,
they let me chew on them, they let me bet on them,
and I'll tell you what, uh--
He had a bite to him and, uh, he-- he could redirect you
when you needed to be redirected.
This is a great day.
And, you guys, this is your play,
you just have faith in this guy right here with the glasses.
He'll take you anywhere.
The best coaches are the ones
that are the hardest on their best players.
Once you earn the respect of your best players...
the rest will follow.
He expected you to not just do your best,
but to make every play, and if you didn't
make every play, and this is in practice or games--
if you didn't make the play, he's on you.
So you're kind of nervous going into practice.
We always talked about improving every day,
trying to get better at every practice,
not being out here, dinking around.
I just wanna say, this season's been great,
I mean, we started out one, two,
and I thought it was gonna be kind of a bad year, but...
So I was the one that pitched
in the Mount Pleasant game that we tied.
It was a wooden bat tournament.
All I remember Whitely saying is,
I think Ricky was catching.
Sure enough, he would set it right on the inside edge
and we broke every wood bat that they had.
It got to the point towards the end of the game,
where they had to start borrowing bats from us,
because all their bats were broken.
During one of our losses, Whitely actually yanked
the whole starting lineup.
At the end of that game, Whitely told us
to all get in the dugout
and he ripped us, big time.
And I really thought that fighting on a loss
was a turning point in our season.
The seniors have been through things,
I thought things were coming too easy for 'em.
Ultimately, his story was,
"You guys are a lot better than this.
You don't know what your talent is
and how good you guys can be.
You better start shaping up,
or it's gonna be a hell of a long season."
And we knew at that point in time,
that-- that we needed to change the tone
of the way we practiced.
From that day forward, everything swung
and nothing could stop us.
I learned later in college,
I played a little baseball in college,
where you-- the coach there,
super nice guy, applauded your effort.
And if you did-- if you made a good effort,
he kind of applauded you, he'd say,
"You'll get them next time."
Nobody played very well for that team in college.
I always felt that I could get kids to do things
that they didn't think that they could do.
If you could get kids to go the next step
and be more successful than they believe that they thought
they could be, then you're gonna have a good team.
You know, you've heard the saying
is you make diamonds out of coal, right?
I mean, you take this piece of coal
and the way-- the pressure he put on you...
some people just disintegrate.
And their parents would fly off the handle.
Some kids couldn't handle the way that he coached.
And I don't know if, you know, a lot of kids today
could handle the way that he coached.
He put all this pressure on you.
You would get to the point where you just said,
"If he-- if he jumps on me like this one more time,
you know, tennis looks pretty good right now."
And I'm not a quitter.
I haven't gone there, but no,
I would have certainly regretted that for the rest of my life,
especially if they won state without me.
Bill wasn't afraid to tell a player
when he did wrong and he would say it,
uh, in front of the team.
First game of the year, we played Jimtown
and they ended up winning state in Indiana that year,
same year we won state in Michigan.
I believe it was a one-to-nothing,
or 2-1 game-- it was a very well-played game.
And it is the bottom of the seventh.
There's a guy on first base and there's two outs.
Guy hits the ball to the pitcher,
Steven Pustelnik.
I go to short
and Steven gives me a-- a pretty good ball,
but it's a ball that I'm gonna have to go fast
to turn this double play and end the game.
And I went so fast that I dropped the ball.
Next guy hits a triple to win the game.
Game over.
Whitely benches me for the next game
and basically says, in front of the whole team,
"You might not play shortstop again this year."
The reason we didn't play well
is because we haven't been practicing.
And I remember telling Paul Gorsuch,
our athletic director, he was along the fence,
and telling him that's the last frickin' time
that we'll-- we'll take a spring break off
to play a baseball game right afterwards,
and it wasn't quite that language.
I didn't take stuff home to my parents
about what my coach was telling me, right?
If he called me that name,
or said a swearword.
Because back then, when he said it,
it was true.
You know, correct it right away, say something and be a coach,
because that's what a coach does.
Pain is gonna come with failure. It makes you stronger.
It tears you down like a muscle, but it makes you stronger.
And he didn't take that pain away, he made that pain worse.
And he never would say this, but the deep down
message is, "I believe in you."
Don't try to take away someone else's pain.
And I think that's what we try to do in this world,
we try to take away everyone's pain.
As we move forward in life and we think about
coaching young people, or being parents,
you know, I can say that that's one person
that taught me a lot about being the person I am today.
Yeah, I wasn't at the game,
I was actually in Chicago on a trip,
but I listened to the game.
Pinconning has been here before,
they made this trek way back in 1971,
when they took on Detroit Lutheran West
and lost in the State Championship game 4-1...
That was, like, 20 years ago.
I want to rewind it.
Yeah.
Um, hard to watch.
Hard to see.
Um...
I live in Sturgis now, so that's kind of crazy.
I talked to Rick in great detail
and Rick really struggles, and still struggles to this day
on, um, the game, because...
they felt they had it won when the ball went off the bat.
Hi, is Rick available?
This is Brett Scheske.
I'm a filmmaker out of Sturgis, Michigan.
He's not interested?
Would you by chance know of anyone in Pinconning
um, from the team that might be willing
to talk about the '99 season?
We just want to know more about the Pinconning team
and we know Rick was a great coach.
But you have my number now, so if you guys think of anyone,
or if Rick has a change of heart, just give me a call.
I appreciate the call. Thank you.
Success isn't dictated just by tonight,
right here where you're standing.
Success is forever.
Success is when you're 40,
when you're 60, when you're 90.
That's when you see winners. You see winners long-term.
If you learn tonight that you lost here
and that was it...
you're one step closer to being a loser,
and I don't think there's one person
out here that's a loser.
The Trojan fans are right behind the dugouts
along the third base line, a good number have come up
to try to cheer the black and the orange on
for the school's first ever baseball championship.
So, you want to know the crazy part about this?
Yes.
It's the first time I saw it.
Some reporters would be in the press box, not me.
I was never in the press box.
I very rarely, if they let me in there,
I was never in the dugout.
I was somewhere along the sidelines.
I wanted to feel what it was like
to be with the fans and stuff like that.
Look at this, look at this, look at this,
here's a stupid kid down here.
He's stooped over.
You go-- you go write some sports stories
and use-- use some of your pictures.
Dave was awesome. You know, I remember him
coming out and taking swings with us a few times
and, uh, you know, he was just always fun to be around.
He had a great personality.
He asked us, he was kind of, like,
sheepish about it, but kind of excited.
He asked us to play a game of wiffle ball with him.
It was like, he'd tape up these wiffle balls
and it's like he's this, like, closet wiffle ball player.
Like, he's, like, from a pro league or something.
He's all coming to practice and we'd play
wiffle ball with him. And he was another guy you could
take out your nervous tension on, because you could just--
you could laugh at him, you could make fun of each other.
And little stuff like this mattered.
He was a fan as much as he was a writer,
and he was a great writer.
"'Juggernaut, a massive inexorable force
or object that advances irresistibly
and crushes whatever is in its path.'
I didn't think Webster ever saw the Sturgis baseball team,
but it seems obvious that he was referring to them."
I've always said, "If you're gonna have a good team,
you better have some skunks, you can't have all choir boys."
And that group of kids, I had some really great kids,
nice kids, but when it got to sports,
if they got a chance to get you down, they'd do it.
They'd punch you in the mouth and they'd take all your money
and they'd-- they'd go back and do it again.
I can't hear you!
Strike first, strike first!
No mercy, sir.
That one's long gone!
Way out of here! It had to go 400 feet!
And the sophomore has given Sturgis a 5-0 lead here.
And now he has 42 RBI, five this inning,
and the Trojans now lead 11 to nothing.
Ball wants it, popped to shortstop,
Matt Scheske all over that one, freezes it,
and the Trojans are Regional Champions again
in 1999.
Swung and driven into short centerfield,
it'll drop for a base hit.
Around third comes Johnson.
The throw to the plate is high, Ricky Hart reaches up
and grabs it and the tag is made!
And Sturgis has advanced into the State Championship game
tomorrow morning back in Battle Creek.
It seemed easy.
They knew they were good. They were never cocky.
They were just tougher than nails.
They were mentally tough, physically tough, focused.
I mean, I've had some really good baseball teams,
but none of them come close to comparing to that team.
I would put that team up with about any team
that's won a state title.
"The nine. Mario Maravolo, Chili.
Has key hits in last two wins."
And now it's gone!
Home run shot from Maravolo!
"Bryan Keim, Beezer. Threw out tying a run in last game."
Deep in centerfield,
Keim on the fourth, reaching up making a running grab!
"Nick Hochstetler. Got at-bats, got hits."
Yes!
"Tim Kolzow, TK.
Solid punch from left side and nifty D."
-Yeah! -Go, go, go, go, go!
"Matt Moses. Possibly best nine-hitter in state."
Two odds, two outs for Matt Moses.
And he swings and drills one.
Straightaway centerfield, his eyes are on it--
-it's over his head! -"Steve Pustelnik.
Number one pitcher with intensity."
Steven Pustelnik goes all the way.
This is a two-hit in.
"Matt Scheske. Amazing range and arm."
In the hole Scheske over to first base, what a play!
"Bryan Vercler.
Solid pitcher at the number two slot."
The windup by Vercler.
2-2 pitch, and the Trojans are in the final four!
"Ricky Hart, AKA Hart Attack.
Power in arm and back."
He swings and drives one deep
to rightfield and that is gone!
-Grand slam for Ricky Hart! -"Nate Lung, Lunger.
Designated hitter with tons of power."
Driven deep
to rightfield, get out of here.
That was long gone!
I mean, he threw that thing!
It wasn't-- there was no strangers on that team.
Even the guys that-- that may not have played as much,
I still knew just as well as everybody else on that team.
I think anytime you have a very good team in any sport,
guys have to understand their roles.
Not everybody can be the superstar.
Not everybody gets to play all the time
and some guys sit on the bench a lot.
And they have to understand that it's not their time,
they'll get their chance.
And in that '99 team,
we had a number of guys, who didn't play that much,
but they were all a part of the team
and they fit in.
And they're very instrumental to the success that we had.
Yes, we had some great athletes, but it was the grunt guys.
It was the guys that showed up in the summer,
the guys that did all the pre-season training,
they followed all the directions
and they gave everything that they had
within their human body.
Everybody pushed for each other to get better,
we all challenged each other to get better.
Everybody was on the same page.
There's not a day that goes by
to where I don't miss the camaraderie
and the interaction that I had with the coaches
and the parents and-- and the players.
The bottom line is building a team
that cares about one another.
You don't have to have
the greatest athletes in America to win.
Doc still, to this day, doesn't know how much
he helped me get through baseball
and how much he helped me succeed.
It all came back to him, just say, "Hey, Vacuum,"
every time he saw me in anatomy class.
He never talked about it any more than that,
he never said, "You're good," he never said, "You're awesome."
He just kept calling me The Vacuum
and I felt like he truly meant it.
Let them know they made a mistake.
Number one, own it. Take responsibility for it.
But more importantly,
I'll be there to help you get through it.
He lifted my confidence as much as anybody,
and he probably doesn't even know that.
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I remember the only thing that I ever did
throughout this summer outside of, you know,
swimming and jumping my bike
was I played baseball with my friends.
If you've watched the movie Sandlot,
that literally was us all the time out in the summer.
We were playing baseball in the backyard.
My philosophy for the kids was,
"Do your best, do what's right,
and treat other people the way you want to be treated.
And you know what?
You're gonna be successful at whatever you do."
Now, at a teaching, coaching level,
I thought it was important that the kids know
the fundamentals of the game.
We are in Sturgis, Michigan
at Wall Field at the corner of Lakeview and Lafayette,
still plenty of time for you to come down
to take in this.
The championship game of the 1993 Sturgis
Little League All Star Invitational Tournament.
Not too many clouds in the sky,
that may play a little havoc with the outfielders
trying to pick up a high-fly ball.
But beautiful, not too hot, about 83 degrees,
absolutely perfect.
Little more enthusiasm!
When I was ten, 11 years old,
my name got put in the paper
that I got a single and I walked twice.
It was a little blurb
and that was the greatest day of my life at that point.
I'm like, "My name's in the paper."
That was our philosophy,
is that we wanted to make every kid a star.
Boy, you want to talk about
people sitting in the stands and you see people
with headphones on and earpieces in
that are listening to the games.
Ricky Hart.
It was-- it was all community.
Little League and baseball experience
back then was just awesome.
This tournament started last Monday night.
Sturgis Orange started off with a victory.
They defeated Mendon 7-0.
They defeated Three Rivers then 9-2.
They defeated Lagrange 15-5.
And today they defeated White Pigeon
by the same margin, 15-5.
I always told my kids that we're out here to have fun.
We're out here to learn how to play baseball
and we want to win.
Good job, good job, good job, come on, come on!
Go, go, go, go, go!
I think we built the program up
and we made it so that kids enjoyed it.
We wanted to make it so
it was better at every level that they got to.
And there would be quote-unquote "tryouts."
Whitely led that.
He was grading every single player
at eight and nine years old,
to determine what team they're gonna be on.
And he'd be flashing, like, a three, or four, or five,
to tell you how many stars they were.
I organized and scheduled everything from eight-year-olds
all the way up to 16-year-olds.
I always knew who was coaching.
Uh, we had coaching clinics.
My biggest influence, uh, beside my dad,
was Mike Clipfell.
It's just been a real fun year this year.
A lot of the 12-year-olds, you know,
this'll be my 4th year coaching.
I've been with them guys now for three years,
and it's just been a real fun time
to, uh, watch all the kids mature
and learn more baseball skills.
There's kind of one thing we've always wanted to do
and that's win the championship
and that's what we're gunning for right now.
It was very competitive.
Even the bottom-tier teams, you know,
they did their best they could
and-- and that's how it always was.
Probably one of the biggest compliments,
I would say, I ever got secondhand was,
"Scheske wants to win just as bad as everybody else,
he just doesn't show it." And that--
that made me feel pretty good, because they were right.
Again, there were so many kids in the community
playing the sport,
that it created a level of competitiveness
that really no other area,
or many areas around us, had.
I remember Ricky Hart telling me,
again, we're little kids at this point,
but he says, "Oh, yeah, Whitely told my dad
that he can't wait for us to get to high school.
-He thinks we're pretty good." -Every dollar that we raised,
whether it was through sponsorships,
which we had great sponsorships in town,
and also the money that the kids paid to play,
um, all of it went back into the program.
We had this thing running like a well-oiled machine.
I wish we were Little League World Series affiliated,
'cause I think we could have done something.
There's my man!
This has been a very special group of kids,
not only talent-wise, but their attitudes.
We had the best kids, best teams in the area
and I said, "You know what?
"If these kids can stay together,
these guys could win a State Championship."
The mentions here at C.O. Brown Stadium.
322 down the leftfield line, 372 at left center,
402 to dead center,
369 in the power alley and right center,
333 down the rightfield line.
So, the leftfield corner is where you'll wanna...
I'm trying to Facebook these guys.
I have friend requested Adam Pashak,
do you know who that is?
-Uh-huh. -Uh, Jeff Hudson.
-Uh-uh. -Jeff Dembowske.
I know Dembowske. That's another big name up there.
Eric Piorkowski.
-Yeah, I don't know him. -Nathan Gage.
-No. -Jeff Spustack.
Yeah, I don't know him.
And the Focos, Jeremy and Justin.
Justin Foco? I'll check on that one.
I've turned over all kinds of rocks for Jeremy
and I can't find anything.
-Matt Gorske. -I don't know Matt.
Gorske's another name up there that's a huge, huge name.
Um, I don't know Matt Gorske--
but wait a minute, Matt Gorske.
Um, I'm extremely close friends with,
uh, a Gorske that's there
that might be related to him.
That sounds familiar.
My name is Matt Gorske.
I played shortstop.
Other than the last game,
I mean, the year was fun.
And then the game-- that game was fun.
But, uh, hey, 20 years later, I mean, you look back at it
and that's-- that's-- that's your memories.
That's your life, you know?
They had some really, really good baseball players.
Most teams would have welcomed
their seven, eight, nine kind of players.
I mean, I think it was probably one
of the biggest moments in our lives.
20 years later, it's a story
that I continue to tell.
You know, Pinconning is a baseball community.
It's just a generation after generation
of just tough-nosed kids.
And again, when you're in a community,
that-- that's what you do, is play baseball.
Well, it's easy to pass that on
from one generation to the next.
You know, my dad taught me,
"Talk with your bat, not with your mouth.
What you lack in size, like,
you're gonna have to make up in effort." That's it.
Go, go, go, go, go!
And in Little League,
we were-- we were friends.
We-- we didn't like each other on the baseball field.
Like, we-- we wanted to beat each other, you know?
And you lived, like, a mile down the road.
Rick Rudrow was,
as far as playing for him, it was, uh,
"We're gonna freaking win and that's it.
By all means necessary."
Well, he's the face of Pinconning baseball
and has been for 50 years, and he's earned the right.
You know, I mean, in the baseball program,
winning was just expected.
You know, it's not here just to-- to play ball,
it's here to play and to win and to beat the other team.
So, yeah, winning was number one.
If you made a mistake and you messed up,
I mean, more than likely you'd hear about it,
but on the flip side of that, when you did something good
and you performed,
he would give you praise for that.
And when you got praise from Rick Rudrow,
you knew you earned it.
You know, there were no participation trophies
and you didn't get a trophy or medal,
unless you worked your ass off and you deserved it.
You gotta know who to poke, who to stroke,
and who to leave alone.
And Coach Rudrow was the master at that.
Respect the game, always wear your ball hat.
He expected us to be professionals.
You know, he had the true core values of baseball
and he wanted to instill those in us and he did.
You know, he would never admit
that there was another team better, you know?
It was always one of his-- I think one of his
greatest strengths, is he'd never admit defeat.
It was always, you know, we didn't do something
that we needed to do to win a game and he played that way,
you know, as a player, he played that way.
Yeah, he was a stud.
He was an absolute stud baseball player.
Everyone you ever talked to,
that ever watched him play,
was the greatest baseball player
they've ever seen come out of the area.
6'4", big old handlebar sideburns,
you know, and he's like your hero.
I mean, he could throw the ball 95 miles an hour,
he could hit the baseball 500 feet.
And wherever you go, there's just legendary stories
about how great of a baseball player he was.
We'd throw him some pitches
and he'd just-- he'd call it off the scoreboard.
I mean, you could just put them wherever you wanted.
Big lefty and just could hit the shit out of the ball.
MHSAA, their very first baseball State Championships was 1971
and he was the starting pitcher
in the championship game. Lost 4-1.
And then he went to Mott Community College for two years
and got drafted by the Yankees
and made it up to triple A in their organization,
before he called it a career.
The year before, in '98,
we made it to the quarterfinals and we-- and we lost.
They were ranked number one pre-season, right?
There was a lot of high expectations for them.
I remember Coach Rudrow made it a point,
didn't want to be ranked the next year.
He didn't want any part of any of that,
because he didn't want the pressure over us.
And then it's not like
we started off that well, either, the next year.
At one point, we were 11 and 6,
and then we didn't lose a game after that.
We had experience from the prior year,
I'd say the sense of urgency was there.
We knew that we had something special.
We knew we had Jeff Hudson and Adam Pashak as,
you know, two horses we were gonna ride
as far as we could ride them.
One thing that I always had in my back pocket--
calling pitchers, I had great pitchers.
I had kids that were throwing the ball 88, 89 miles an hour.
Well, it's pretty easy to call pitchers
when you got a guy in high school throwing 88
and they got a pretty good deuce.
Swing and a miss. Boy, you could hear
maybe the pop of the mitt on that one
as Pashak grabs through his hardest toss of the day.
When I would warm up before a game,
he made it his goal to get me as mad as possible.
You know, "These guys are--
you're gonna have a tough time, you better be on, like,
they're going to take this away from you"
kind of thing and I-- I would feed into that.
Everybody could get on base.
We had some guys like Jeff Dembowske and Jeff Hudson.
Not only did they swing harder than anybody else,
they hit the ball all the time too.
It's, like, they weren't just swinging hard and missing,
they were swinging hard and crushing the ball.
We hit more homeruns
than any team had ever hit in school history.
We were not afraid of anybody.
They were athletic, no nonsense.
Had a little chip on their shoulder.
Didn't matter who we were going up against,
we knew we were going to beat them.
They were baseball players.
Our first regional game,
we-- we beat, I think, Kalkaska pretty handedly.
We beat in the regional finals a good Petoskey team
2-1 or two nothing, something like that.
And I remember going to church the next morning on Sunday
and being so focused.
All I could think about was Tuesday.
The quarterfinal game.
Whitehall's Nate McLouth
is the average up to 270 now,
thanks to three hits against the Cubs last night.
Of course, Whitehall is 38 and one and,
I mean, they had that Nate McLouth
that got drafted by the-- the Pirates
and was an all star for the Braves, I think.
And then the list went on and on and on.
I went to work for my uncle that week.
I had to take Tuesday off and he said,
"Well Tuesday will be the last day you take off,
'cause you guys have no chance to beat Whitehall."
Nobody in this town thought we were beating Whitehall.
People weren't on our side as much.
And this team comes out with-- Eminem was popular--
like, Eminem hair-- they all had blonde hair
and just thought they were gonna win.
What I knew about Whitehall, is they're #1 in the state.
They broke the state record for homeruns that year.
I mean, they were-- they were the Goliath.
I read an article in, uh, the Detroit Free Press
about a month beforehand.
What they kept talking about is, yeah,
we don't even sit on the fastball anymore,
you know, we just wait for people to throw curveballs
and we just hit them out of the park,
and kind of almost make a joke out of it, you know?
So I held that in my back pocket,
so to speak, for a while
and I, you know, challenged Adam Pashak,
I just said, "You know,
"this-- this team is waiting for your curveball
and we're not gonna give it to them.
We're gonna throw heater after heater
after heater after heater."
We go out, Adam gets the first guy out, I think.
Next guy gets on, made a groundball up the middle,
and Matt and Hudson turned a double play
and I, you know, I'm a catcher, I go screaming down
the first baseline and back it up
and throw it first, in case something happens.
When we turned the double play, I put the brakes on
and I looked right in their dugout and told them,
"It's gonna be all night like this.
You guys aren't gonna do anything all night long,
I promise, this is the way
this whole day is gonna go for you.
Your season ends tonight."
That was in the first inning.
Justin is the kind of guy
that you love to have on your team,
and you probably don't like him too much
if you have to play against him.
And I loved him.
Once we beat Whitehall, we thought we're gonna
just do this through the rest of the way,
we're gonna beat everybody up the way we beat them up.
And I think East Grand Rapids took us lightly.
Up until the championship game,
like, we would just jump on teams.
You know, that quarterfinal game,
that semifinal game, it seems like we were scoring
three, four, five runs those first couple innings
and then it was just kind of demoralizing to the other teams.
This is the only time in my career this ever happened
to me, but we went to the seventh inning up,
I think, 8-1, 8-2, something like that.
I couldn't catch the ball, I had, like, seven passed balls
in the seventh inning.
I gave up three runs myself to the point
where Rick called a time-out, comes out there, he said,
"Do I need to take you out?" I said, "No, I got this."
I think I had already checked out
and went to the championship game.
County leading off centerfielder, Bryan Keim.
Batting second, first baseman, Tim Kolzow.
In the third spot, third baseman Steven Pustelnik.
In the cleanup position, catcher Ricky Hart.
Batting fifth rightfielder, Nick Hochstetler.
The mood when we got to Bailey Park that morning,
I felt that there was a quiet confidence among them.
You know, I remember a lot, actually,
of that game, um, you know, the tension,
I think everybody felt it.
Like, I guarantee I was on edge.
You know, hell, you don't get many chances.
Rick and Gary called us into their hotel room
as a team, and he told us, you know,
he said, "It's our destiny to win this game."
One of those speeches where it, like,
sends chills through your body
and he was like, "And when we win,
we're coming back here and we're burning Pinconning
to the ground."
It was a business trip.
We had a goal, we had a job to do,
and-- and we were confident
in completing that and being successful.
We already knew what our lineup was.
There's nothing to prepare for. We're ready to go.
I mean, there's nothing left to do but go win a ball game.
You know, you get that far and I knew
what the hell happened the year before,
you want to win the damn thing.
Nobody remembers if you come in second, believe me.
You're remembered when you win, not when you lose.
So, yeah, you're damn right, I wanted to win that thing.
Just underway here
at C.O. Brown Stadium in the Bailey Park complex.
and it's straight away centerfield.
Bryan Keim going back over the fence.
Past the warning track and off the wall.
So a kid hit a line drive right at me,
right off the get go,
and I thought it was going to stay on that same level
and it just kept-- like, a throw just kept rising on me,
uh, and it got to a point where I knew I had no shot.
And I can remember it was gonna be a triple.
I mean, it was just straightaway centerfield
and I remember rounding first and they'd just watered,
like, around first base and I slipped,
had to pick myself up, still got a stand up double,
but we didn't score that inning.
And the next man to take out Vercler
is the shortstop, Matt Gorske.
So I get up to the plate, and my job
as a second batter in the order,
was Adam gets on base and I bunt him to second.
So what happens is,
they give me the green light, they let me swing away.
From Battle Creek, swung on, lifted again,
straight away centerfield, this time Keim comes in
a few feet. He's got it.
No advancement by Pashak for the courtesy runner.
And what my job was to do,
was to make a productive out
and hit the ball to the right side.
I take responsibility that I changed
the momentum of that game the second I was at bat.
You know, for whatever reason,
I asked coach about that, you know, later I says, "Hey,
we always bunt there in that situation.
Why didn't you bunt there?"
He says, "I had a hunch, we're gonna have an inning."
You know, once we got in the game,
they had a pitcher that threw probably harder than anybody,
we'd seen anybody throw all year.
One word to sum it up was terrifying.
Pashak has struck out 98 hitters
and walked a 17.
Can he bring the fastball?
And in the first inning I just remember,
you know, them having some good at-bats
and I think they had a single or two to rightfield.
That was kind of a sign that they knew how to hit.
Uh, I knew that they were a defensive team.
I remember Coach was saying, "If we score three, we win."
And Keim is well aware of that
as he stands in, waiting for the one-one.
The other way for a solid single into rightfield.
Line, down the rightfield on a base hit.
Keim is going to make the turn at second.
3-1 delivering line in the leftfield and the bases.
Sturgis taking an early one-nothing
as Ricky Hart goes the other way.
Pustelnik stops at second
and the boys are delivering early here,
in the bottom of the first.
You know, I thought we dodged a couple of bullets early.
We weren't used to playing in stadiums.
So, there was-- there was a play earlier in that game.
Our all-state catcher
is going to catch a pop-up behind home plate.
And that wind shoved it back towards the plate.
Hit the netting in front of us.
One strike on Dembowske.
Boy, that was popped up.
In the infield right at home plate.
Ricky Hart, trying to find it,
now he won't do it and it lands in foul territory.
Ricky had trouble with that one from the get-go.
I was like, "How did that happen?"
I thought that Sturgis put
a little more pressure on us than we did them.
Defensively, I think we played
probably one of our most sound games we've ever played.
You know, Jeremy, specifically.
He made two catches that kept us in the game.
Boy, that's driven into centerfield.
Backpedaling, looking up now, reaching up,
and making a nice grab on the move is Jeremy Foco.
He's gonna have to hustle up.
He's gonna get doubled off first base.
Nobody thought he was gonna catch that ball and he turned
a double play on it, which saved a bunch of runs.
Driving one to right-center.
Over on the ball making a diving grab is Jeremy Foco.
Honestly, the one that felt the best to me
was the diving catch, because it was, like,
I've never done something like that before,
at least that laid out.
He ran like the wind,
batted almost 500, he had a big arm.
I don't think he ever realized
how good of a baseball player he really could have been.
...their senior first baseman.
Boy, that's flying down the rightfield line, a base hit.
I hit the ball to rightfield
and when they threw it in, the guy missed the cut off
and I saw the ball going by me and I'm like, "Well,
I'm gonna go."
So I went to second.
I tried to slide around the bag and they called me out
because they had the ball there before I got there.
But he didn't touch me at all. Just-- just to clarify.
Bill Whitely hot about that one,
as Kolzow tried to go into second base.
We stranded so many runners, we had hit after hit after hit
and only, I think, scored one run.
I mean, it was really-- we played the way we normally do
because we couldn't get on the board.
Count on the pitcher. 1-2 pitch, strike!
Fastball tipped into the mitt of the catcher.
And Pashak comes right back to strike out
the final two hitters of the inning.
I remember watching their pitcher
throw his first pitch when he goes up on the mound
and I remember looking back at the dugout.
And Matt turns around,
and he's got this huge smile on his face
and he's just like, "We're gonna wipe these guys up."
And that is something that I regret.
You know, they had a kid on the mound, Bryan Vercler,
who-- nothing seemed to faze that kid.
Bryan would just go out there and throw the baseball.
"The Mute," I mean, the guy was quiet,
he just did his job and came off the field.
Right-handed junior Bryan Vercler on the hill.
Line drive right back!
Vercler who snagged-- I mean that was dead center,
right through the middle
and Vercler stuck up his glove in defense.
I thought he almost killed the pitcher,
he had a line drive right up the middle and he caught it.
Inch one way or the other, that would have been probably
a different game, but nothing just seemed to fall for us.
I felt like their pitcher, uh,
was not a kid that was gonna dominate us,
I thought it was just a matter of time before we got him.
I don't know how fast he was throwing,
but it was hittable, it felt like it was hittable.
Halfway point already in this one.
Let up, driven, deep to leftfield.
Out on the overhead near to Maravolo,
out near the 372 mark and it clears the fence!
Looked like it hit, like, the top side of the fence
right at the 372 marker.
And we are tied at one
as Hudson delivers his ninth home run of '99.
Maravolo knew he wasn't gonna get to that one.
His only hope was it was going to stay in the park
and, boy, that thing just kept carrying on...
That was a bomb, obviously, and, um, okay, we're gonna roll now.
Lined into leftfield past short and third.
Lined into left centerfield. Keim going back.
He won't get this one, it's over his head.
And Pinconning takes their first lead
of this state championship game.
2-1 on a ringing double to left-center by Ben Galus.
How superstitious were you guys?
I'm not superstitious, but I'll tell you,
the 1999 team was very superstitious.
Extremely superstitious.
Yeah, yeah, I mean,
everything had to go down to chalk lines,
but the glasses, you know, he never showed emotion.
He was Mr. Intensity the entire time.
The entire time.
It would start from the pre-game,
before they would warm up,
they'd have to look for four-leaf clovers.
You would find four-leaf clovers in the field
and you would pick those
and you would put them in your hat.
They also had a pattern that they would get into
for their pre-game warm up for the stretching.
I believe they actually did, like, a cross,
like, a T for their warm-ups, but those guys,
they were always doing something different.
Well, we obviously had the stack.
You know, we would stack all those gloves up
and Ricky was the guy to stack those up and--
I can't honestly tell you the foundation,
or remember the foundation of it,
I just remember, um,
as a catcher, being the last one
to place my glove on the top
and then the game ball would go on the top
and then we would run, and we always kind of had this--
this superstition, that, you know,
as a foundation, as a strong foundation,
as a team, nothing can break us down.
Sometimes, another team would come and knock that stack down
and then we knew we were gonna win the game.
And that never failed.
But again, it was just a superstition,
but at the same time, it was a foundation for us
and it was a time for us to come together,
and that's what that represented.
I do remember them stacking gloves.
So the first time I saw it, it kind of blew my mind that,
"Hey, they really do this, they're that superstitious."
Now it's funny because I am so superstitious myself,
that I still-- I talk to the teams about
how that team stacked their gloves.
There is a superstitious story that I have.
Do you want me to share that now or-- okay.
This goes back to when we were 10 and 6, or 12 and 6.
I needed a new drink,
so I bought a different drink for every game
to try to make a connection, you know, to a winning streak.
So, I bought orange Sunkist and we won two games.
Hell, we rattled off, like, 24 wins in a row
and 24 orange Sunkist in my opinion.
I bought two right here
at the gas station here at the light
before we left on Thursday morning.
One's for the semis, one's for the finals.
We got to the semis, I opened up the first bottle.
You know, we beat the hell out of East Grand Rapids
and I got another one on ice for, like, 48 hours
and, uh, for the first time
I'm gonna share my orange Sunkist
with everybody.
Well, I just opened up the orange Sunkist
and I'm like, "Fellas,
this is the last one I'm gonna open,"
and, um, one of the players,
"Coach, that's one of those new orange Sunkist
that's got the--" you know, some kinda lottery on it,
a little sweepstakes thing.
He says, "Look at the cap and see what it says!"
"Sorry, try again."
And of course I lie about it. "I won!"
I kind of, like, put in my pocket, and we all celebrate
and throw the orange Sunkist around and go play.
And I tell you, that worked on me for seven innings.
Well, three out.
That's all that separates Pinconning
from a State Championship.
A 2-1 lead as we go to the bottom of the seventh inning
and it's Bryan Keim...
It's almost, like, I tell the story like we won.
It's almost, like, I try to reason in my head
of how to get to a different point.
And I never get to that-- that other point.
I-- I never get there.
So, now you go bottom of the seventh,
it's still 2-1 and...
the big thing for Sturgis was
they had their top of the order up.
Sturgis would like to get the leadoff man aboard,
put some pressure on the Pinconning team,
3-2 delivering the low and outside ball four.
Time to board for the third time today
and the Trojan fans
who really got up between innings
are on their feet again.
And I thought, "Oh, here we go."
Because we had the best--
best base runner in the state of Michigan
on first base and we had the top of the order in line.
Swing, and a line right back
through the middle a base hit.
With the hit in front of him, Keim checks in at second base.
Taking no chances with nobody out here,
the Trojans have two aboard.
Adam, our leader on the mound, pitching all year long,
we ran him as long as we could, I mean, you--
you got to ride your horse.
I-- I was done.
I mean, it was just, it was the right move.
Time to make a change and let's just,
I mean, there was no doubt we're going to win that game.
So, now you got Stephen Pustelnik,
your number three hitter up.
He could very easily let Stephen hit away.
You know, what do you do?
Do you bunt him, or do you let him go?
I had an image in my head of, you know,
getting a fastball right down the middle of the plate
and just turning on it and just seeing
that puppy fly out to leftfield.
Obviously that didn't happen.
And I remember standing there going,
"What am I gonna do? What do I do, what do I do?"
And it went through my mind a million times within a minute.
And I said, "We got to bunt him."
Bunting.
It's a good one in front of home plate.
Galus picking it up, throwing to first.
Boy, what a play by Hudson to stay with that thing.
He lost his bearing in his mitt.
His first thought was to go to third.
As soon as that play happened,
you've taken the bat out of Ricky Hart's hand.
And Ricky Hart... no pun intended,
was the heart and soul of that baseball team.
Obviously in my head, I'm having a great game.
I'm three for three and, you know,
I'm-- I'm-- I'm geared for this,
but, uh, they intentionally walked me.
They're going to intentionally walk Ricky Hart,
middle of the bases!
It was one of those good and bad.
You made the right move.
Bad, now we're losing at that point,
probably the best hitter in the state of Michigan.
He's gonna not have an opportunity
to impact the game.
I knew in the-- in this situation,
if we got him to second and third,
that first base is open
and had a right-handed pitcher on the mound,
that they would put him on.
But I also knew that we had to get him to second and third.
I remember going over the game in my mind
thinking, "You know what? That was a gamble."
That was a gamble, because you took
two of your best hitters
and you took the bats out of their hands.
Get ready folks,
we could have a bang-bang ending here at Battle Creek.
If you don't feel the tension and the excitement of this one,
you've probably been dead for a couple of days.
But it will be Nick Hochstetler's chance now,
the senior rightfielder with the bases loaded.
And one out, and the Trojans trailing 2-1.
We all had confidence in-- in Nick.
He was a great player all year.
But he had some really good cuts.
He was swinging it really well. Um, he just didn't make contact.
Get it over, a ball and two strikes.
Uh, Nick Hochstetler.
1-2 pitch, swung on and missed.
Hochstetler goes down.
I mean, the first two guys get on,
the pitcher almost throws it away on Steven's bunt,
I mean, that could have been game,
that was tie game right there.
And then we have a strikeout and-- and, you know,
all of a sudden, we could lose this game.
And Pinconning is now one out away
from winning the school's first ever State Championship.
And then we get this sophomore kid.
Uh, Nate Lung.
One thing about Bill Whitely was he always had
extreme confidence in his guys.
I don't know if anybody else,
the bottom of the seventh inning,
down by one, would have wanted a sophomore up to bat
in that kind of situation, but Bill never hesitated,
never faltered, sent him right out there.
I just told him, "Try to get a fastball."
Um, but my biggest thing was,
I had a stallion on third base who wanted to go.
My thought process was, I was going to steal,
I was just waiting for the call.
But the problem was,
the kid was going from the stretch.
All right, here we go again.
First pitch to long is a little bit low, ball one.
Hey, a walk would do the trick, too.
Remember, there's no place to put Nate.
Foco, the catcher, really thought that was a nice one,
he framed it on the outside. Swung on and missed.
Lung took a healthy swing at that one.
Bill Whitely telling him to
settle down a little bit in that box.
Wind up, the 1-1 delivery, that one's in sight.
Hopping out of the way is Nate Lung.
Two balls, one strike.
I sat up on the outside, lift it up,
and we wanted it up and away.
And Jeff threw it right in the glove.
He put it exactly where I called for it.
Like I said, I was on deck and if Nate gets on,
it's a tied game and I'm coming up to bat
and he hits this ball and I took my helmet off
and I just throw it down on the ground.
I don't know if it's gonna get caught or not,
but it's, like, when that ball left his bat,
it's, like, career's over. This is over.
And it seemed to take forever and I'm thinking to myself,
"We're either gonna win or lose and--
but regardless I'm done."
What was your initial thought
when the ball left the bat?
"We won."
I threw my mask off, I threw my helmet off,
threw my chest protector off.
That's-- that's a pop up to Jeremy, this game's over.
I remember watching that from the--
what would have been the third base side,
and he hit it and I put my head down.
And I'm like. And I never saw it.
And so I was listening to it on the radio.
Bryan Keim is at third base,
Kolzow at second, Ricky Hart over at first.
2-1 delivery, swung out,
lifted in the air to centerfield.
Go, go, go!
-Go! Go! -Jeremy Foco!
It's over his head! It's over his head!
The Trojans are the champions! In '99!
Foco should have had that one, it was a high fly ball
and it went over his head!
And Sturgis wins the State final!
Can you believe it?
Wow.
Just got chills.
Shoot.
Hmm.
Well, my grandma passed right before the state game.
She passed away
and my grandma's always, you know,
got me whatever I needed for baseball
and all that and I told her "Grandma,
we're gonna win the State Championship
for you this year."
And we sure did.
He's almost like a robot, it seemed like.
You know, very emotional, but I think, you know,
there was this sense of calmness,
uh, that came over him
when he was in the-- in the batter's box.
He knew what was going on, but didn't really care.
I just remember looking up
and thinking it was gonna be a somewhat routine fly ball.
My heart sank a little bit,
because we had gotten to the point
we had dreamed of getting our whole entire life
and it was gonna come down to this one catch.
Jeremy Foco is-- It's over his head!
The Trojans are the champions in '99!
It went from heartbreak
and "We didn't quite make it" to jubilation
in a span of about a second and a half, it seemed like.
Tom Dukes, his play by play,
that's how I knew that he missed it.
I didn't see it.
I was just, I'm like, "Oh, it's over."
I-- I'm like, "It's done."
I'm like, "This is such a great run" and then it's done.
Then I'm like, "Oh, my--" it was--
When it first left Nate's bat,
when he hit it,
the first thing that popped into my head was,
"Fly ball, centerfield.
Pinconning has just won the State Championship."
Well, we-- I thought we were State Champs
for four seconds.
I spent, you know,
three to four seconds as a State Champion.
And then see the ball land, and then I looked to my left,
and I saw the kid from second base, you know,
just a couple steps away from home.
Jeremy Foco, who has played
just an exceptional baseball game all day
and that was just a high fly ball.
The first one, when you watch it,
just looks like a fly ball right off the bat.
Shit.
Yeah.
It's hard to watch even now.
Yeah, that's the sad part of seeing the guys like that.
Like I said, I didn't play that game, but it was--
Uh.
Yeah.
Wish that was our celebration, you know?
The way that I imagine it would have felt
to make an amazing play on that and win the game,
probably the same way he felt by hitting that ball.
It was off to the warning track, wasn't it?
I mean, you've got to give a ton of credit to that kid
in that situation to be able to put--
he put pretty good wood on that ball too,
I mean, he-- something like he hit a little--
a little better than I thought, you know?
It sounded like a pretty good hit.
I listened to the game
then immediately started
communicating with other people.
They were in shock
because they felt it was an error.
You didn't go to the State Championship game,
correct?
What was the first thing you heard about the game
after it was over?
I feel like it was a different style ball
that was hit to me in the first inning,
but it was the same feeling. It kind of came up.
And then it kind of did, like, three circles and I--
I mean I don't know I think it-- it two-hopped the fence.
It's a 400 park.
Yeah, I mean, that ball's almost to the warning track.
I would have bet you $100
that ball never hit the warning track when,
you know, until after watching that video,
and that was darn near close to the warning track.
The ball landed on the edge of the warning track
and probably in 90, 95% of high school fields
it'd been a home run.
If we're playing at Pink Onyx field, it's a home run.
He doesn't even get his glove on.
I should've hit that ball out.
Some people will tell the story and they're like--
it makes it sound like he was camped under it,
like, sitting there waiting for the ball
and like hit, he just-- no, it wasn't that.
Like, when he hit it, I was like,
"Piece of cake, I'm gonna catch this ball."
And it-- and then as the ball was going,
it wasn't like, you know, I started stepping back,
start sitting back, like, "Oh, no, this is go-- this is hit."
Just based on even looking at that,
if I had played it perfectly, then I'm-- I'm--
I think I would have gotten to it, but I didn't.
I don't know if it just carried, like,
it was one of those things where it was, like,
carried or did he just hit it way better than I thought?
You know, after seeing it, you realize,
you know, what happened.
That, you know, he hit a freaking bomb.
480, it should have been.
If I didn't dip my back shoulder.
-They won. -No!
I just remember wanting to get out of there.
Like, I was like,
"I want to get out of here as fast as I can."
I remember grabbing my stuff,
because there was another game right behind us
and getting with my parents, getting in the car, leaving.
It was-- it was like as soon as that happened,
you wanted to do nothing more than just get out of there.
We didn't talk about it, we didn't take pictures before,
we didn't take pictures after.
You know, everybody just went on their separate ways.
I know I went home with my wife
and we stopped at some bar restaurant
in, I think, Perry, we stopped and--
and then, um, we never talked,
I mean, never talked about it, never said a word about it,
and-- and then my wife drove me home,
I lived right in town here and I had, uh,
a 30 pack of beverages sitting on my porch
and I drank every one of them.
I sat on my porch all day, just stared at my feet
in just disbelief, I mean,
I can't tell how many people drove by.
People, for years, just said...
"Yeah, we saw you sitting there and...
what you're going through." Mm-hmm.
It was the first time I really felt like...
we had lost something big
and it was all my fault.
We-- I went and sat in the dugout
and I was so upset.
They call you out to give you medals.
I remember not wanting to go out.
I think my dad peeked his head around the dugout
and he was like, "You get out there."
And it was good advice, right?
Because it was, like, I didn't want to sit there
and just be a baby about it.
The other guys were hurting, too.
My dad's work ethic is second to none.
So Sunday morning, day after, I get up,
he said, "Well, you can't sit here and sulk all day.
We need help with the store, why don't you come help?"
And, uh, and I did.
I don't look at it in a bad light ever.
I-- I really don't.
That's how good of a season we had,
how good of a team we had.
I just get down to the same conclusion of...
how close we were.
They were just as good as we were.
Uh, I-- I believe that.
And we, you know, we made-- we made,
you know, one more play than they did
and came out on top.
Great team, great season,
but not all great teams can-- can be champions.
And sometimes you have bad luck,
you know, sometimes you don't win them all
and, oh, boy, when you make that run,
you know, it's just-- it validates all the things
that you tell those kids.
"If you do this, this, this, and this, you know,
you can make a run to the state title."
You know? And we did.
It gave me a lot of perspective
as a 17-year-old that I never would have had.
I felt that sort of, like, even after that game
it was, like, you know, "I need to do the things
that I enjoy and I love." Like, I was talking about
how I played golf the next year and I did track.
I really had a good time doing those things and I loved it.
The things that we commit ourselves to
should be those things.
If I had to choose to-- say like, "Hey,
would you rather be in Sturgis' situation,
needing to get a hit to win the game
or in Pinconning's situation,
needing to play defense and get the last out?"
I'd pick our position every single time.
And I want that ball hit to Jeremy Foco every time.
"When the final season came,
the Sturgis baseball community was a loyal group of family,
community, and anyone who ever played the game.
The guys who came before the championship team
knew they had set the scene.
Their leadership laid the foundation.
These kids and their families grew up together.
Fathers and past players coached
and they were respected and supported by the community."
Well, the craving for that team, man.
Just, I mean, that's the best part of sports,
that's part of coaching, that you--
you hope the kids feel, like, when my kids play,
I just hope they feel that-- that-- that just that joy.
It's tough to-- tough to-- tough to repeat,
tough to emulate, but, boy, it's-- it's awesome.
If you're gonna stay on top,
if you're gonna be successful, you have to stay after it.
These guys have sent everybody in our program a message.
It was funny because Saturday after the game
I went to a couple open houses and I drove through town
and I saw kids out with their mitts and went by Wall School,
kids were out there playing and, uh, you know,
I think they had a little bit more jump in their step,
a little bit more bounce to 'em
because of what these young men had done Saturday.
And it made Sturgis proud and the community proud.
All right, Bill Whitely, we look forward
to seeing you next spring back out on the diamond.
Thanks, Mike.
I'd rank it to the top.
Very top.
Sturgis has their first
baseball State Championship
in an unbelievable fashion!
It's surreal, even just to talk about it right now
I get emotional about it, 'cause that was me living
my non-existent baseball life through baseball players.
You know, arms went up over the head,
it was this-- the Sturgis Trojan in me came out,
I was happy to see my team win.
The heart's just going 100 miles an hour
knowing that your alma mater just did something that
not many teams ever get a chance to do.
Oh, yeah!
Yeah! All right!
Dang. That's a good memory.
Um.
And I'll tell you what,
when that left Nate Lung's bat,
that was the final out of the ballgame.
I think everybody sensed it in the stands,
we certainly did upstairs here.
But it was not to be for Pinconning
and it helped Sturgis win.
Andrew, go! All right, you guys catch him.
Go by me, Andrew, go by me.
Go by me, guys. Go, go, go, go! Go by me.
Oh, you all right?
You're all right.
Good to see you. How're you doing?
-Good! -You're well?
Shut it. Grab it.
Ironically, every time I go over to Chicago
and I go by that sign that says "Sturgis, turn left..."
man, I'd like to burn that town down.
I say it every time to myself, you know, just kind of--
I ran into one of those players a few years later,
uh, at a-- at a party at Western.
It was at my house, he came to my house,
it was a house party and I had to go upstairs
and put my ring on and-- and show-- show it to him
'cause I was-- 'cause I might have been a jerk.
Uh.
But-- but yeah, we-- we talked-- we talked about it and,
you know, he-- he was cool about it
and I probably wasn't so cool about it,
but, um, super nice guy and, um,
probably not my proudest moment, but--
You're gonna take it off,
pop a ball in your mouth, and then play.
Grab a cheese ball. Grab a cheese ball.
Balls, grab a cheese ball.
Really crunch on that cheese ball.
Grab a cheese ball, but don't look at the cheese ball.
I knew all the umpires in Bay County,
they all knew me, I've been playing here forever,
so they let me have a long leash on how much I could say,
but we hit four or five home runs against Gladwin
and I'd just go start talking to their catcher
every time they come out and tell them,
"Your pitcher's gotta stop throwing the ball right there,
every time you throw it in there we're gonna put it
in the cornfield. You guys gotta stop.
As long as you don't say anything derogative,
you can never get in trouble, right?
You can't call him specific names, but you can
mention a person's name, you can mention his mom's name,
you mention his girlfriend's name, you can mention
somebody you know his girlfriend hooked up with on him.
It's part of the fun of being a catcher.
I think he was-- he was an old school coach,
so he stood up for his players.
If there-- there's games
where one of the Bay City teams,
first at bat, guy walked.
Kid unstrapped his gloves, set them on the plate,
put the bat right across the plate,
and came back to the inning after that,
after the inning was over and Rick said, you know,
"You gotta--
you gotta take care of that next time he's up to bat.
It was just one of those-- you just don't show up
the other team and you don't act like that.
So, you know, we hit him the next time up
and it's old school baseball.
They didn't hit the batter.
They called time out and told Adam
to go step off the back of the rubber, turn,
and fire the ball into his ribs.
-Where was he at? -First base.
Like as he's diving back into first base.
At the pick off move. Yeah. Yeah.
If someone tried to show you up
or if they, you know, were stealing signs,
whatever it may be, it's just,
you put one in the ribs.
What's with the sunglasses?
I think a lot of it is so they can't tell
if I'm trying to pick up signs.
You know, I wear sunglasses all the time anyways,
but, uh, in baseball when you're coaching third,
I'm always trying to steal signs.
You know, whether it's from the coach in the dugout
or from a catcher.
Um, we're-- we're always trying to--
trying to get an advantage.
We're not doing the Houston Astral thing with,
uh, you know, filming in the centerfield,
but we're doing it the right way
and we're always trying to find a way to--
to pick up signs from other teams.
In life, how would you rank this?
Oh, I'd rank it to the top.
Very top.
Um, meeting my wife, that was the top.
But--
What do you remember about Nate Lung
as a baseball player?
I-- I just, I mean, the things that I remember about him,
he fell a lot, um, seemed a little bit clumsy,
um, and...
swung as hard as he could every time he swung the bat.
Um, and I believe most of the time grunted
every time he hit the ball.
Um--
So, we're up there at Whitely's
and it's freaking tornado weekend.
I don't know if you guys experienced that
down here or not,
but it was like freaking four hours,
nothing but the newsflash, you know,
watching these different triangles going,
I mean, and-- and here's Sturgis
and here's Whitely. And I says, "Yeah, boys,"
I says, "You guys don't remember this,
but I was delivering papers for the South Bend Tribune
when I was, like, ten years old.
And on the front page there was one shot...
where the wind was so violent
that it blew a freaking chicken
right into aing ketchup bottle.
ing Whitely and Clancey were like,
"What the are you talking about?
. You areing soed."
I said, "Dude, I wasing ten!"
And he said, "Get the ing video
and we'll see that son of a."
I said, "Dude," I said,
"They didn't have videos back in 1965."
I says, "I will try to find theing picture
on the South Bend paper that--"
And then he says, "Oh, you're--" and I says, "No!"
And, so that's what he texted you,
I think he said something about it.
-Yup, that's what it was. -So you're telling me
the tornado drove a chicken into a ketchup bottle?
Yep. That ain't no shit.