PEORIA, Ariz. – At Perfect Game national championship tournaments like the PG/EvoShield Upperclass National Championship being contested here in the West Valley region of the Phoenix metropolitan area, amazing performances sometimes spring up like desert flowers after an unexpected rain shower.
Early Friday afternoon, while pitching for the Maryland-based CrabFest All Americans on a Cleveland Indians Cactus League spring training practice field at the Goodyear (Ariz.) Ballpark Recreational Complex, Jack Alkire produced one of those brilliant blossoms.
At first glance, Alkire comes across as somewhat unremarkable at a high-profile scouting event like the PG/EvoShield Upper. He is a senior at prestigious Dematha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md., who calls Cheverly, Md., home, but at 5-foot-10, 180-pounds he is certainly not physically imposing.
Closer examination reveals that Perfect Game ranks him as a national top-550 prospect in the 2015 high school class who has verbally committed to Virginia Commonwealth University. He possesses a fastball that generally sits 85-88 miles-per-hour and had topped out at 89 – until Friday afternoon.
And then, greatness happened. Alkire’s fastball touched 91 mph; curveballs and changeups he used infrequently topped out at 74 and 78 mph, respectively.
The final numbers in a 5-0 win over On Deck Academy from Las Vegas, Nev., spoke for themselves: a seven inning no-hitter in which Alkire faced the minimum 21 batters – an On Base runner reached on an error in the fourth and was immediately erased when he unsuccessfully tried to steal second – didn’t walk a batter and struck out 16, throwing 65 of his 93 pitches (70 percent) for strikes.
“Really, I just stayed in the same spots the whole game; I stayed outside with my fastball, and they weren’t able to locate it, moving it up and down,” Alkire said late Saturday afternoon, 24 hours after his gem. “I think it gets easier (as the innings progress) and also I just tend not to think about it. But going into the seventh inning you do think about it and you just feel like you’re on top of the world.”
“That was the first time I’ve been part of a no-hitter,” Alkire’s CrabFest All Americans teammate Kevin Heiss said Saturday. “Jack threw great … and we played defense and had timely hitting.”
Alkire’s no-hitter set in motion a series of superb pitching performances that allowed CrabFest to advance to Sunday’s PG/EvoShield Upper playoffs with one of the brackets’ top seeds.
While not nearly as spot-on as Alkire, 2015 left-hander Andrew Rozylowicz from Annapolis, Md., came out Saturday morning and fired a complete game five-hitter – he threw four hitless innings to start his outing – and allowed just one earned run while striking out three and walking four in a 2-1 win over the SBG Wahoos out of Encino, Calif.
“It was a good start to have 11 innings of no-hit ball,” CrabFest head coach Sean O’Connor said with a laugh, “and we got through it and showed a little emotion. It’s different because these guys aren’t a regular travel team; they kind of come together for this event.
“For us, we were here last weekend (PG/EvoShield Underclass) and had a great event, losing in the semifinals. And now to bring a totally different group of kids … it’s kind of unique to see the friendships and the bonds they can build.”
The All American’s pool championship-clinching win – a dominant 10-1 victory over the Los Angeles-based CBA Cavs – served up even more pleasing to the eye pitching prowess while, for the first time at the tournament, also offering above average offensive numbers.
2015 right-hander Tyler Carmen from Laurel, Md., and 2015 lefty Kasey Gast combined on a five-inning five-hitter, allowing one earned run while striking out six and walking four (the walks all belonged to Gast in two innings).
In its previous two games here, CrabFest hit a combined .156 (7-for-45) with six singles and one double. The All Americans scored their 10 runs on six hits in their third win, with Joseph Hall (2016, Fulton, Md.), smacking a double and driving in three; Bradley Thaxton (2015, Stevensville, Md.) hitting a double and driving in two, and Heiss and Andrew Keith (2015, Silver Spring, Md.) each with a single and two RBI.
CrabFest is still just hitting .203 as a team but Heiss, a Rhode Island commit ranked in the top-600 nationally, is hitting .429 (3-for-7) with three singles, three RBI and a run scored.
“It’s awesome being out here on the West Coast; I’ve never been out here before,” he said. “Seeing all this, there’s a bunch of good teams down here and it’s good to be a part of one of the best teams here – I really think we are.”
In the six years that the Perfect Game/EvoShield Upperclass and Underclass National Championships have been contested in Phoenix’s West Valley, California-based organization’s like GBG Marucci, CBA Marucci , Trombly Baseball and the So Cal Bombers have made names for themselves while consistently recording top-four and top-eight finishes.
Interestingly enough, a team from the Atlantic Seaboard has managed to do the same thing toiling under the sometimes relentless desert sun (and, this week at least, some pretty high humidity).
The Perry Hall, Md.-based CrabFest All Americans organization is an off-shoot of the Team Maryland organization that brought teams here and watched them advance to the semifinal round at this event in 2012 before losing to the So Cal Bombers; last year the program made it to the quarterfinals before being eliminated by the Bombers.
“It’s always fun and it’s become a yearly event; this is our fourth year coming out to this event,” O’Connor said. “We tell the kids that if we pitch well and play good defense the rest kind of takes care of itself. This is year four … and we have an opportunity to do something pretty special.
“The kids get some great colleges to watch them; the weather is always phenomenal. It’s always nice to come out and play at these great fields and facilities; it’s a highlight for our kids to come out here and enjoy it and relax.”
Although this squad is just getting to know one another and coming to realize just what it might be able to accomplish over the next two days, O’Connor – who also coaches in the elite EvoShield Canes organization and is the head coach at Dematha Catholic High –already has indentified the group as a “caring team” that is quite aware of the organization’s three-year history of success while playing under the desert sunshine.
“We talk about it,” he said. “I think the pinnacle for us is exactly what we talked about four years ago, and that’s your playing for the guys that are coming behind you. To even have our name mentioned in a (PG tournament preview) without mentioning players and just what our organization has done, is the epitome of what we tell these kids and that’s to show when people say, hey, this team’s coming and even though it’s other a different banner, I want to see those guys play.”
Even with the playoffs starting late Sunday morning, the players are still in a getting-to-know-you mode; some more than others.
“I know a bunch of guys on the team; it’s not like we were just selected and we don’t know each other,” Alkire said. “I’ve played with some of these guys for years now and we’ve definitely bonded together and that helps a lot. On most of these travel teams you don’t know the other kids so it helps to make it an actual team.
“This is my favorite thing in the world. A guy like me, there could be 30 (scouts or coaches) behind the backstop and I don’t feel any pressure,” he added.
“We have to get to know each other better because I haven’t played with most of these guys,” Heiss said. “I’ve played a little bit with some of them but when you haven’t played with them in a long time it still takes a little bit of time to get used to.”
In the five-year history of the PG/EvoShield Upperclass PG national championship tournament history, the five champions have all called California home. Four of the five runners-up have also been Cali outfits, for the love of Pete, with the lone exception being the SE Texas Sun Devils in the inaugural event in 2009.
Could this be the year a team from the Atlantic Seaboard, an organization that over the past four years has certainly proved it belongs, takes home the gold PG national championship gold trophy and wears PG national championship rings? There is certainly a history of Atlantic Seaboard programs like the Virginia-based EvoShield Canes coming to the desert and proving it can be done.
“I think baseball is strong on the East Coast but I also think it’s a different brand of baseball; it’s a different ‘recruitable’ athlete, I would say,” O’Connor said. “I’m proud of how our guys play and I think every area has its own sense of pride. These guys can definitely hold their own; there’s no question about it.”