CARTERSVILLE, Ga. – March madness made an early stop at Perfect Game Park South-LakePoint Friday evening, complete with its own final four (times two). The opening act was the semifinals at the Perfect Game High School Showdown, with three of the four teams ranked in the top-20 nationally. The closing act, much later Friday night, was the semifinals at the PG High School Showdown-Academies, with all eight teams in both divisions looking to capture “that one shining moment.”
But enough with the college basketball analogies already. These were high school baseball games being played on one of amateur’s baseball’s brightest stages while college games were being played on the other side of the complex. The electricity in the air was palpable and seemed to engulf PG Park South at LakePoint in its entirety a full hour before the PG HS Showdown semis got underway.
“It’s almost has the feeling of (Major League Baseball) spring training,” Miami Gulliver Prep High School head coach Manny Crespo Jr. said before his Raiders took on Oxford (Miss.) High School in one of the PG High School Showdown’s powerhouse semifinal matchups. “You get that fever of baseball coming back and the fans are great and the teams are coming out here and doing the best they can. And this complex is amazing. I had no idea what to expect but I’m pleasantly surprised.”
The LakePoint complex is amazing but so were the four teams that found themselves in the semifinals at the PGHS Showdown. There was No. 2-ranked Parkview (4-2 overall, 1-0 at PGHSSS) from Lilburn, Ga., facing unranked and obviously underrated Sparkman High School (10-2, 2-0) from Harvest, Ala.
At a field on the other side of the prominent observation tower, fans and scouts could watch No. 20 Gulliver Prep High School (10-2, 2-0) from Miami do battle with No. 3 Oxford (7-1, 1-0). Madness, the large crowd murmured. Pure madness.
“We came out here knowing the level of competition we were going to face,” Oxford head coach Chris Baughman told PG. “I was really pleased with the way our guys stepped up and got on top early (in a 4-1 win over McEachern HS on Thursday), and that’s kind of been our M.O. so far this year – we’ve gotten on top of people. … We just really wanted to come out here and have a good showing and show people we can play a little bit and have a good time with it.”
All four semifinalists proved they could play a little bit while also having a good time with it, but winning always trumps losing when it comes to the enjoyment side of things. That said, nobody was having more fun Friday night than the unranked Sparkman Senators who sent the Parkview Panthers reeling to the tune of a 7-0 knockdown punch that in turn punched the Senators’ ticket into Saturday’s noon championship game at PG Park South.
Over on an opposite field, the Gulliver Prep Raiders were posting a much milder upset of their own, stopping the Oxford Chargers 3-2 in a game in which the two powerful lineups combined for only 11 hits, including just four from the winning team.
Those outcomes left a championship matchup between Sparkman (11-2) and head coach Kellen Greer and Gulliver Prep (11-2) and the head coach Crespo Jr. It should be, in common vernacular, a real dandy if anything can be taken from those two teams’ previous wins here Thursday and Friday.
Sparkman won a pair of games Thursday (the entire tournament was a single-elimination playoff with 12 of the 14 teams playing two games Thursday while Oxford and Parkview received byes straight into the semifinals after winning single games Thursday) and the Senator knocked a couple of heavyweights right into the consolation round. They started by beating Hillgrove High School (Powder Springs, Ga.) by a 10-5 count and then got everyone’s attention with a 9-1 demolition of No. 7-ranked Buford (Ga.) HS.
The Senators needed only seven hits to plate their seven runs against Parkview, but two of those were solo home runs from senior outfielder Brock Anderson and junior infielder Andrew Stemple. Anderson, who also walked twice and scored three runs, is a PG National Showcase alumnus who is ranked No. 163 nationally and has committed to the University of Washington.
Another notable contributor in Starkman’s semifinal victory was senior right-hander Seth Gully, a top-1,000 national prospect and a Calhoun Community College (Ala.) recruit; Gully threw a complete-game, two-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts and one walk. Junior third baseman Jacob Foster singled twice and drove in a run and senior middle-infielder and NW Florida State College signee Breonn Pooler doubled and drove in one.
Gulliver Prep’s 3-2 victory over Oxford was much less decisive although the Raiders’ pitching staff maintained a level of excellence it first showed in 6-2 and 6-0 victories over Mountain View HS (Lawrenceville, Ga.) and Cartersville (Ga.) HS on Thursday. Friday night, it was uncommitted sophomore right-hander Kevin Maura’s turn in the spotlight.
Maura worked five, four-hit shutout innings with six strikeouts and three walks and picked up the win despite having to watch nervously while the bullpen gave up single runs in the sixth and seven innings to pare down a three-run lead.
The Raiders lineup one-through-eight includes eight NCAA Division-I recruits: Adrian Del Castillo (Miami), Alex Erro (Northwestern), Javier Valdez (Florida International), Giovon Soto (Florida International), Raymond Gil (Miami), Chase Sanguinetti (Florida State), Pedro Pages (Florida Atlantic) and Robert Touron (Miami). They managed only three singles and a Gil double off of superb Oxford right-hander Jason Barber (t-500, Mississippi) but somehow made it work.
“It’s great for our guys to be able to see what kind of baseball they play outside of Miami,” Crespo Jr. said. “But it’s also kind of like a wakeup call for them to see what people call the best teams in the country and then see what kind of team they really are. If you can compete with these guys, that’s the kind of baseball you should play day-in and day-out regardless of who you’re playing.”
Highly ranked Oxford and Parkview will return home without having captured the grand prize in a truly grand environment but both schools remain in great position to right the ship and challenge for their respective state championships and maybe even make a large charge to a Perfect Game National Championship. Parkview did just that last year, finishing the season on a 26-game winning streak and winning both a Georgia Class AAAAA state title and PG national title.
“I just want to them to play, just come and be ‘us’; come out here and don’t lose sight of the big picture for our team,” Oxford’s Baughman said prophetically before the semifinal loss. “There are scouts all over the place and a national setting for our kids but we have a bigger picture for what we want to accomplish at the end of the year.
“We just want to continue getting better day-in and day-out and we just want to win another state championship and be one of the top teams in the nation if that’s in the cards.”
Gulliver’s Crespo Jr., Sparkman’s Greer, Oxford’s Baughman and Parkview’s Chan Brown will the games played here as a teaching opportunity. The only difference is Crespo Jr, and Greer will have another day in the classroom.
“They’re starting to understand the system and what they’re capable of doing,” Crespo Jr. said. “Here in the beginning, we have some young guys and we’re just trying to get them to understand their roles. At this point they understand that any point I can switch up the lineup, put you at a different position and you’ve got to do your job. That’s what being a baseball player is and that’s what being a good team is, being able to adapt to the situation and make some adjustments, and they have.”