FORT MYERS, Fla. – Perhaps, 30 years after they first put the thought to music, Tom Petty and his band of Heartbreakers didn’t have it quite right after all. Maybe, just maybe, the waiting isn’t always the hardest part.
The Oakland County-based Warriors Baseball Club of Michigan were able to use a 2½-hour lightning delay late in Tuesday’s 14u PG BCS Finals championship game against Georgia-based Team Elite Prime 14u at City of Palms Park to their advantage and outlasted the Prime 14u, 7-4, in the 14u finale.
The PG national championship was the first for WBC of Michigan but the third in three years for head coach Brian Kalczynski. He directed another Michigan-based team – Midwest Elite Baseball – to the 17u PG BCS Finals and 18u PG BCS Finals championships in 2013 and 2014 but seemed to especially enjoy this title with this group of 14-year-olds.
“I can’t believe it; I cannot believe it,” he said at game’s end. “You could come here 100 times and never make it to the semifinals. To come here three years in a row and win it three years in a row, I just can’t believe it.”
The championship game became one of one-upmanship right from the start with the Warriors-Michigan putting up four runs in the bottom of the second only to watch the Prime 14u answer with four of their own in the top of the third.
The No. 7-seeded Warriors (9-0-0) received RBI singles from Dillon Kark, Reese Trahey and Caleb Jackson as part of their four-run second inning. The No. 12 Prime 14u (8-2-0) played mirror-mirror on the wall with consecutive run-scoring singles from Bradley Price Jr., Rece Hinds and Mason Land in the top half of the third.
The Michigan kids went right back to work, pushing single runs across in each of the third, fourth and fifth innings – MacKinley Menard drove in a run on a fielder’s choice groundout in the third and Bobby Cavin and Jacob Erickson had RBI singles in each of the next two frames. Then came the lightning delay.
Kalczynski said he and his assistants spoke with the team about staying focused during the long delay and told them that the game would be finished at some point and they needed to keep the proper mindset. Fortuitously for WBC-Michigan, the delay came before the Prime 14u went to bat in the top of the sixth, right when Kalczynski was about to make a pitching change anyway.
“I’m not saying this just because we won, but I think it helped us,” Kalczynski said. “It settled everybody down.”
That observation came from a coach looking at the pitching/defense side of things. There was another side, the one in which his team had scored single runs in three straight innings to break a 4-4 tie and take 7-4 lead right before the delay.
“Maybe offensively it might have stopped a little bit of our momentum but we only needed six more outs,” Kalczynski said. “I thought defensively and from the pitching side, it kind of helped us.”
The Warriors’ Kark went 4-for-4 with an RBI and two runs scored in the title game; Cavin was 2-for-4 with a double. The Pride 14u’s Price Jr. and Land were bot 2-for-4.
Kalczynski had saved one of his top pitchers, the right-hander Erickson, for a Tuesday start but had originally planned on throwing him in the Michiganders’ semifinal game in the morning. Kalczynski said he received a text message from Erickson Monday night relaying that the young pitcher had enough confidence in his teammates winning their semifinal game that he would like to be held out for the championship.
Erickson wasn’t razor-sharp – he surrendered four runs on eight hits in his five innings of work – but he was good enough to pick up the win. After the delay, the Warriors went with Joey Johnson who threw two very quick, two-hit innings.
“That is what I wanted to do as a coach but I also knew we had to get (to the championship game) first,” Kalczynski said. “He took a lot of pressure off me when he texted me and said that’s what he wanted to do and it’s on (the team to win in the semis) and that’s what they did.”
Warriors’ right-hander Trahey was named the 14u PG BCS Finals’ Most Valuable Pitcher. He made two appearances, including a winning start in the semifinals, and allowed two earned runs on eight hits over 11 innings (1.27 ERA) with 10 strikeouts and no walks. He also hit .346 (9-for-26) with three doubles, three RBI and nine runs scored.
The Prime 14u’s Peyton Lejeune earned Most Valuable Player designation after batting 11-for-23 (.478) with two doubles, three triples, six RBI and 12 runs scored with a 1.462 OPS.
Team Elite Prime 14u put up four runs in the bottom of the first inning and that proved to be the difference in its 6-2 victory over No. 17 Team MVP from Miami in the first of two semifinals played Tuesday morning at COP Park.
The Prime 14u loaded the bases in the first thanks to two walks and an error and then scored their first run when Mason Land was hit by a pitch. With still no one out, Raymond Torres delivered a two-run, line-drive single to right for a 3-0 lead; Landon Sims later came through with a sacrifice fly.
Team Elite scored its fifth run in the bottom of the fourth on an RBI single from Payton Lejeune and its sixth run in the sixth when Bradley Prince Jr. hit one-out single and later scored by stealing home with two outs. 2018 right-hander Joseph Brandon work six innings, allowing two runs – one earned – on five hits while striking out four and walking five.
Team MVP (6-2-1) got on the board when it pushed a run across in the top of the second on a passed ball and scored again in the third when Yordani Carmona delivered a sacrifice fly.
Reece Trahey allowed only one run on four hits and struck-out six in seven strong innings of work, and also singled twice and drove in a run to lead WBC-Michigan to a 4-1 win over No. 14 Chaos Baseball from Denham Springs, La., in Tuesday’s other semifinal at COP.
Caleb Jackson also had two hits and drove in a run for the Warriors and Daniel Morris and Menard delivered RBI singles. Colton Frank IV delivered an RBI single in the top of the third to account for Chaos’ only run.
2015 14u BCS Finals runnerup: Team Elite Prime 14u
2015 14u BCS Finals MVP: Peyton Lejeune
2015 14u BCS Finals MV-Pitcher: Reece Trahey
