John Raffel
Sports Scene
Cinderella has nothing on Vandals
It was a painful loss and ending to a remarkable season for Merrill pitcher Jimmy Schoof and the Vandals baseball team.
Merrill was easily the Cinderella story of the Division 4 playoffs, making it all the way to the state title game in Battle Creek against the University Liggett School Knights from Grosse Pointe Woods.
The Knights rallied after it looked like Schoof might be able to hurl his team to a state title.
He pitched very effectively, throwing five shutout innings before the Knights erupted for five runs in the bottom of the sixth and posted a 5-1 victory for the title. The champs had four hits in that inning, but Merrill committed two errors.
The Vandals thought that the tying runner was tagged by catcher Zach Kitzmiller, but it was ruled that he missed the tag. Nathan Gaggin delivered the RBI single for the Knights to make it 2-1, and then Liggett added three insurance runs, two of which were unearned and the result of an error.
In the first inning, the Vandals got the 1-0 lead when centerfielder Phil Pierce reached base on a hit and later scored on Dustin DeBeau’s base hit.
DeBeau had two hits, but for the game, Merrill wound up with only three hits and two walks.
University Liggett ended the year with a 30-4 record. Merrill finished at 18-12.
“When we started day one in practice, we told the kids we could win that district,” coach Dave DeBeau said. “When we came out of districts and saw what our draw was, we told the kids this is here for us to take. Nothing was easy, but our kids responded. They started believing in themselves and we got here. We were confident going into Friday’s game. I knew a lot of people didn’t give us a chance.”
Schoof wound up with five runs on seven hits against him, but pitched a game that nearly delivered a state title to Merrill, which was 7-7 and the fifth place team during the regular-season in the Tri Valley Conference.
“He was working on his third shutout in a row; what can you ask from a kid?” Coach DeBeau said. “He’s a senior. He can pitch the baseball. He proved it here again today. We deserved to be here. We played well. We had that one inning, they came out hitting, what can you say?”
The loss was tough for Schoof, who was fighting back tears immediately after the game.
“I was going good until I got some bad calls,” Schoof said. “I should have had a kid struck out but I walked him on an outside pitch. The kid hits a triple up the gap. They called him safe at the plate. It looked like to me that he was out. We played good. Things just blew up on us and they got some hits.”
Schoof acknowledged from a reporter that replays showed the tag was missed at the plate, giving Liggett the tying run.
“Dominic Jamett made a great slide and got under the tag,” said University Liggett coach Dan Cimini, who said he never thought about keeping his runner at third despite there being zero outs. “As soon as I saw the ball up the gap, he was going. I didn’t want to strand any more runners.”
After the regular season, Merrill went on a terror, beating Brown City High 6-5 and North Huron Secondary School 1-0 in the regionals, edging Lutheran High School Northwest 2-1 in the quarterfinals, and beating Frankfort High 4-1 in the semifinals.
“They’re a scrappy team and they deserved to be here,” Cimini said. “They play the game well and had a good pitcher on the mound who kept them in the game. I give their coach a lot of credit for getting their kids to believe in themselves.”
“We knew we had a good ball club,” DeBeau said. “Our conference is tough. Every team in our conference has a pitcher as good as that [Kyle] Zimmerman kid [three-time all-state pitcher from Frankfort]. You have to come ready to play every day in our conference.
“When we cross over inside our conference, we play Division 2 schools. We have three division 4 schools in our conference. Our conference prepares us for this. We knew we had the right mix of kids. Getting here was a dream come true.
Merrill scored two runs in each of the first two innings against Frankfort, which finished the season at 32-4. Phil Pierce and Calib Stewart both drove home runs for the Vandals.
“We’re a good ballclub,” DeBeau said. “We’ve come a long ways in the last three or four years. I’m proud of them. I thought when we won 1-0 over North Huron, after we lost some one-run games earlier in the season…. We finally learned how to win those one-run ball games down the stretch when it counted.”
Josh Draves had a hit and two RBI against Frankfort. Brandon Mudry went seven innings on the mound for the victory, allowing one run on six hits and two walks.
“We played together as a team and hit the ball early like we did today,” Schoff said.
DeBeau acknowledged the possibility that Schoof might have run out of gas on Saturday.
“He threw the quarterfinal game on Tuesday,” DeBeau noted. “Normally, I try to give him five days rest. He’s going to college. I told him I’m not going to break him down. That’s why we went with Brandon the other day.”
Schoof will be going to Delta Community College. “That was the best bet for him,” DeBeau said.
The Vandals will lose four seniors this year, but Coach DeBeau is not too worried. “I have. . .three juniors and four sophomores and five [freshmen] coming up that are good ballplayers,” he said.
It was pointed out to DeBeau that many teams with outstanding records lose early in the playoffs.
“It is amazing what we did,” he said. “They looked at the program and said ‘Coach, we have one of the worst records of all the teams that are down here.’ But I said when you come down here, everyone has the same record. Give me one game with my two guys on the mound and I’ll battle you all day long. I’m not going to beat them four out of seven. But give me one game and we have as good of a chance to beat them as anyone does.”
The state runner-up finish will give his team a shot in the arm, DeBeau predicted.
“These are the kids that have stuck with it,” he said. “There’s a lot of young ballplayers in town that know these kids.”
Dave DeBeau’s 26-year coaching record is 209-457, and the runner-up finish was easily the top highlight of his coaching career.
“This is a dream come true,” he said. “We’ve been a football town. We’ve had good success in football. All these kids play football. All these kids play basketball and baseball. We have 230 kids in our high school. We need these kids to play everything. My grandfather started the Little League in town. My dad coached 27 years. Now you know where I did it from.”