Editor’s note: This is an opinion column.
By Bobby Mathews, Sports Editor
Baseball is a cruel game. I forget who said it, though my intuition says it was former Los Angeles Dodgers legend and eventual Arizona Diamondbacks skipper Kirk Gibson.
Some local teams know it for a fact. The Moody Blue Devils, sporting a roster with at least three players signed to play college baseball, are sitting at home for the postseason. So are the Clay-Chalkville Cougars and the Pinson Valley Indians. Springville, a 6A team that played competitively with the No. 1-ranked team in 7A, the Hewitt-Trussville Huskies, earlier this season are also sitting at home despite a high level of talent.
Next season, with area play expanded into regional play for AHSAA baseball teams, all of those teams would likely be headed to the playoffs.
Instead, there are now three teams in The Tribune’s coverage area who will see postseason action: the aforementioned Huskies, Leeds, and Shades Valley.
Hewitt-Trussville is 23-2-1 on the season and 7A Area 6 regular-season champs. At one point the Huskies had a 15-game unbeaten streak (with one tie) until Vestavia stopped them 4-3 on April 14. They’ll face Spain Park to wrap up their regular season on Thursday, April 21. Leeds racked up a 15-game winning streak during the regular season, a 5A Area 10 title and hosts a playoff series this coming Friday against Ardmore. Shades Valley won a 6A Area 11 championship and gets the unenviable task of facing Cullman in a best-of-three series.
It’s been a heck of a season to watch. Riley Quick has been phenomenal on the mound, and Baker Green is no slouch for the Huskies, either. Both look incredibly imposing as they deliver the ball, and I gotta be completely honest: Even in my playing days, I wouldn’t have wanted to face either one. They’re throwing some nasty, nasty stuff.
Dax Phillips and Peyton Moore have both pitched extremely well for Leeds, with Alex Bradford and Jarod Latta both getting quality starts as well. For Shades Valley, Avery Prichard has been the ace, while Jamiel Saliba and Stephen Manley can hurl it, too.
And we can’t leave out the fact that Leeds head coach Jake Wingo got his 100th win as the Green Wave’s skipper, either. Wingo has done a heck of a job this season at Leeds. When I saw them early on this year, one of the things he consistently told me was that the Green Wave’s bats needed to come alive in order for them to be successful. That happened, and now Leeds is rocking into the playoffs and currently ranked No. 5 in Class 5A.
It’s important, however, for all of these teams to remember what high school baseball is like. It’s a nervous breakdown played over the course of seven innings, and as they head into the playoffs, area teams have to know that every squad in the postseason has a chance to win.
That’s what makes baseball great. It’s what makes baseball hard and cruel.
I started this column with a quote, and I’ll end with one more. This one’s from the fictional Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own:
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard … is what makes it great.”
Bobby Mathews is sports editor of The Tribune. Reach him at bobby.mathews@trussvilletribune.com or @bobbymathews on Twitter.