Baseball Remains Front of Tuttle's Mind, Close to Retired Coach's Heart
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
June 29, 2023
BLISSFIELD – Larry Tuttle jogged out of Tuttle Dugout onto the artificial turf at Adrian College and took his spot in the third base coach’s box, looked in at the batter as he approached the plate and clapped his hands.
It’s like he never left.
For more than 50 years, Tuttle occupied the third base coach’s box for the Blissfield Royals. He is the winningest high school baseball coach in Michigan history and one of the winningest prep baseball coaches in America. It’s been two years since Tuttle last coached the Royals, but when the Lenawee County All-Star Game came around this year, and Onsted coach Matthew Randall was named a head coach of one of the teams, one of his first calls was to Tuttle.
“To see him coach third base again for two innings of that all-star game was nothing short of amazing,” Randall said. “I love that man and everything he has taught me.”
Tuttle and Randall faced off about 40 times over the years.
“There’s a lot of respect between us,” Tuttle said. “I was happy to do it.”
Tuttle, 79, is a Morenci native who played baseball and graduated from Adrian College, coached for one year at Temperance Bedford and five decades at Blissfield. He spends a little more than half of the year in Florida these days in a house he owns in The Villages, a retirement community about an hour north of Orlando.
This past spring, Blissfield took a spring baseball trip to Florida and Tuttle was able to come out to the field and watch a few practices.
“That’s the best time,” he said. “I always enjoyed those first practices of each season. People will ask me, ‘But what about the cold? It’s always so cold in Michigan that first week.’ The first 10 days or two weeks or so inside, that’s where we formed our whole season, working on the fundaments and the strategy, getting the kids mentally ready for the season. That was a fun part of coaching.”
He returns home to Michigan each summer to spend time with his kids and grandchildren, including a freshman-aged granddaughter who is showing good things in softball. His roots are in southeast Michigan, and he has every intention of keeping it that way.
Tuttle’s career at Blissfield was nothing short of remarkable.
He coached Blissfield for 54 seasons. It would have been 55, but the 2020 season was canceled due to COVID. The Royals won 1,332 games during his career. They won 33 District titles, 23 Regional championships and seven Finals crowns. Blissfield also won 40 league titles, including in his final season of 2021. His No. 18 jersey was retired by the school district.
In 2015, Tuttle was an easy inaugural choice for the Michigan Baseball Hall of Fame.
This summer, Tuttle returned to Michigan in time to see Blissfield play a few regular-season games and was there when his beloved Royals played in the Division 3 District tournament. He wore his familiar Royals gear. When the Lenawee County All-Star game was played, Tuttle was in his full Blissfield uniform. It still fits perfectly.
“I still enjoy the game,” Tuttle said. “It’s my energy level that just isn’t what it used to be. That’s why I stepped down. I still love the strategy of the game.”
When he’s watching a game, he still goes through every play in his mind and what he would do if he was calling the shots.
“You’re always coaching even though you might a spectator,” he said. “It may not be the right way, but it’s my way. That’s baseball. I love thinking about what to do on this count or that count, to take a pitch or not.
“I see a lot of coaches these days who had played in college. Young coaches coach the college way, but you are dealing with high school kids who may not have a real firm understanding of the game itself. You have to teach high school baseball to college kids. You don’t teach college or pro ball to high school kids.”
Tuttle, who has battled some health issues the last couple of years, misses being in his role as coach.
“I miss the players and the relationships I had with umpires and the other coaches,” he said. “It’s hard to replace that.”
Tuttle is an icon in Lenawee County. When he goes to a game, people gather around him to talk. He still follows the area teams and has a relationship with several coaches and ex-players.
Tuttle enjoyed monumental success at Blissfield. The Royals’ last sub-.500 season was in 1971.
“I know that because I have the records,” Tuttle said. “The closest we came was we were 8-8 one year in the 1980s.”
Tuttle has been a stickler for stats his entire career. Some coaches have a hard time remembering how their team did two years ago. Tuttle knows. He kept intricate stats on every team he’s coached at Blissfield and to this day has them organized only a few steps away from his kitchen table at his home in Blissfield – which is just across the street from the high school and a long home run away from the baseball field that is named in his honor.
“I have a file cabinet full of files from each season and I have the scorebook from every year I coached at Blissfield, starting in 1968,” Tuttle said. “Stats were always important to me, not the wins, but the stats. Baseball stats tell you so much about the game.”
Since stepping aside, Tuttle has had time to reflect on his career.
“I would have never believed I would have coached that long,” Tuttle said. “Then, I sit back and think, ‘That was a lot of wins, wasn’t it?’ I don’t mean that in a bragging way. I think more about it when I go to a game.”
Randall recently announced his retirement from Onsted after 13 years as head coach. Onsted is in the same conference as Blissfield, the Lenawee County Athletic Association, so he had a close-up view of Tuttle in action.
He now has a memory of the last game he coached at the All-Star Game at Adrian College.
“I credit a lot of my coaching philosophy to this day to him,” Randall said. “Our relationship has really grown over the years. I wanted Coach Tuttle to be with me in my final game. That’s why I asked him.”
PHOTOS (Top) Retired Blissfield baseball coach Larry Tuttle coaches third base during the June 26 Lenawee County All-Star Game. (Middle) Tuttle’s jersey is retired during a 2021 ceremony. (Photos by Doug Donnelly.)
Fish's Powerful Record Pursuit Helped Set Stage for College, Pro Achievements
By
Steve Vedder
Special for MHSAA.com
August 27, 2026
Many of the home runs were prodigious, some of the balls landing on the tops of schools, crashing onto car roofs, into clumps of trees, empty parking lots and neighboring practice fields.
Two of Zach Fish's record-setting clouts, in fact, landed on the I-94 expressway and in the middle of a cemetery.
But it wasn't the variety of locations that made his homers remarkable. It was their number.
As a senior at Richland Gull Lake in 2011, Fish set the state single-season home run record with 24. The total not only broke the record of 23 set by Morley-Stanwood's Jim Willison in 1998 and Drew Henson of Brighton in 1997, but no hitter since has even made a serious run at breaking Fish's mark. The closest has been 15 homers by Zach MacDonald of Portage Central in 2021.
"There were some fun ones," Fish said of the homers.
Fifteen years later, Fish, now a corporal for the Granbury, Texas, police force, said he looks at his record-setting season much the same as he did during the final three months of his high school career. He remembers feeling a sense of accomplishment, but also relief as the Blue Devils, which would finish 38-2, could now switch focus from Fish's record to the drive of winning a state title.
Fish said when he thinks back over his career, it's not only the home run chase he remembers but also cherishing a leadership role on a young Blue Devils club. Fish also remembers the 5 a.m. offseason workouts designed to strengthen his 6-foot, 200-pound frame, and always seeking new ways to hone his special talent for recognizing and adjusting to how high school pitchers were trying to get him out.
As for the record, Fish also recalls the torrid late-season stretch it took to surpass Henson and Willison. Just when it looked like he could fall short, Fish slammed 16 homers over his final 17 games, including his last three in the Regional tournament to break the record.
Fish said an overlooked part of the 24 homers – and something which was probably a benefit – was that aside from local media, no one was clamoring for stories each step of the way. There was minimal distraction outside of the Gull Lake community as Fish approached breaking one of the most sought-after state records.
"There wasn't any social media back then. Not much hype or noise around it," he said. "And I got a lot of positive reinforcement from the people around me. No one said anything if I came back to the bench without hitting a homer or getting a hit. The important thing was we were winning as a team. I think my success was a product of how successful the team was.
"I stayed within the mindset of the team. With all the people around me, I never got too high or too low. That helped me focus.”
The 24 homers closed out a remarkable career for Fish, who after his senior season was taken by the Texas Rangers in the 24th round of the 2011 MLB draft. Fish, who hit .561 with 82 RBIs as a senior, was named to the Rawlings, Baseball America and MaxPreps All-America teams. He would be recruited by Michigan, Clemson, Vanderbilt, Louisville, Washington and Georgia Tech before signing with Oklahoma State, where he would become the Big 12 Player of the Year as a junior.
Fish's story from growing up playing in a Kalamazoo recreation league as a grade schooler to being taken by the Chicago White Sox in the 11th round (318th overall) of the 2014 draft and spending two years in pro ball includes, by his own admission, an extraordinary drive to succeed.
"Bordering on obsession," he said. "Baseball was more than a passion with me. I loved baseball and what it stood for. It's America's pastime for a reason."
Growing up, Fish actually showed minimal signs of becoming a nationally elite-level player. He played rec ball in Kalamazoo and later hooked up with the Midland Braves travel team for three seasons as a 16, 17 and 18-year-old. He played two seasons at Kalamazoo Central where he batted .291 with five homers as a freshman and then .423 with six homers as a sophomore.
Family obligations led him to transfer to Gull Lake as a junior, where he quickly blossomed. He hit .473 with 12 homers, 57 RBIs and 27 stolen bases.
"Coaches would help me," Fish said of his power. "They said just swing hard in case you hit it. I truly believed that. The first two years in high school I was kind of sporadic in terms of hard contact. A lot of that was in my approach."
Fish's junior season set the stage for his sensational final year. He barely had double digits in homers by midseason before catching fire in the second half. But with 21 homers heading into the Regional, he was still two short of tying the record. He climbed to within one when he homered during a 12-2 Regional opener win against Sturgis, then slammed two more in a 13-2 Regional Final victory over Hamilton to set the record.
With the achievement accomplished, Fish said he remembers returning to the bench after the second homer against Hamilton with mixed emotions.
"At first I came back like it was just another homer," he said. "I was in the dugout, put my (catching) gear back on and I had this moment of what I did. But at the same time, I was glad it was out of the way and now we could focus on the team and winning a state title.
"The last three weeks was a good stretch, but I was able to swing the bat because the guys in front of me were getting on base and pitchers had nowhere to put me."
In a 6-5 Quarterfinal win over Grand Rapids Catholic Central, Cougars pitchers virtually refused to pitch to Fish. Amid a flurry of intentional walks, Fish saw only one strike, which he smashed for a bases-loaded triple. The team concluded its season with a 6-1 Semifinal loss to eventual Division 2 champ St. Clair as Fish flew out twice and was safe on an error in his final high school at-bats.
According to MaxPreps, the 24 homers ties Fish for 27th place nationally, just six behind the all-time record of 30. His 82 RBIs as a senior ties him for 26th place. Fish finished his prep career with 47 home runs, 23 behind the state record of 70 hit by Henson from 1995-98. Fish's 203 career RBIs are second behind Henson's 290. The 24 homers in 116 at-bats means Fish hit a homer an incredible once every 4.8 at-bats.
Former Gull Lake coach Bill Blakely said Fish was always striving for perfection as a hitter. He recalls Fish would often come back to the bench following a home run lamenting his swing could have been better. As for the record, Blakely said he would occasionally move Fish around on defense, including making use of his 90-mph fastball on the mound, to keep his mind off hitting. Blakely reasoned Fish could get a break from the pressure of the home run chase if he had to focus on defense.
"Externally, he didn't show that it bothered him," Blakely said of the chase. "We had lots of kids who could keep him loose. It was a light atmosphere. We would count the homers as they came along, but he didn't go into any slumps as he got close.
"As for the record, it wasn't if he was going to set it, but when, barring an injury."
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Gull Lake's Zach Fish follows a drive during his senior season in 2011, and at right Fish is now an officer in Granbury, Texas. (Middle) Fish takes the field as part of the Rookie-level Great Falls Voyagers. (Below) Fish mans the catcher position for Gull Lake during a Division 2 Semifinal against St. Clair in 2011. (Granbury and Great Falls photos courtesy of the Fish family. Hitting photo by Gary Shook. Catching photo from MHSAA archives.)