First-Time Title Winner Guaranteed in D4
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
June 16, 2017
EAST LANSING – Coach Bryan Scheurer figured his Portland St. Patrick team couldn’t play much worse.
The Shamrocks committed four errors over the first four innings of their Division 4 Semifinal and trailed Unionville-Sebewaing 8-4.
“Our motto is to throw strikes early,” he said. “We want to throw strikes and take the outs they give us.”
That wasn’t working. In addition to the errors, St. Patrick issued three walks.
“We weren’t playing well,” Scheurer said. “Another one of our mottos is, losing is not acceptable. We’re going to chip away, grind away.
“We didn’t make it easy.”
The Shamrocks scored four runs in the fifth inning to tie the game and pushed across four more in the seventh to defeat USA, 12-8, on Friday at Michigan State’s McLane Stadium.
St. Patrick (28-0-1), a 10-3 loser to Sterling Heights Parkway Christian in the Final last season, will attempt to win the program’s first title when it plays Hudson (27-16) at 5 p.m. Saturday.
Hudson, which had never won a Regional title until this season, trailed Gaylord St. Mary, 2-1, after four innings and then scored two in the fifth and added three in the sixth to take a 6-2 lead on the way to achieving another program first.
St. Patrick had two triples in the fifth inning of its win. Freshman Devin Fedewa’s two-run triple was the key hit.
Graham Smith then started the seventh with a walk, and the bases were loaded with one out after an error and a hit batsman. Dan Mackowiak batted in what proved to be the winning run with a sacrifice fly to center. Nathan Lehnert and Scheurer’s nephew, Brandon Scheurer, had RBI singles, and another run scored on a well-executed double steal.
St. Patrick trailed Bay City All Saints 3-0 and 6-4 in a Regional Final before coming back to win, 7-6. Brandon Scheuer said his team has come back a number of times this season, so the fact the Shamrocks were trailing again didn’t faze them.
“We’ve seen games like that before,” he said. “We try not to hit doubles and home runs. We want to hit singles. We play small ball. We’re good at it. Apparently, they are, too.”
USA (30-8-1) batted around in the third inning and scored four runs to take a 7-3 lead. Scheurer came on in relief in that inning, and though he gave up three of the four runs, he settled down and allowed just two hits and no runs over the final three innings to receive credit for the victory.
Scheurer had four hits, and four of his teammates had two including Brendan Schrauben, Lehnert and Fedewa, all of whom had two RBI.
St. Patrick had 15 hits to nine for USA. Cooper Kauffold had three hits and three RBI for the Patriots.
“That was a heck of a game when you think about all of the back-and-forth play,” USA coach Tyler Bader said. “I told our players you’ve got to use this as a springboard. Not having experience here can add up.”
USA was playing to reach an MHSAA Final for the first time.
Hudson 6, Gaylord St. Mary 4
Jesse Hesistan went the first six innings for Hudson before filling the bases with no outs in the seventh. Coach Jeremy Beal brought in Garrett Gamble from third base and switched Hesistan to third.
The move worked. Drew Koenig hit a grounder to Hesistan, who stepped on the bag and threw to first to complete the double play. Though a run scored, Hudson got what it wanted.
“I was nervous,” Gamble said. “Pitching in relief is never easy. You just have to get it done. You prep for this.”
Brady Hunter singled in St. Mary’s fourth run, but Gamble got the last out on a fly out to center.
“(Hesistan) had enough pitches left to finish,” Beal said. “He was staring at getting us to the Final. That double play was just like we drew it up.”
Hudson’s three runs in the sixth inning proved valuable. Black Borck singled home the fourth run and Gamble, who went 4-4 with four RBI, followed with a two-out, two-run triple.
“We needed to score some runs,” St. Mary coach Matt Nowicki said. “When you get in a hole like that, it’s tough. It would have been nice to take that next step.”
Nick Torsky went the distance for St. Mary (29-8), and Joseph Moeggenberg went 3-3 at the plate.
“We don’t have experience in games like these,” Beal said. “But our athletic department has had success. Wrestling for one. We coach kids in the fall, and it carries over to the winter. We coach kids in the winter and it carries over to the spring.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Portland St. Patrick second baseman Dan Mackowiak throws to first during Friday’s Division 4 Semifinal. (Middle) Hudson puts a tag on Gaylord St. Mary’s Nick Torsky.
Monroe High Memories Remain Rich for Michigan's 1987 Mr. Baseball
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
July 22, 2024
WHITE LAKE – Dan Hilliard’s time came before Twitter, before computers were part of everyday life and almost before there was such a thing as Mr. Baseball.
But he fit the bill perfectly.
As legendary Monroe Evening News sportswriter Bill Brenton once wrote about Hilliard’s Monroe High School baseball career, “a complete list of accomplishments would overload this word processor.”
Hilliard was an outstanding pitcher at Monroe High School during the late 1980s. He never lost a game his junior and senior seasons on the mound. He was an all-state choice and after his senior year was named Mr. Baseball, the second recipient of the award that has been handed out by the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association since 1986.
Scott Salow, the head coach at Homer High School when the Trojans won 75 straight games and his sport’s national coach of the year in 2005 by the National High School Coaches Association, was a high school teammate of Hilliard.
“He was absolutely dominant,” Salow recalls. “Our best overall player. He could hit and run as well.”
Hilliard was as surprised as anyone to learn he was Michigan’s Mr. Baseball after his senior season.
“I didn’t know there was any such thing as Mr. Baseball,” Hilliard said.
After going 9-0 with a 1.42 ERA and a .506 batting average in 1987, Hillard was invited to play in the MHSBCA All-Star Game at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. At a pregame dinner, one of the board members pulled him aside and told him they were going to call him up to the podium and introduce him as Mr. Baseball.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, OK,’” Hilliard said. “I didn’t really think baseball had that award. I didn’t really think of it.”
Hillard was a pitcher-outfielder for Monroe. For his career, he went 27-2 as a pitcher and had 57 stolen bases in 60 attempts.
“To me, I didn’t think I did anything super crazy,” he said. “I was part of a really good team. We put together a lot of wins. To me, I was just a part of the team. I didn’t think I stood out more than anyone else. It’s humbling to think back on those times.”
Longtime Blissfield coach Larry Tuttle – who has the most wins of any high school baseball coach in Michigan history – coached Hilliard in American Legion ball. Tuttle’s Blissfield team won the prestigious Monroe Auto Equipment Co. Baseball Tournament during Hilliard’s senior season, but Hilliard received the Most Valuable Player Award.
“He was very deserving of that honor,” Tuttle said. “He was a great pitcher, the best around. We recruited him to play summer ball with us.”
Tuttle was on the Mr. Baseball selection committee when the award began.
“We met and talked about it and decided we needed to do something to honor the best player in the state,” Tuttle said. “Dan was no doubt deserving after the season and career he had.”
Hilliard grew up in Monroe, near the shores of Lake Erie, playing recreation baseball during the week and on a travelling “all-star” team that a few parents would organize on the weekends. As a youngster he played in the famed Monroe County Fair All-Star Tournament, which dates back to the early 1960s and is still going strong.
At Monroe, he couldn’t play high school baseball until his sophomore season.
“Back then, the high school was only sophomores through seniors,” he said. “I wasn’t at the high school as a freshman.
“I was a little intimidated at first,” he added. “It didn’t take long for me to realize I did belong up there on the varsity. I was the youngest guy on the team, so a few guys took me under their wing. I had a great time.”
Hilliard went 4-2 as a sophomore hurler for Butch Foster’s Trojans. His junior year is when he shined the brightest, going 14-0 on the mound with a 0.69 ERA and 155 strikeouts. He easily was picked as the player of the year by the local newspaper. He followed that up with another undefeated senior season and then joined Tuttle’s Blissfield-based American Legion team for the summer.
“I put together three pretty good years,” he said. “That was that.”
He made the short drive to Blissfield one afternoon for a game.
“It was my night to be on the mound, so I was in the bullpen warming up and Coach Tuttle came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I need to talk to you.’ That’s when he told me I was picked for the East-West All-Star game. I thought, well, that’s pretty cool,” Hilliard recalled.
Once in Detroit, the all-star players got together for a workout, then went to a banquet where Hilliard was announced as the statewide player of the year.
“A lot of the guys there were guys I had never heard of or never played against,” he said. “They were from different parts of the state.”
Hilliard went to Central Michigan University to play baseball, but never donned the Chippewas uniform. When his sophomore season rolled around, he transferred to Spring Arbor University near Jackson, where his older brother and Salow were playing baseball.
“I thought it was a better fit for me,” Hilliard said. “It ended up being great. I loved playing college baseball.”
It was at Spring Arbor where a teammate introduced him to his future wife, Elizabeth. They moved to White Lake soon after where they still live and have raised three children, ranging in age from 20-28. Sports remained a big part of Hilliard’s life. His two daughters both played volleyball in college, and his oldest daughter is now a coach at a university in Illinois. His youngest daughter plays college beach volleyball in North Carolina. His son was a three-sport athlete in high school who studied turf management at Michigan State University.
Hilliard works for an electrical supply house in Waterford.
“Things are going good,” he said. “It is a very nice place to live. There are a lot of lakes around here.”
His Mr. Baseball plaque hangs on the wall in his basement, right next to a photo of him at Tiger Stadium with the rest of the East-West all-stars.
“It pops into my head every so often,” he said of his high school days. “I pay attention to the local high schools up here and see who’s playing well. I think about those times a lot. I don’t talk about them often, but I think about it.”
He doesn’t have video clips of games he pitched, but the memories are strong.
“In this day and age with internet and YouTube and all these videos, you see a lot of great players in the state,” he said. “I wonder what it would have been like if I would have been in this modern day.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Dan Hilliard pitches for Monroe High as a senior in 1987; at right, he holds up his Mr. Baseball Award that continues to hang on a basement wall. (Middle) Hilliard headlines in the Detroit Free Press on June 18, 1987. (Top photos courtesy of Dan Hilliard. Clipping courtesy of the Detroit Free Press.)