Flashback 1981: 3 Days Finally Yields 4 Baseball Champions
By
Ron Pesch
MHSAA historian
April 30, 2021
The nursery rhyme “Rain, Rain Go Away” has often served as unofficial anthem for the MHSAA’s baseball tournament, first held in the spring of 1971.
A decade after the start, downpours again turned a planned Saturday-sprint-to-the-finish into a three-day-marathon that finally wrapped up on Tuesday, June 16, 1981.
In the end, the 10th MHSAA Boys Baseball Tournament did feature a few ‘firsts.’ The finish of the season marked the first year that championship games for each of the Association’s four classes were scheduled for play at a single site. Previous championship action saw each class play its title game in a different city across the state.
Alumni Field at Central Michigan University served as host. Home of the Chippewas, the site served as an impressive backdrop, as the stadium had been recently renovated thanks to fundraising work by Mount Pleasant insurance businessman Jack Weisenburger, who had played five years of professional baseball in the Boston Braves organization, and nationally-known beloved sportscaster Dick Enberg, a CMU alumnus.
CLASS A
Roger Horrie’s 10th-inning two-out hit up the alley in left center scored freshman pinch runner Deron White from third base, giving Harper Woods Bishop Gallagher a 7-6 walk-off victory over Flint Carman.
The smash, coming off Jeff Hamilton’s two-ball, two-strike pitch, was welcome relief to Lancers coach Jim Bresciami, whose team had stranded 17 runners on base prior to the game winner. Gallagher had loaded the bases in both the seventh and ninth innings, but was unable to score.
“Roger is our best bunter,” Bresciami told Detroit Free Press sportswriter Mick McCabe, “but we already had a man thrown out at the plate on a bunt so we just let him swing away, and the good Lord let it drop.” Horrie had walked three times and bunted twice earlier in the game.
The contest, twice postponed because of storms, was finally played on Tuesday.
Hamilton (who later played for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1986-91) starred for Carman, notching three RBI on a triple in the top of the fifth inning to give Carman a 5-3 lead. Kirk White’s two-run homer for Gallagher in the bottom of the inning tied the game at five each. Darrin Lum doubled in the sixth for Carman, then scored on a single by Pat Richard to make it 6-5 before Don Rowland (later a member of University of Miami’s 1982 and 1985 NCAA championship baseball teams and a draft pick of the Detroit Tigers) tripled then scored following a sacrifice bunt by Andy Krause, again knotting the score.
With the win, Gallagher became Michigan’s first Class A team to repeat as champion, while Bresciami became the state’s first coach in Class A to win two titles.
Bresciami compiled a 545-149 record over 21 seasons at the school before retiring following the 1985 season. His teams earned three runner-up finishes (B-1974, B-1977, A-1984) and three Finals titles (A-1971, A-1981, A-1985). In addition, Gallagher returned to the Class B title game in 1986, falling to Battle Creek Lakeview, 4-3, under coach Bob Hadacz, a four-year assistant to Bresciami. Gallagher then won another crown in Class B in 1989, coached by Thomas Trompics.
CLASS B
On Monday, Bay City All Saints required only five innings to grab its second baseball title, trouncing Tecumseh 7-1. The Cougars had previously won the 1978 crown in Class C.
Tecumseh scored first, loading the bases in the top of the second inning and pushing a run across on Rex Robinson’s one-out single to grab a 1-0 lead. But it was all All Saints to follow. The Cougars responded in the bottom of the inning with an RBI single by Mark Berent, then added two more with Mike McIlhargey’s 385-foot home run shot to bump the score to 3-1. Catcher G.J. Zanotti added a solo homer in the third inning, then All Saints scored twice more in the fourth and again in the fifth. The game was called under MHSAA rules after three downpours made the field unplayable. Dave Laprairie went the distance for the win.
“For many on the team,” noted the Bay City Times years later, “their biggest game was not the state final win over Tecumseh. … To them, the real highlight was their semifinal against Mount Pleasant that was played in Bay City's Veterans Park before a crowd of nearly 3,000 people.” Mount Pleasant had finished as runner-up in Class B a year previous, and took All Saints – the top-ranked team in the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association (MHSBCA) regular-season final poll – to extra innings before surrendering, 10-7.
Following the postseason, All Saints shortstop Keith Miller was named to the MHSBCA Class B first-team all-state squad. (Miller would later play college baseball at Oral Roberts University, then carve out a nine-year career in the Major Leagues playing five seasons with the New York Mets and four with the Kansas City Royals.)
CLASS C
Allen Park Cabrini grabbed a 9-8 win over Buchanan in a thriller. It was the second title in three years for the Monarchs and coach Donald Oboza.
Suspended in the third inning on Saturday with Cabrini leading 1-0, the game was resumed Monday. Cabrini added four more runs in the inning for a quick 5-0 lead. Buchanan scored twice in the bottom of the third, and then tied the contest at 5-5 in fourth, highlighted by a John Ehlert home run.
The Monarchs jumped out to a 9-5 lead before storms delayed play for another hour and 35 minutes entering the seventh inning. When the game resumed, Buchanan rallied for three runs in dramatic fashion to pull within one.
“With (Buchanan) runners at first and second and no one out,” wrote Jack Walkden in the St. Joseph Herald-Palladium, “the Bucks John Ehlert hit a long drive up the alley in right-centerfield. But (Cabrini centerfielder John) Stanko went far to his left to haul down the drive over his shoulder. The play proved even more important when two of the next three Buchanan batters collected hits. If Ehlert’s drive had gotten through, Buchanan probably would have at least tied the game.”
“That guy made a heckuva play on Ehlert’s ball,” said Buchanan coach Bob Storm. “That was the ballgame.”
Cabrini’s senior righthander Tony DeMarti, “who several times left his shortstop position to pitch” due to the MHSAA’s rule that forbid one hurler from pitching more than a combined 30 outs over 10 innings in the Semifinals and Final, was “brought … back to the mound (in the seventh),” according to McCabe, “where he eventually ended the threat …”
Cabrini first baseman Mike McKelvey finished with a single and a double, driving in three runs. Stanko notched a single and a double, scored twice and added an RBI on the day for the Monarchs. DeMarti, who had scored the eventual game winner, also earned the victory in relief – his eighth win in 12 decisions on the year.
Cabrini finished with a 29-11 mark. Buchanan’s 27-5 record was the school’s best to date.
CLASS D
In the only game to finish as scheduled at CMU, Reading’s Randy Spangler (13-1) pitched a complete game, scattering five hits as the Rangers downed Mesick, 1-0.
The run came in the top of the first inning as catcher Mike Shoemaker walked, moved to second on a sacrifice by Jon Keger, and then scored on an error when Spangler’s grounder to deep short was thrown away.
Paul Ruskowski walked and stole second for Mesick in the bottom of the seventh inning, but was left on base. Coach Jack Kerspilo’s Rangers ended the year with a 26-3 record. Starter Chris McNitt took the loss for Mesick, which finished the season at 23-4.
Ron Pesch has taken an active role in researching the history of MHSAA events since 1985 and began writing for MHSAA Finals programs in 1986, adding additional features and "flashbacks" in 1992. He inherited the title of MHSAA historian from the late Dick Kishpaugh following the 1993-94 school year, and resides in Muskegon. Contact him at [email protected] with ideas for historical articles.
PHOTOS: (Top) Harper Woods Bishop Gallagher claimed the Class A baseball title in 1981, its second championship in the sport. (2) Future Dodgers infielder Jeff Hamilton waits on a pitch for Flint Carman in Class A. (3) John Stanko takes a cut for Allen Park Cabrini in the Class C title game. (4) Buchanan celebrates a homer by John Ehlert. (Photos collected by Ron Pesch.)
Airport Graduate Villarreal Hoping to Receive Call on WPBL Draft Day
By
Steve Vedder
Special for MHSAA.com
November 19, 2025
It hasn't always been the smoothest of paths for Bella Villarreal – but considering the trail-breaking nature of her quest, she refuses to second guess her choices.
Which is how it goes for someone trying to make the leap from a high school of fewer than 800 students to becoming the first Michigan native to play in the new Women's Professional Baseball League.
A graduate of Carleton Airport High School and presently a freshman at Eastern Michigan, Villarreal's journey includes overcoming her own doubts, ignoring skeptics, poking a hole in a sport universally reserved for males and traveling hundreds of miles to find suitable competition. It's a long and continuing fight she's hoping will culminate in her being among the players taken in the inaugural WPBL draft Thursday.
While Villarreal describes herself as a football fan and someone who could never get into softball, dabbled in basketball and pushed thoughts of playing volleyball to the back of her mind, her first love has always been baseball. It's been that way since before she stepped into her kindergarten classroom and peaked after shining in a WPBL tryout in Washington, D.C., in August.
"I've been drawn to baseball since I was a 4-year-old playing T-ball," Villarreal said. "I've always wanted to play baseball. It's inspirational to me and was always a goal for me to play. I never wanted to stop something that made me feel so good."
While she harbors a deep love of baseball, the sport, however, hasn't always returned that affection. After playing in local boys leagues growing up, Villarreal – a pitcher and second baseman – made the Detroit Bees boys travel team as a 9-year-old. From there she graduated to the Indians Baseball Club as an 11-year-old and then finally more travel ball with the Cubs club as a 15-year-old. She's played in three Baseball For All events, the largest girls baseball tournament in the country.
Along the way Villarreal has encountered support, but also a prevalent attitude that girls who favor a sport with a bat and ball should be playing softball, not baseball. By the time she was 16, Villarreal, by then long committed to a future on the baseball diamond, was having to travel all over the Midwest to find baseball tournaments.
What she found was scattered acceptance among some male teammates, but also a frustration with traveling around a half-dozen states to play the sport she loved.
One of the turning points of Villarreal's fledging baseball career came at Airport High School. After her extensive inclusion in travel leagues, Villarreal made the school's junior varsity baseball team as a freshman and sophomore. While there were bumps along the way, the foremost lesson Villarreal took from that school's baseball program was that she could indeed succeed playing against the boys. She also honed fundamentals and learned the value of everyone pulling in the same direction.
According to the National Federation of State High Schools Association (NFHS), there are no states with girls baseball as a sanctioned sport – but the organization counted 1,372 girls who played baseball on high school boys teams this spring. While Major League Baseball estimates 46 percent of all baseball fans are women, only nine women played on NCAA men's baseball teams in 2024.
None of which has deterred Villarreal's love of the game.
"I worked hard and wanted to be part of the team. I learned that there is no "I" in team," Villarreal said of her time at Airport. "And I think it also confirmed my ability. I knew if I did well in high school, I could do it any place."
Armed with the confidence that she could carve a space in the sport, Villarreal, now 19, has tried to improve her game with twice-a-week hitting workouts and four days of work designed to improve her strength and speed.
The work has paid off. She came away from the first WPBL tryout in Washington, D.C., with hopes of being taken in the draft. The tryout included players from 10 countries, including a dozen from Japan, which has the top-ranked women's team in the world by the World Baseball and Softball Federation. In all, the first day of tryouts included 600 players from across the country and as far away as Australia, Mexico, South Korea, the United Kingdom and France. Cuts were made after each of the four days, with Villarreal surviving all of them. That's a hopeful sign she will be taken in the draft by one of the league's four franchises.
Villarreal admits the tryouts, which concluded with inter-squad games, were high stress.
"Of course I was nervous," she said. "But I made some friends there who helped me stay motivated that I could get through it. It was serious, but everyone had fun, which was a big thing. There were jitters the first day, but then I was good at becoming myself. To make the second and third days, you knew you must be doing something right. I started becoming confident with the things I knew I could do."
Originally slated to include six teams, the league will start play in May with teams in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Teams will have 15-player rosters which will play a seven-week regular season. It's not the first attempt at forming a professional women's baseball league. There have been four previous attempts beginning with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II and the most recent with Ladies League Baseball in 1997-98.
Villarreal believes given time and enough resources, women's professional baseball can thrive. She would love to look back on her time as being among the trailblazers in that progress.
"Absolutely, there is interest," she said. "I know there have been attempts before, and some really haven't stuck. But I think we can build it up to a place where girls have more of an opportunity."
For those girls who would someday wish to join that quest, Villarreal has advice.
"You should know where you're supposed to be," she said. "Do what you love as a challenge, and just be who you are. It doesn't matter what sport you play – know that you are capable."
Editor's note: Villarreal was drafted in the fifth round of the WPBL Draft by Los Angeles, the 82nd pick overall of 120. She was selected as a second baseman, and was one of two Michigan players drafted. Jordan Eyster of Royal Oak, a 21-year-old outfielder, was selected in the fourth round by San Francisco.
PHOTOS (Top) Airport grad Bella Villarreal watches from the dugout during a USA Baseball Development Program event. (Middle) Villarreal steps to the plate as a member of Carleton Airport’s junior varsity baseball team. (Below) Villarreal takes a photo while pointing toward her mother Tonya. (Photos provided by the Villarreal family.)