DETROIT — Juan Torres said it was a completely different feeling walking the halls of Detroit Cass Tech last week. 

A junior baseball player for the Technicians, Torres knows full well to what extent Cass Tech is a football school, especially since it won the Division 1 title in the fall and produces Division I college talent every year. 

But after Cass Tech won the Detroit Public School League baseball city championship on May 19, there was plenty of pride and attention paid to what the school had achieved on the diamond.

“It’s pretty tough because we are a football school,” Torres said. “Being able to show up to school (the day after) and to say that we won something, it felt really good. We can compete. That was a really good feeling.”

For Cass Tech head coach Melvin Jackson, earning a 6-1 win over Detroit Western in the PSL final at Comerica Park was a moment he had waited for and built toward since taking over the program eight years ago. 

Western had won the last 15 PSL championships and in general has been the gold standard for baseball in the league. But Cass Tech has been inching closer in recent years. 

Last year, the Technicians beat out Western out for a PSL division title, but lost to the Cowboys in the playoff championship game. 

Cass Tech wasn’t denied this year, with starting pitcher Kyle Terry pitching 5 2/3 innings and Jordan Spencer registering the last four outs to start a jubilant celebration. 

The offense was keyed by Torres, who had three hits and three RBI. 

“This year, I kind of felt like we were ready,” Jackson said. “They have been really hungry for this moment.”

While rivals, Jackson said the reason he wanted to defeat Western was because the Cowboys had been an inspiration and measuring stick for his program. 

Jackson and Cass Tech hope topping Western for the PSL title can be a sign of continued growth for high school baseball in the city. 

“You want to bring baseball back, and these are the things that will help bring baseball back to another level in the city,” he said. 

Cass Tech and other programs in the city face challenges that many suburban schools do not. Cass Tech technically has a home field on Belle Isle, but just about every nonleague game is played away on someone else’s field. 

Detroit Edison, the Division 3 runner-up three years ago and a semifinalist last year, is in a similar boat having to play most of its games on the road and conduct practices on the school’s turf football field. 

“When you go out to some of those schools and you see those kinds of facilities, it makes you think, ‘What if?’” Jackson said. 

But much like Edison, Cass Tech forges on and makes the best of it. Just like Western was an inspiration to get to the top of the PSL, what Edison has done is motivating the Technicians to make a deep run in the MHSAA Tournament. 

“We want to build a program like theirs,” Torres said. “We want to build toward something where we can compete every year and be in those important games.”

Jackson insists that his team can achieve things this year beyond the PSL title. 

Cass Tech could very well run into Western again today since they are in the same District, and Jackson feels winning that bracket could be a great springboard for his team.

“There’s more baseball to play,” he said. “If we can get past them, the sky is the limit. The kids I have right now, my seniors and my juniors, they are hungry.”

Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.

PHOTO Detroit Cass Tech’s baseball program takes a post-championship photo after winning the Detroit Public School League city title. (Photo courtesy of Cass Tech coach Melvin Jackson.)