May 21, 2021 5 min read

MONTOUR – If a fortune-teller had informed Chartiers-Houston coach Andy Manion at, say, 3:30 Friday afternoon that his team would only give up two hits in its Class 2A quarterfinal matchup with Carmichaels set to start a half-hour later, and said nothing else, Manion would have liked his team’s chances.

It wouldn’t have guaranteed a Buccaneers win and a punched ticket to the state tournament, but it probably would have at least made Manion envision a tight, hard-fought baseball game at Burkett Park.

It surely wouldn’t have made him think about a 7-2 loss.

Baseball is unusual sometimes.

The Buccaneers did a good job of limiting the Mighty Mikes’ hitting, but they couldn’t keep Carmichaels off the base paths.

“They walked people,” Manion said. “They walked people, they made defensive mistakes, they had a wild pitch where two runs scored, that can’t happen.”

In total, Chartiers-Houston (15-4) issued nine walks and committed four errors, and offensively, couldn’t figure out Mikes’ starting pitcher Drake Long. Thus, Manion’s first season in Houston is over.

It wasn’t a perfect win for Carmichaels head coach Richard Krause, but at this stage of the season, all that matters is the result.

“I am not happy about how we hit the baseball, but I’ll take it,” Krause said. “This is the only team that’s beaten us all year, and we washed that out.”

Carmichaels (17-1) didn’t need a hit to score its first run in its first at-bat. Char-Houston starter Ryan Parise walked the bases loaded with one out, and Liam Lohr put Gavin Pratt across with a groundout to put the Mikes ahead, 1-0.

In the second, the Mikes scored two runs on just one hit, with both runs coming in on a wild pitch.

It remained that way until the fifth, when the Buccaneers’ offense showed a pulse, scoring their first run on a single by Jimmy Sadler – a rocket past Mikes’ first baseman Nick Ricco. Drake found himself in the only real trouble he ran into all day, with runners on first and second and the Buccaneers’ No. 3 hitter Austin Kuslock at the plate. But Kuslock grounded into a force out to second baseman Lohr, averting the threat.

In the bottom of the sixth, the Mikes buried the game with four runs, the first of which coming on the strangest play of the day.

With the bases loaded and Dylan Rohrer on first, Rohrer ran to second and quickly had to go back to first realizing Zach Hillsman, who was on second, had nowhere to go. It turned into a blessing for Carmichaels, however, when Chartiers-Houston catcher Luke Camden threw the ball into right field, allowing Dominic Colarusso to score. The Mikes scored three more runs and allowed a meaningless tally in the seventh before Rohrer finished it off on the mound.

The Mikes got a big-game-worthy performance from Long. He went six innings, allowed just one run on four hits, striking out three, walking one and hitting a batter.

“Fantastic,” Krause said. “Fantastic… He’s been good all year like that. He mixed his two pitches. He keeps the ball down really well.”

Parise took the loss for Char-Houston, only allowing one hit over three innings, but walking four and allowing three runs.

Krause and Manion have known each other since Manion was 16 years old, the youngest member of Krause’s summer league team, and have carried that friendship for nearly three decades. The two had a half-hour conversation the night before their game – due in part to Thursday being Manion’s birthday.

“I have great respect for him as a baseball guy,” Krause said. “Chartiers-Houston is very fortunate to have him as a faculty member and as their baseball coach because he is nothing but a professional, class act.”

“I know the way he thinks, he knows the way I think…,” Manion said. “It’s difficult because I know I’m going to get to see him in the summer. It’s difficult knowing that their team ended our season, but I learned a lot from him over the years over there, and we talked back and forth, I’m sure he picked something up from what we do… for us to lose, I’d rather (it’d) be them than somebody else.”

Now, the Mighty Mikes will continue their quest for a fourth WPIAL championship Monday afternoon at Shaler, when they take on Shenango. First pitch is scheduled for 2 p.m. Regardless of whether the Mikes advance to the WPIAL finals, or lose in a mercy rule, Carmichaels will be playing in the state tournament for the first time since 2014.

“That’s amazing,” Long said. “It’s a dream. We’ve been thinking about this since we were eight, nine. Now we’re there.”

“You know what’s really great about today?” Krause said. “You lose, your season ends. You win, no matter what happens Monday, you’re playing for two more weeks… So, I have these kids for two more weeks; we get to hang out together. I wasn’t ready for it to end.”

It has ended for Sadler. The Buccaneers’ standout shortstop went 2-for-4 and drove in both of his team’s runs in his final high school game. Sadler’s baseball days are hardly done, as he will continue his career at West Virginia. Even though he’ll continue to play the game at a high level- perhaps the highest level, if things go well- Sadler knows things won’t be the same when he isn’t playing alongside people he’s known since childhood.

“Like I said in the huddle, I hope to have a long career, but there’s nothing that’s going to be like high school baseball with all my friends,” Sadler said. “Making all these memories, having all this fun. I grew up with these people, every single one of them. It’s going to be tough leaving them.”