High School Baseball Tournament (7-20-2023)

   I am currently gathering information on great high school baseball team going all the back to the 1950s for what I hope will be a 32-team tournament simulation.

    The difficult part about getting baseball information is that it is such a statistically driven sport in relation to recreating teams, Where football & basketball have relatively few key stats (rushing, passing, turnovers, etc. for football), baseball has numerous categories to dissect and evaluate. 

   Just today I spoke with John Rivera, who was a member of the great 1988 West New York (NJ) Memorial baseball team that won a National Championship. I related an instance where the depth of baseball statistics goes beyond just batting average or earned run average.

   The undefeated 1978 Evansville (IN) Memorial team, led by the Don Mattingly, had a player who batted .150 for the season in their lineup. Not only was he in the lineup, he batted second or third in the batting order. After pouring through stats and box scores, I found that Larry Bitter was an invaluable source to Memorial's success. He was an outstanding fielder at secondbase, plus his bunting and ability to move base runners, set the table for Mattingly and his teammates.

   I had about 30% of the 32-team field already in place from previous simulations, but a few weeks ago I tried to reach out to 1996 Miami Westminster Christian to see if I could kick-start this large undertaking of gathering statistics for baseball teams from before 2000. 

   Alas, my email went unanswered.

   I re-sent it one last time in hopes of getting a response, if not, the project was dead because you can't have a High School Baseball Greats tournament without '96 Westminster in the field.

    I checked the next day and lo and behold I received a response. The problem: I had reached out to Westminster ACADEMY for information; not Westminster Christian.

    Coach Gonzalez at Academy was kind enough to forward Coach Rich Hofman's number and Mr. Hofman provided me with detailed hitting, pitching and fielding stats for 1996 Westminster Christian.

    The tournament was off and running.

    What a team, by the way. They had almost no weaknesses. While only one team at the end of this will have won their final game, the '96 Westminster Christian team is one of the greats.

   I am still waiting for information on 1982 (KY) Madison Central, 1994 Toledo (OH) Start & 1995 Germantown (TN). Hopefully John finds some information on the '88 WNY Memorial team, but if not, no problem, they were still a remarkable squad.

   If you have any information on some great baseball teams of the past or any suggestions for the tournament, please email me at: sclark2591@sbcglobal.net

   High school rankings, on the state or national levels are an enigma for sports historians and fans. 

   First, you have the human element and bias that goes along with observing a narrow scope of information. Even with the popularity of live streaming, time and breadth of the subject matter won't allow fans and voters to accurately seed or rank teams properly. 

    Think about the bias that is involved among Heisman voters. Regional favorites taint and skew ballots every year.

   On the high school level, when it comes to ranking football teams, there is little in the way of assessing the talent of these squads or their opponents, other than hearsay or gathering data from past trends (i.e this area has produced a number of Division I players or this region has produced x number of state champions.)

   In the early days, ranking pioneers Art Johlfs and Barry Sollenberger utilized second-hand information from media and coaches to derive a national ranking for high school football teams. It was a solid guideline to inform fans and followers of which teams were deserving of recognition; not necessarily the best teams.

   Johlfs was from Minnesota, which might explain why polls throughout the 19660s and '70s had schools like Minneapolis Washburn, Rochester Marshall and Edina West in the top-10 nationally. These schools had great seasons, but to place them in such lofty positions seems like a reach.

   For the most part, these ranking gurus appeared to get it right. With very few intersectional or interstate match ups between top teams back in the day, it was difficult to gauge who was deserving or a certain ranking.

   The muddled mess came  from ambiguity of why a team was receiving their ranking: was it that they were the better team or did their performance make them deserving of those accolades.

   Chris Lawlor, who did most of the rankings for USA Today, starting in 1982, presented many of these scenarios. For example, USA Today ranked Sheridan out of Wyoming as the #23 team in the nation at season's end in 1991. A dominant, undefeated team in a traditional non-football state concerning talent, there were100-teams from California, Texas and Florida that would've defeated the Broncs in 1991...probably.

   In 1982, Beaumont (TX) West Brook won the 5A (largest class) state title in Texas with an 11-4-1 record, then received a #15 ranking in the USA Today. With five blemishes on the season, were they deserving of a national ranking?  Meanwhile, Odessa (TX) Permian, who lost in the regional final, ended up 12-1, but was ranked #6 in the final USA Today poll. Sugar Land (TX) Willowridge, led by Thurman Thomas, went undefeated and won the 4A title, but was not ranked in the final 25.

   Inconsistencies like this abound throughout the different seasons. I recall one publication declaring during Concord (CA) De La Salle's 151-game winning streak from 1992-2003, that until somebody beats them, they are the #1 team.

   That's not how it works.

    Each team needs to be assessed on a year-to-year basis. Because the 1998, 1999 and 2001 DLS teams were so dominant, this doesn't warrant the 2002 Spartans as the nation's best (which I believe they were not. Yes I'm talking about you Lilburn (GA) Parkview and Ramsey (NJ) Don Bosco Prep

   One site that uses data -driven analysis to rank teams is CalPreps. Started back in 2001, when they only covered California schools, they began ranking teams nationally in 2003. They operate  under the guise of a ranking reflecting on how teams perform and who they've played. CalPreps makes an  attempt to determine if would team A defeat team B by assigning a rating score. By the end of the season, you have a number of teams from the power football states in the top-25. An example would be in 2004, where nine of the top-16 teams were from Texas, with only three of them winning state titles. Meanwhile, 2004 Charlotte (NC) Independence, whose closest contest was a 22-point win in a 16-0 season, was ranked #67 nationally by CalPreps, while USA Today had them slotted at #2 in the country behind only Southlake (TX) Carroll.

   In conclusion, whether the rankings are subjective or data driven, they are still a great way to create interest and discussion for the sport of high school football. 

Here are five instances of greatness  that I've personally witnessed in over 40-years of watching and covering high school sports in the mostly Michigan, but some of Indiana and Ohio areas.

1. 2009 Detroit Pershing's Keith Appling scoring a finals state record, 49-points in the Doughboys 90-73 win over Kalamazoo Central for the Class A crown. Appling's outburst help Pershing outscore the Maroon Giants, 56-34 in the second half. He left to a standing ovation.

2. Detroit Cass Tech's Mike Weber runs for 404-yards (on 32-attempts) in a 48-35 regional final victory over Chippewa Valley.

3. 2004 Detroit Renaissance boy's basketball team, destroying a previously undefeated Detroit Denby squad, 68-40 in front of a packed house at Cobo, that included coach Roy Williams. Joe Crawford, Malik Hairston, TaJuan Porter and Carson Butler starred for the eventual Class B champions.

4. 2002 Pontiac Northern's Lester Abram, carrying the team on his back to the Class A crown. He had help with the likes of Derrick Ponder, Bates Gay and Antonio Bonds, but it was the 6' 5 forward who did what he needed to secure the Huskies second consecutive Class A crown.

5. I drove three-hours west to Grand Rapids to watch East Kentwood play Muskegon in a 2002 playoff game. The game wasn't necessarily the best, but a sellout crowd on a fall Saturday afternoon in Michigan...it doesn't get any better. Plus, RB Noel Alleman and that Falcon offense was something to behold