OHS baseball in the zone right now

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June 2, 2012

OHS baseball in the zone right now

Anonymous Daily Star The Daily Star Sat Jun 02, 2012, 03:30 AM EDT

BINGHAMTON _ Comfort comes from familiarity.

The more you do something, the more at ease you are with it.

Unless someone comes along next week flashing 90-plus heat on the radar gun, Oneonta High's baseball team has reason to feel comfortable as it enters the Class B state tournament.

That's because it's been tested time and again over the last two seasons.

The Southern Tier Athletic Conference is no joke when it comes to baseball. That the Yellowjackets have amassed a 41-4 record over the last two seasons en route to winning two straight conference titles is downright impressive.

Teams that have started pitchers who'll play for Wake Forest, North Carolina Greensboro and Le Moyne College lost to the Yellowjackets this season.

Class AA schools Binghamton, Vestal and Horseheads also fell to OHS, as did Class As Johnson City and Owego.

It's safe to say OHS is the best baseball team in Section Four.

The most resilient, too.

Never was that more apparent than Thursday afternoon at Conlon Field. There, the defending Class B state champions opened a six-run lead through 4 1/2 innings only to see Oneonta rally for an 11-10 victory _ the final four runs coming in the bottom of the seventh _ that gave the Yellowjackets their first sectional title since 2002.

That win over rival Chenango Valley exorcized some demons. And not just mental anguish but physical scars.

Senior catcher Zach Pidgeon saw his season end with a shoulder injury last May following a collision at the plate with a CV player during a STAC East Division tiebreaker OHS won, 6-5. Senior pitcher Mike Calkins took an inadvertent knee to the head from Mike Fillers in the first inning of last season's Section Four Class B final. Calkins stayed in the game until the third inning before going to Wilson Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a concussion. CV went on to win that game, 10-2.

So to fall behind, 7-1, heading into the bottom of the fifth against Le Moyne-bound Austin Lewis ... well, at that point most teams would start to think we can't get over this hump.

"We were down a good number of runs against a very good pitcher," OHS coach Joe Hughes said of Lewis, a left-hander who struck out 13 in four-hitting OHS in last year's sectional final. "We just kept talking about, we're going to do it. The heart and character of this team was on display today and I couldn't be prouder of them."

As the father of a 14-year-old who appears to be headed toward a fairly decent future in baseball, I constantly preach to the youngster how difficult it is to play the game at a high level.

All sports require muscle memory, but it has to be so ingrained in baseball because there's no recovery time. When you're facing an 85 mph fastball, it's the work you've done in the cage all winter, all the hitting off the tee and all the swings you've taken when no one is watching that come to plate with you. And if that work has been neglected, rest assured, you'll be exposed.

You can't roll out of bed and play baseball. There's no such thing as a natural in this sport.

Some might make it look easy, but you can bet there's a large body of work that allows them to look so smooth.

And that brings me to a comment Calkins made Thursday. He said he can't imagine that any team has worked harder than OHS since it suffered that eight-run, season-ending loss to CV last season. Hughes has made similar comments throughout the season.

Normally, I shrug off comments from coaches and players who say they work hard. Hard work should be a given, not something to brag about.

But then you watch the Yellowjackets play and realize they understand baseball better than their opponents, especially at the plate. They fell behind, 5-0, to JC standout Ryan Clark _ headed to NC Greensboro next season _ before rallying for a 9-8 victory in 10 innings. They got better the more they saw him.

The same held true against Lewis. They made the proper adjustments the second, third and fourth times through the lineup.

Here's how they said they did it:

 "We weren't going to do it with one swing," said Calkins, who drew key leadoff walks and scored in the fifth and sixth innings against Lewis. "We just tried to chip away. We wanted to make him pitch, because we knew their second-best pitcher threw yesterday, so we were just trying to knock him out of the game. We knew if we got him out, we'd have a great chance."

 "I think we took the perfect approach this year," said left fielder David Wright, who had three hits, walked and was hit by a pitch from his leadoff spot. "Even last year, he had little control problems. This year, we swung at the first pitch if it was there, but we were patient enough to take our walks."

 "When you go to the plate you want to have an approach, a plan when you go up," said junior center fielder Chris Pindar, who drove in the winning run in the bottom of the seventh. "Usually, you see a first-pitch fastball. If you see an off-speed pitch, you don't want to swing at it."

Clearly, these are kids who think a lot about baseball.

They were good last year when they went 20-2. They're better this season _ and that's because this season started right after last season ended.

The 21-2 Yellowjackets will bring a 13-game winning streak into Tuesday's Class B state quarterfinal against Westhill or Cazenovia, who'll play for the Section Three Class B title at 7 p.m. Saturday at Alliance Bank Stadium in Syracuse. Should Oneonta win Tuesday, they'll head back to Conlon Field for the state semifinals and final the following Saturday.

Ninety-mile-an-hour fastballs notwithstanding, they have reason to feel comfortable heading into those games.

Rob Centorani covers high school baseball for The Daily Star. Email him at rcentorani@thedailystar.com.