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Winning silver: Miller falls in a wild championship battle with Cape Henry

Photo: Ryan Yemen

Without the bitter, the sweet ain’t so sweet. There’s an awful lot of different ways to describe second place and they usually aren’t met so kindly. Nonetheless, immediately after the game, the teaching moment was not lost on coach Billy Wagner.

Years down the road the 2022 edition of the Miller baseball is going to be very happy that Wagner stopped his players from walking out of Shepherd Stadium without getting a full team photo, smiles and all, with the VISAA Division 1 runner up plaque. There’s no quickly getting over the gut shot of losing a state title 5-4 in extra innings to Cape Henry Collegiate. But without that team photo, the Mavericks would have failed to properly acknowledge the journey that got them to Sunday’s championship game, a route that saw Miller take down No. 3 seed Bishop O’Connell and No. 2 seed St. Christopher’s.

 

“You have to take that moment to teach, it’s a coaching moment, you have to have that photo,” Wagner said. “You tell them you know it stinks, it hurts but we can learn from it. It’s easy when you win. Life is like this. You’ve gotta work hard to put things together and it doesn’t always work out in your favor. You have to get up the next day when it doesn’t work out. For all the hard work we did to get here, I don’t think we came up short. We just lost playing a great game as hard as we could.”

 

The Mavericks went blow-for-blow with the Dolphins for eight and half innings. But with the bases loaded with two outs Tanner Schaedel delivered a hard hit single up the middle to walkoff Cape Henry into a 5-4 victory in game that took two days to play, two innings on Saturday and another seven on Sunday.

 

“Holy moly, I guess there was a little less pressure being the home team but… that was such a wild game and we were just running on fumes,” Cape Henry coach Tim Hummel said. “It was a long drive here yesterday, a long drive back and then a long drive again today and trying to keep our focus was tough. We made mistakes we haven’t made much of the year but in a game like this you couldn’t dwell on those. You had to stay calm and I think we did on the mound and certainly at the end at the plate.”

 

On Saturday in the 94-degree heat before lightning delay the game, Exom and Schaedel were engaged in a solid pitchers duel both pitchers retired six of the seven batters they faced with Exom giving up a single and Schaedel giving up a leadoff double in the second but pitching out of the game.

 

Patrick Rakes put Miller on the board in the top of the 3rd with two outs when he launched a ball into a hitters wind for a solo run to make it 1-0. It was a bittersweet moment for Miller as just moments before the Mavericks had a 1-out single but got picked off on a slick move from Schaedel to first.

 

Cape Henry led the bottom of the third off with a double to gap in left from Josh Holland. Then Andrew Hart reached on an error. That set up  Harper Cox for an RBI groundout equalizer. A walk to Tanner Schaedel and a balk put runners on second and third which proved costly as Kenny Schaedel cranked a 2-run triple deep to the gap in right-center to put the Dolphins ahead 3-1. Cape Henry went up by three to finish the 3rd when Parker Wight delivered a sacrifice fly to center field.

 

Noah Murray took over in relief of Exom in the fourth and after back-to-back walks he was able to work out of the jam without the margin getting any wider. That set up the next big change of momentum as Tanner Schaedel was dialed in having retired six straight batters but a leadoff single from Rakes and double from Murray brought Miller to life. An RBI sac-fly from Laken Tignor cut the deficit to two runs. Then one big 2-run HR swing from Devin Christopher tied the game up at 4-4 and chased Schaedel.

 

“The fight today, that’s why I’m so proud of this team because we just kept fighting back,” Wagner said. “If you’re going to lose a state title game, you lose it in extra innings fighting your tail off.”

 

Miller then picked up a boost on defense when Thomas Reilly came on in relief of Murray after a leadoff walk. Reilly induced a bunt that he was able to dive for and then send over to first for a double play and a pop fly to center ended the 6th with the game still tied at 4-4.

 

Then in the bottom of the seventh after a leadoff single Murray flew from third into a line drive, came up with it and went to first to complete another game changing double play. A leadoff walk drawn by Tignor was followed up by two pop ups and a strikeout to send things to the bottom of the eighth still deadlocked at 4-4. Reilly and Henry Cooke combined for a nice “strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out” combo in that eighth inning to give Miller another inning. However, the Mavericks went down in order in the ninth and that set up Tanner Schaebel’s game winning hit in the bottom half.

 

Miller loses Exom, Cooke, Tignor, Reilly, Dustin Wood, TJ Brooks, Noah Laney and Landon Abrahamson to graduation. However, the Mavericks return 14 players next year who will be all the wiser for having been a part of such a deep and pressure riddled playoff run.

 

“To lose this game is not the end of the world,” Wagner said. “To not learn from it would be a problem. That’s the hard part ahead. The tears can be good — it shows how much this means and it should. But I know we can come back together, move on and learn.”

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