Even The Best Of Teams Are in Danger in the Postseason for Baseball and Softball.

Written Wednesday June 2nd at 8:15 AM

Updated Saturday June 5th at 6:15 PM

Even the best of teams are in danger in June when it comes to baseball and softball postseason.

In these two sports, if you lose one game you’re done. It isn’t like college where you need to lose two games to be eliminated.

The MHSAA baseball and softball postseasons started on Tuesday with the pre-districts. There was not a lot of upsets that occurred on the baseball or softball diamonds but there was one huge upset that did occur on the softball diamond that sent shockwaves throughout the state at Grand Blanc.

Grand Blanc played host to Davison on Tuesday afternoon. The Cardinals were an honorable mention in the state. The Bobcats was the second ranked team in the state and featured a Miss Softball candidate in pitcher and Purdue commit Kendall Klochack. Grand Blanc was having a very good season. They won the Saginaw Valley League crown. The Bobcats played Davison earlier in the season winning twice over them. Their only losses came to Lapeer and Howell this season.

However Tuesday felt different.

In the podcast room at the ONTV studio filming the podcast, I thought about the Grand Blanc district since Oxford was in the district. I was thinking about the Wildcats chances to win the district. I thought beforehand that their chances would be higher if the Bobcats were upset by either the Cardinals or the Lightning again.

Then it happened.

Klochack and Cardinals pitcher Paige Anderson were locked in a pitchers duel in a 1-1 game. Davison coach Brad Brown sent in pinch runner Laila Lupu to second after a double that got her into scoring position. The Cardinals on the next batter would get a single off Klochack which put Lupu at third and then Brown gambled when Grand Blanc was not paying attention to detail, no time was called or anything he sent Lupu home and no Bobcat was there sending the Davison players, coaches, and parents into a frenzy.

The Grand Blanc players, coaches, and fans couldn’t believe what happened on their home field, an error in judgment and not paying attention to detail cost them big time.

Davison would then beat Lapeer in the semifinals but fell to Oxford in the district finals.

In the postseason everyone starts with a clean slate. It’s win or go home in June. 

The upsets continued into Saturday especially in baseball where three State ranked teams in Lake Orion (Lapeer), Oxford (Clarkston), and Hartland (Dexter) were upset and Howell softball was upset as well (Dexter.)

The irony of all of this is even ranked teams are vulnerable to be upset even on their home field. It has happened many times in the past. Any team can be beat on any given day.

Rankings are just a number.

That’s the beauty of postseason competition come in June which makes it that much brighter since there was no postseason in 2020 because of COVID-19.

At the end of the day even the best teams are in danger in June. Tuesday and Saturday proved that point.