Tough outing for Legion team

There’s a reason why one should never bet against a stacked deck.

For Spokane area American Legion baseball teams, the state tournament stands as just such a situation.

“I’m not complaining or anything, but it’s tough for teams from over here to compete against some of those programs on the West Side of the state,” University AA legion coach Scott Sutherland said. “Some of the teams we face from over there are all-star teams. Junior Legion, on the state level, doesn’t have rules about how many schools you can draw kids from; Spokane does. We can draw from only one high school or 2,000 kids. That’s why all of our AA teams in Spokane are from just one high school.

“You get over there, and it’s David playing Goliath some of the time.”

It was one of the Goliaths that knocked University out of the winner’s bracket.

“We had a pretty tough draw,” Sutherland said. “We opened with Kennewick and beat them. Billy Moon pitched just the way he has all season and won his 10th game of the summer. In the winner’s bracket we played Bremerton, and they’re made up of players from four or five high schools. They had players from Port Orchard all the way up to Poulsbo playing for them.

“And the thing is, that was the first AA team to beat us all summer. The games we lost before that were all to AAA teams.”

University lost to Olympia, 10-0 in seven innings, in a loser-out game to end the season with a 29-7 record and the Spokane city championship.

“Olympia was one of those teams that was a lot like us,” Sutherland said. “They were mostly from Olympia High School with one player from Tumwater. It was one of those games though where we hit the ball hard, but right at people. We didn’t pitch well, and they did. That was all there was to it.”

Pitching was a University hallmark during the season. Moon finished 10-1 as the team’s No. 1 starter. Tyler Olson finished 7-2 and Zack Baldwin and Cameron Cook each were 5-1 going into the playoffs.

“We lost Zack Baldwin the week before the season ended,” Sutherland said. “He hurt a disc in his back and the doctor told him he was through for the year. That definitely hurt – he was our No. 3 guy in our four-man rotation.”

Still, Sutherland was excited by the way his young players performed over the summer and likes the experience his players gained going into next year, when he takes over as head baseball coach at U-Hi.

“We had a great summer and we played a lot of young kids,” he said. “At any one time we had five sophomores-to-be on the field for us, and they got a lot of time playing together.

“And we got to finish our season playing at Bailey Field (home field for the Washington State University baseball team). That was the first time these kids have had the chance to play on artificial turf.”

Sutherland was most pleased by the progress made by someone who didn’t play for him this summer.

“Danny Jordan was one of the few sophomores to play AAA,” he said. “If we had had him available to play for us it probably would have been a different story at state. We might have had a chance to win it with him.”

Jordan, who pitched and played shortstop for the Titans, played for the AAA Bandits.

“He’s our team captain next year on the varsity,” Sutherland said. “It was really good for him to play AAA this year. He played every single inning this year for the Bandits. He pitched quite a bit and played shortstop.

“They said he was throwing 84-85 mph, which was a surprise to us. He was throwing 78-79 for us during the (high school) season. We’re pretty excited.”

The depth of young players will be needed next spring, when Sutherland must replace seven players who graduated from a team that reached the Greater Spokane League playoffs.