La Plata senior pitcher Michael Boyden felt Charles County baseball was overdue for some respect.
“It goes to show that just because we?re from Southern Maryland doesn?t mean that we can?t play,” he said after his team?s 8-2 victory over Patapsco in the 3A final. “A lot of teams Charles County schools get overlooked. It?s good to put ourselves on the map.”
But Southern Maryland?s triumph was Baltimore?s loss. The Baltimore area, which for years has produced some of the state?s best public school teams, was shutout during championship weekend at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen. The area?s four teams that advanced to title games ? Harford Tech in 1A, Marriotts Ridge in 2A, Patapsco in 3A and C. Milton Wright in 4A ? all lost. It marked the first time the Baltimore area, composed of Baltimore City, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford or Howard counties failed to win a state baseball title since 1982. Since then, the area had won 48 of 100 state titles before being shutout this spring.
“I think it shows the talent of all levels of the schools in the county. We feel that Harford County baseball is on par with all the other counties,” Harford Tech interim coach Bill Jones said. “We had the whole team here [Friday] night, and it was a great experience. And we had some C. Milton Wright guys here [supporting us Saturday].”
Three teams lost in walk-off fashion, beginning with C. Milton Wright (19-5), which lost to Sherwood, 7-6, on an eighth-inning single in the 4A final on Friday.
“It was a tremendous ball game,” Mustangs coach Joe Stetka said. “Any time you go to a state championship game and go eight innings, and at one point we were three outs away from winning the thing.”
Harford Tech (16-8) lost to St. Michael?s, 4-3, on a two-out, infield single with the bases loaded in the seventh.
In a championship series set in Harford County, both local entrants lost. But the Upper Chesapeake Bay Athletic Conference was the only league represented by multiple teams.
The most crushing defeat, though, may have been Kent Island?s 6-5 win over Marriotts Ridge.
The Mustangs (18-6), who lost in the semifinals but advanced to the final after South Hagerstown was disqualified from the tournament because it violated a rule that limits the number of innings a pitcher can throw in a seven-day period.
The Marriottsville school, however, could not make the most of its second chance to win its first state title.
“We were excited, we thought we were meant to win this,” Marriotts Ridge senior center fielder Kevin Seker said. “We came out [in the seventh] and we were so excited, and we walked a few batters and you could see people starting to get tense.”
