Mulberry baseball upsets No. 1 McKeel to reach state tournament for 1st time in 64 years

LAKELAND — One Polk County baseball team remains standing, and it’s perhaps the most unlikely to remain — at least in terms of recent history.

When Mulberry qualified for this year's state playoffs, it was for the first time in 17 years and only for the fourth time since winning a state title in 1960.

The Panthers certainly were infused with new talent this season, but they still were underdogs against No. 1-ranked McKeel when the teams met Tuesday night.

With two outs and Nic Partridge on third base, Noah Campbell’s infield grounder to first base was misplayed and Partridge came home with the winning run in Mulberry’s 2-1 victory in eight innings.

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Mulberry (19-9) is ranked No. 27 in the FHSAA’s Class 4A power rankings and was seeded No. 6 in the region. But after being upset by Hardee in the district semifinals, the Panthers won three straight to advance to the state tournament for the first time in 64 years.

Mulberry will play No. 2 Fort Lauderdale Cardinal Gibbons at 4 p.m Thursday at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers.

“We haven’t had a winning record in who knows how long, and haven't made it to states in at least 60 years,” said Partridge, who scored both of Mulberry’s runs. “So it's a big win for us. A whole bunch of us came here to build a team and win some games and that's what we did today.”

Partridge, who is a transfer from Lakeland and leads Mulberry with a .448 batting average, was on base three times on two hits and a walk. He had one thing on his mind when he was streaking down the third-base line.

“I was touching,” he said. “I made sure I touched our home plate and made sure we scored that run because I knew if I scored, (Campbell) was going to get three outs and win that game for us.”

Campbell’s job wasn’t done after he put the ball in play for the winning run. He had come in to pitch with one out in the previous inning in relief of starter Alex Fisher and still had to get three more outs.

Campbell stopped more than a few hearts on the way there.

McKeel's Hayden Testerman drove a deep fly ball that center fielder Brock Thielen grabbed on the warning track. Carter Rouse then drove a ball to deep left field that appeared to be going out but Jaden Sweeney caught at the wall. Earlier in the game, Sweeney caught a ball that nearly went over the wall.

The final out took four pitches as Campbell got a strikeout to end the game.

“There's some pressure, but you can't play this game scared,” Campbell said. “So you got to go out there and just do your thing. We live for these moments. Some of these guys on the team are committed (to play in college). They're going to go play at the next level. So we're born for this. We train, we train hard every day and we do the little things right.”

Both teams missed some scoring chances early as both starting pitchers came up big and made hits and runs hard to get.

Fisher pitched 6 1/3 innings and allowed one earned run on three hits. He struck out eight and walked two. McKeel’s Caleb Clanton pitched 7 1/3 innings and allowed one earned run on seven hits and struck out six.

McKeel took a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning on Brock Spurgeon’s RBI single.

Mulberry tied the score in the top of the sixth. Like the winning run, the Panthers took advantage of a McKeel error. Partridge led off with a single. On Hayden Wyatt’s groundout to third, Patridge kept running to go first to third. There was an error on the throw to third that allowed Partridge to score.

The Panthers had the bases loaded earlier in the game but couldn’t score.

“Bases juiced, we’ve got to try to find a way to push the run across,” Mulberry coach David Gotauco said. “But at the end of the day, that's baseball. We kept scratching, fighting and it worked out to our advantage. We scratched that run out in the end on that key error. We were aggressive on the base paths. Him taking third on that was a big play. And then the overthrow was huge.”

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Mulberry upsets McKeel in FHSAA 4A-2 regional baseball final