A sectional semifinal stunner for six-time Indiana high school baseball state champion
MISHAWAKA — A blue Powerade bucket filled with ice and water and the hopes and dreams of another deep state baseball championship run sat alone in an empty first-base dugout of Jordan Automotive Field late Saturday afternoon.
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Occupants of that dugout, the Penn Kingsmen, had gone off and gathered down the right-field line to make sense of it all following their Class 4A sectional semifinal game against Concord. For the previous two Junes, that blue bucket — or its orange Gatorade cousin — had been hauled around by the Kingsmen at Victory Field in Indianapolis, site of the high school state championship. Eventually, happily, it would be dumped over the head of head coach Greg Dikos.
That’s what state champs do. They dogpile after the 21st out. They soak the head coach. They celebrate the ultimate prep success. They don’t lose in May.
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Penn entered the 2024 postseason having won the last two Class 4A state championships. Forget a three-peat. Forget Father’s Day weekend in Indianapolis. Penn didn’t even make it to Memorial Day following a 4-3 loss to Concord.
“It’s a gut shot,” said senior shortstop Casey Finn. “Usually, you can say that you’re going to bounce back, but we can’t. We don’t have that opportunity.”
Last June, the Kingsmen celebrated the school’s sixth state championship in style. They reserved rooms across from Victory Field at the swanky JW Marriott. They stayed up all night. They soaked up the success of going back-to-back. They likely never stopped smiling. Steaks from St. Elmo’s for everyone!
On Saturday, they could only stand or sit in small groups and stare. Most had tears in their eyes. A few family members and fans openly wept. This wasn’t how anyone envisioned this one going. Not for this program. Not this weekend. Lose? Yeah, the Kingsmen might lose, but sometime deeper into June, maybe even back down in Indy.
But in the opening game of the sectional? At home? Man, this one was going to be tough to process for a core group that has known nothing but winning — and bucket celebrations in June — the last two years.
Senior third baseman R.J. Cromartie was on a first-name basis with state titles. On Saturday, after seeing his prep career end, he stood and spoke while tears welled in his already-reddened eyes. One minute, Cromartie thought he’d done the undoable. The next, he’s hugging his classmates and teammates and trying not to admit that yeah, it’s all over.
“It’s hard,” Cromartie said. “Sometimes that’s baseball. It hurts, but we move on.”
The top of the seventh — Penn was the visiting team on its home scoreboard — saw Cromartie crack a run-scoring single, eventually advance to third, and then deliver what he thought was the tying run on a Finn suicide squeeze.
Sliding headfirst into home, Cromartie was juiced. This was the spark that Penn needed, that Penn had to have, to finally shake a season-long offensive sputter.
Hold that thought.
Penn placed the leadoff runner on in each of the first five innings. When the Kingsmen did that in recent seasons, it usually was good enough for eight, nine, 10 total runs. Big innings. Big at-bats. Games where everybody in the lineup would eat.
Instead, this group often went hungry. Like Saturday, when they left eight runners stranded the first six innings. Big innings beckoned, then quietly fizzled.
A 4-all game never materialized after senior pitcher Braeden Messenger, a magician on the mound all afternoon, fielded Finn’s bunt and flipped to catcher Alex Kridler, who tagged out Cromartie. The bang-bang play saw the Kingsmen go bust.
“Our coach (Greg Hughes) came for a mound visit and said watch for the suicide squeeze,” Messenger said. “I told him I was going to bounce off that mound and make the play. And I did. It’s insane.”
One harmless groundout later, it was all over.
Penn went 20-9 and tied for the Northern Indiana Conference title, but there was something about this group that was missing from the state title runs of the other two. Maybe it was timely hitting. Maybe it was shut-down pitching and defense. Maybe it was just that hunger to go and win it all.
Whatever it was, the Kingsmen only had it for spurts this season. They didn’t have it Saturday. The previous two Penn teams would’ve found ways to win that one. Maybe easily. This game, this season, was so hard for this group.
“We battled that whole game,” Finn said. “It just sucks we couldn’t come away with the win after getting that momentum.”
Messenger wouldn’t allow it. He wasn’t about to lose this game or come out of it. Not after working out of trouble many times including getting free from the bases-loaded jam in the top of the seventh. While facing the game’s last hitter — Austin Eysol — Messenger reached the maximum of 120 pitches. State rules allowed him to finish that hitter before he was finished.
Messenger told himself that not only was it going to be the last hitter he faced, but the last hitter in the game. It was the last hitter in Penn’s season.
“It’s crazy, just crazy,” Messenger said. “It still hasn’t processed in my mind. We knew we had an opportunity and capitalized on it. We got the hits; we made the plays.”
As the Minutemen celebrated with family and friends on the third-base side of the field, the Kingsmen were left to deal with their daze. Concord advanced to Monday’s sectional championship game against Goshen — an all-Elkhart final at Penn, how weird — while life would move on for Penn’s eight seniors. Eventually.
That included Cromartie, who in the coming weeks will graduate high school, enroll at Notre Dame and chase a college career as a freshman. There will be a time between now and then when he looks back on all he did at Penn and smile.
“It might be a day; it might be two weeks,” he said. “I don’t know. Just going to sit back and enjoy life the next few weeks.”
Saturday wasn’t a time for reflection — or enjoyment. It was too soon. Too raw. Honestly, too unbelievable. Penn baseball doesn’t see its seasons end in May.
This one did.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact: (574) 235-6153.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Experienced Penn baseball cannot figure it out in sectional semifinal
