One-Hit Wonder

Andrew Merken and Acalanes grabbed the NCS Div. III title outright — in fascinating fashion.

BY CHACE BRYSON | Editor

Andrew Merken just kept throwing. 

It’s all he could do. 

Standing on the O.co Coliseum mound, pitching for Acalanes High in the North Coast Section Division III baseball championship, Merken was a hard-throwing, right-handed contradiction.

After five innings of work against Tamalpais, he walked off the mound having thrown 95 pitches. His team led 4-0. He’d walked seven batters. He’d struck out six.

He had not surrendered a hit.

Three-year coach of the Dons, Justin Santich-Hughes had the wheels moving. He thought through several scenarios. He had three different kids warming up in the bullpen at different times between the fourth and the sixth innings.

But with a four-run lead and a zero still in the hit column, Santich-Hughes simply went with the pep-talk approach and patted Merken’s tail end to send him back onto the hill.

“He brought me aside and said you’re better than these guys,” Merken said of his coach’s brief chat with him behind the closed door of the Oakland A’s home dugout bathroom. “You can get them out. Just make them hit it.”

Merken kept throwing. 

He opened the sixth with a strikeout and a harmless fly ball to right field. Then another walk — no. 8 — which took him to 110 pitches. Still no hits. 

Keep throwing.

That’s when Tamalpais’ Matt Davis, a left-handed hitter, shot a one-hop screamer toward third baseman Connor Hornsby. The hop came right at Hornsby’s feet, and the senior had to let the ball play off his chest. He smothered it and fired it across the diamond, but Davis was ruled to have beaten the throw. 

First ruled a hit, then changed to an error, Merken still had a no-hitter working but Santich-Hughes decided that 116 pitches would be enough. 

John York was summoned and he retired the last four batters of the game for the Dons — though not without adding his own drama. A gritty Tamalpais team used two more walks, and then got its first hit of the game on a sharp single to left by Chris Hayman to load the bases.

“Last year we were really nervous,” Santich-Hughes said of the Dons championship appearance which ended in a bittersweet tie and co-championship with San Marin-Novato. “I was a nervous wreck from pitch one to the end. Today, I really didn’t get nervous until two-outs, bases-loaded. I think that our guys reflected that as well. You saw the poise of our guys. Not giving in. Never panicked.”

York completed the one-hit combined shutout by getting Jonathan Wachtel to chop weakly in front of the mound and then threw him out thanks to a nice scoop by first baseman Drew Gaylord.

The final totals were astonishing. The Dons allowed 12 base runners in seven innings. Ten were by walk, one reached on an error and one singled. Not one scored.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Acalanes senior Grant Diede said of his team’s shutout despite its propensity to keep providing Tamalpais base runners. “And I hope to never have to see it again. … I tell our pitchers every game, as long as we don’t walk people we’re going to win. We fought through it though. ”

For Diede and the rest of the Dons core group of veterans, it was going to take more than a steady stream of walks to keep them from the NCS crown they’d been gunning for since June of 2011. 

u u  u

A text message. 

That’s how the 2011 Acalanes players found out their NCS Div. III championship game against San Marin — which had been suspended by rain and darkness with both teams tied 4-4 through 10 innings — was not going to be completed. 

“Yep,” senior Connor Hornsby said with a smirk. “Coach texted us later that night saying, ‘Congrats boys. Way to be co-champions.’”

Santich-Hughes learned the game wouldn’t be completed as part of a conference call. It was equally tough to swallow for him. 

“It wasn’t the best feeling,” the coach said.

The school received an NCS banner and each member of the team got championship rings, though several admitted to never really wearing them. It was important to them that they weren’t satisfied, and they wouldn’t be until they owned the title outright. 

And if they were going to do it, 2012 was supposed to be the year. It had basically been a three-year plan since Santich-Hughes took the job before the 2010 season.

“We recognized right away, the first day I stepped on campus, through our first tryouts, that we had a special class of sophomores and freshmen,” the coach said. “We decided as a staff that we’re going to start those guys and play them for better or worse. We were going to build for this year.”

After the postgame awards ceremony was completed and Santich-Hughes had addressed the team in an empty section of the Coliseum field level seating, he and his coaching staff dismissed the team but asked Diede, Hornsby, Drew Gaylord and Spencer Henderson to stay behind. These were the four sophomores who comprised the core of his first team and played for him all three years. The players had nicknamed themselves The Core Four. 

Santich-Hughes thanked them for all they had put into the program and hugs were exchanged. There’s no doubt it was a tough goodbye for the coach.

“They were good athletes, good baseball people, and listened,” Santich-Hughes said of his first impressions of that group of guys from the first tryouts he held at Acalanes.  “They had played Little League and youth ball together, and they were so close. And they really bought into what we were teaching. That’s the first thing. If they didn’t buy in right away, it wouldn’t have gone as well as it did.” 

Hornsby went 3-for-3 in the final, scoring the first run of the game in the top of the first and then driving in a run during the Dons’ 3-run second inning. Henderson went 2-for-4 with an RBI and two stolen bases. Diede went 1-for-3, and Gaylord had a hit and drove in a run before fittingly making the final put out with his pick of York’s throw in the dirt.

“It’s been incredible,” Henderson said. “It’s just been awesome. Those guys are three of my best friends. Going three years with them and getting a championship to ourselves has been pretty special.”

Santich-Hughes knew that quartet and the rest of his returning players (only three graduated off the co-champion team) were going to have that extra motivation to win the title outright this season. But it didn’t really manifest itself until the postseason. 

“We played so much better in the playoffs this year than we did during the season, where we probably lost to some teams we shouldn’t have,” the coach said. “They were just waiting for the playoffs to come around, I truly believe. Once it showed up, they were a completely different team. 

“It was their goal. They finally had a chance to reach their goal, and they played like it.”