#2 USA High School Baseball Team - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

#2 USA High School Baseball Team

Last week’s blog touched on the Sports Illustrated jinx, which I hope doesn’t replicate itself into a Fish Report jinx as this week’s blog is about our local high school baseball team here in Michigan. We’ve lived in Orchard Lake for over 30 years, and our son graduated as salutatorian from the local Catholic high school St. Mary’s Prep in 1997. Over those years, the school has excelled academically and athletically, including 32 state championships in six different sports. In fact, our son played on a lacrosse state championship team in his senior year. Their current baseball team is the defending state champion, has a 40 game winning streak and is ranked #2 nationwide by Max Preps. It’s that team that I hope not to jinx by writing about them.

The team is coached by Matt Petry, son of former major league pitcher, Dan Petry, who starred for the World Series winning Detroit Tigers in 1984. Matt has a brother Jeff who plays professional hockey for the Montreal Canadians, so obviously a real athletic family.

The team has 13 players who have been offered Division 1 scholarships, with their best player, senior shortstop Alex Mooney, pictured in action above, projected to go in the first round of July’s MLB draft. His dad Joe played college ball for the University of Michigan.

St. Marys was founded on the above principles way back in 1885 and includes a high school, college and seminary on the 100 acre campus along the shores of Orchard Lake.

Many of the graduates return to the campus regularly for sporting events and alumni functions, including the annual St. Marys Polish Country Fair each Memorial weekend, supposedly the largest high school fair in the country.

And almost every weekend, an alum gets married in the shrine chapel, afterwards visiting the grotto for a wedding prayer.

Speaking of graduates, Cardinal Adam Maida attended St. Mary’s during high school and as a seminarian. And before being elected pope, St. John Paul II visited the school twice in 1969 and 1978. The shrine chapel on the campus is named in the Pope's honor. During his first visit, the future Pope was quoted as saying, “If Orchard Lake St. Marys did not exist, we’d have to create it”.

With all that prayer power, any Fish Report jinx doesn’t have a chance!

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Postscript: St. Mary’s lost this past weekend 2-1, a game I attended. A two run error in the first inning, a 3 hit complete game by an MSU lefty commit and a 20 mph hurting wind did them in. Alex Mooney, the kid that was projected to be a major league draftee hit the final out with the bases loaded. Bummer! But my wife claims it’s not a Fish Report jinx in play here, but I’m the jinx’er. She said, "Just look at the sports teams you root for, literally all routinely finish in last place; the Tigers, Lions, Red Wings and Pistons. Plus the Michigan Wolverines haven’t beaten Ohio State in almost a decade! So who’s to blame here? Maybe start rooting for the teams you hate!"

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