Marauder Moments: An epic comeback helps Millersville baseball to a PSAC Championship
Ethan Hulsey, Director of Athletic Communications
5/11/2020
Marauder Moments is a series that breakdowns memorable plays and events in the history of Millersville Athletics with the athletes and coaches who made those moments happen. The first spotlight is on the ninth and 10th innings of the 2015 PSAC Semifinal baseball game between Millersville and Mercyhurst. This story is told through the lens of director of athletic communications Ethan Hulsey with help from Coach Jon Shehan and players Dan Stoltzfus and Chas McCormick.
OK, I admit it. I thought the game was over. Down three, bottom of the ninth. I was typing the lede to the game recap instead of manning the video camera, and that's why Chas McCormick's home run is only remembered by those in Butler, Pa., that day and not archived on YouTube as part of the game highlights. That one is on me.
"You gave up on us," McCormick said to me incredulously with the grin of someone who knew the end of the story before it was revealed.
In my defense, a three-run deficit against the ninth-ranked team in Division II seemed rather insurmountable. But I learned quickly (really, in a span of three pitches), that for players like Chas and Dan Stoltzfus, three runs really isn't anything. And after I backspaced my lede into to a blank Word document, I hit record for the very next pitch, and every pitch after that.
"Yeah, you got Dan's home run," McCormick said with an eye roll.
Despite slumping through the 2015 PSAC Tournament, McCormick hit that two-run homer, and two pitches later, Stoltzfus hit a mammoth blast to straight-away center, and shockingly (not to them, but to me and most certainly to Mercyhurst also), the PSAC Tournament semifinal game between the Marauders and Lakers, two titans of Division II baseball, was tied, 6-6. One inning later, McCormick, then a sophomore but already showing the skills that would eventually make him the PSAC's all-time hits leader and the first Marauder position player to reach Double-A since 1968, poked an outside pitch down the right field line for a walk-off double, a 7-6 Millersville win in 10 innings and a spot in the PSAC Championship game which Millersville would win in a rout of East Stroudsburg.
From 2011 to this game on May 1, 2015, Millersville and Mercyhurst met in the postseason seven times with Millersville winning four, three times going into extra innings. This nail biter was inevitable.
"We knew we were going to see [Mercyhurst] at some point," said Stoltzfus in a recent conversation. "They had gotten us earlier in my career. They always had really good pitching and good hitting. They matched up well with us. Every time we played them we knew it was going to be a battle. We looked forward to it. We liked the challenge. We wanted to get them and beat them in playoffs every year."
But fewer than 24 hours before this "Marauder Moment" took place, the Marauders shook a Seton Hill-sized gorilla off their back by beating the eighth-ranked Griffins 8-4, and it took the only three-time pitcher of the year in PSAC history, Chris Murphy, to do it. Seton Hill ended Millersville's season in the 2013 and 2014 NCAA regionals. That 2015 Seton Hill club featured a fearsome lineup that collectively hit an absurd .344 with 83 home runs--a total that still ranks second in PSAC history. Nick Sell, who hit 28 of those dingers and drove in a PSAC record 92 runs (no, that's not a misprint; Sell had 92 RBIs in 56 games), mashed a three-run homer in the first inning off Murphy. But after that, Murphy allowed one run on one hit with eight strikeouts over the final eight innings in a gritty you-aren't-beating-me-today performance. I could write volumes about Murphy's three brilliant seasons in Black and Gold, but that's for another time.
After Murphy slayed the Griffins, Millersville's reward was playing a 40-win Mercyhurst club that would eventually win the Atlantic Regional and advance to the Division II World Series. For eight-and-a-half innings, it looked like a classic let-down following a momentous win, but then David Summerfield came to the plate to lead off the ninth. And yes, the video camera in the press box was not recording.
Summerfield's 2015 was a season for the ages. The former walk-on, in his first season as a starter, ranked third in the country in hitting with a .452 average, and he did so by smacking line-drive singles to either side of the shortstop with uncanny consistency. The left-hander and All-American reached base at a .502 clip, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that he started both the ninth and 10th innings by getting on base.
Summerfield doubled on a 2-0 pitch--a nice way to start an inning, but the team was still down three runs working against Mercyhurst's Ben Nolan. That season, Nolan went 7-0 with two saves, a 2.50 ERA and .235 batting average against. And he hadn't allowed a homer all season. That, and so much more was about to change in the split second it took for his curve ball to travel from his hand to McCormick's bat.
"You have to love playing in that moment," said McCormick of standing in against Nolan. "I want to give some credit to [assistant coach David Baker]. If you go back to the first and second inning I'm 0-for-my-last-6, trying to do too much in the playoffs, and Baker tells me 'calm down and let the game come to you.' Right after that, that's when I started getting things going. You can't be afraid of the moment. Pressure is a privilege."
Actually, McCormick was 0-for-the-tournament at that point. But after his fly out in the first, he reached on a bunt single, stole second and scored Millersville's first run in the third. In the bottom of the fifth, he walked and came in to score on a John Brogan double. While McCormick started to heat up, Nolan might have been wearing down. The reliever entered in the sixth and had tossed three scoreless innings, but when he came back on for the ninth, it marked just the third time all season that he worked more than three innings. That extra look at Nolan made the difference for McCormick.
"Paying attention throughout the game, he was throwing big, hanging curves for strikes," said McCormick. "That was kind of all he was throwing. First pitch, I sat on it and he threw it right down the middle."
And McCormick made the score 6-5 with Stoltzfus coming to the plate.
Let's step away for a moment to truly appreciate Dan Stoltzfus' 2015 and 2016 seasons. Over the course of 112 games, Stoltzfus totaled 154 RBIs, 274 total bases, 39 doubles and 24 home runs. In 2015 he slashed an obscene .396/.458/.727 and topped himself in 2016 by posting a .414/.469/.608 line. He owns two of the top seven run-producing seasons in PSAC history. He's the only player in the top 37 twice. In those two seasons, Stoltzfus set single-season school records for runs scored, hits, RBIs, doubles, home runs and total bases. The doubles record belonged to Jon Shehan. He broke the RBI and total bases records twice. Yes, he hit 15 homers in 2015, but how many could he have hit had he not played 17 games in the cavernous Cooper Park where a no-doubter to right field notoriously and routinely turns into an easy F9?
In this game against Mercyhurst, however, he was 1-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts. Something was off.
"I remember I had been getting some hits in the tournament, but I had felt a little funky," said Stoltzfus. "I'm not trying to hit a home run here. I'm just trying to get on base because I know someone is going to drive me in. I was looking to stay gap to gap. The one thing I remember is thinking 'straight back, straight forward' because I was pulling off the ball--my simple straight-back load and then straight forward, go up the middle, stay in the gaps. He gave me a pitch to hit and I got the barrel on it."
"Got the barrel on it" is quite the understatement. Kelly Automotive Park's center field fence measures 425 feet. Stoltzfus' clout landed somewhere in tops of the trees or maybe in the parking lot where the Millersville baseball parents set up their tailgate zone. The point is, he hit it so far we couldn't see it land. McCormick describes it wonderfully and succinctly.
"That was a bomb. It went a long way."
"I had an idea (it was a home run) right away but everything we do, getting our times to first base, you don't ever see someone with Millersville baseball watching," said Stoltzfus. "You hit it, you get your sprint in to first base and look up and see if our fans are going crazy or not."
As great a power hitter as he was, he insists he wasn't looking to tie the game on that swing.
"We were so locked in on coach's hitting approach that it became second nature," said Stoltzfus. "I got into the box the same way every time. I was thinking [the plan] before coming up, and that was what I was committed to the whole time. It was another at bat. With that team we had, you look at how many different guys had walk-off hits or big shutdown pitching performances, our team just loved that. It was routine and the mental training that we did with Coach Shehan. Those moments became just another at bat. It was relaxed and normal. Whoever's turn it was to come up was going to come through."
Summerfield, Stoltzfus and McCormick reset the scoreboard, pushing the game into the 10th. In the top of the inning, Millersville reliever Dylan Boisclair worked out of a jam after giving up a leadoff double. The second batter smoked a line drive right back to the mound. Boisclair snared it, whirled and doubled the runner off of second. It was Summerfield and McCormick's turn once again.
Mercyhurst stayed with closer Jake Hall, who had bailed Mercyhurst out of the bottom of the ninth. Hall posted a .196 batting average against with 10 saves that season and got leadoff hitter Tyler Orris to line out to start the inning. Summerfield worked a full count and fouled off three-straight offerings before drawing a walk.
In 2015, McCormick hit .357 and drove in 58 runs, a total that would have led the team had it not been for Stoltzfus' ridiculous run production. It was a total that would have led the team in all but three years in the history of Millersville baseball. As a sophomore McCormick was good and everyone knew it. He was the first Millersville sophomore named all-region. In 1989, it was already understood that Michael Jordan was the best basketball player in the world but the buzzer-beater over Craig Ehlo to clinch the series against the Cleveland Cavs was the iconic moment that birthed his legend. Sure, McCormick hit the home run in the ninth, but the walk-off, the clincher, the winner, that's the hit that Marauder faithful talk about years later. This was the moment the future PSAC East Athlete of the Year arrived.
Staying aggressive for the second at bat in a row, McCormick went after the first pitch. It was an outside-corner fastball from the side arming right-hander Hall, and McCormick directed a line drive into the right field corner of Kelly Automotive Park where it skipped into the wide open green space of foul territory.
"I had just hit a curve ball out on the first pitch so I'm looking dead-red fastball," said McCormick. "I know he threw a little harder, 87-88, and I wanted to be short to the ball. The ballpark is a launching pad so it can jump pretty quick. First pitch fastball, I was short and put it right inside the right field line."
The right fielder had played the right-handed hitting McCormick to pull and faced a long run to catch up to the rolling baseball. As Summerfield tore around second base, the fielder had yet to reach the ball. Shehan, excitedly hopping and emphatically waving toward the plate with his left arm and pointing with his right, signaled Summerfield home.
"In that situation as soon as it goes off the bat you are thinking extra bases," said Shehan. "As a coach you are thinking we may not get another shot at this, we've got to take a chance. If he gets thrown out its probably a momentum killer but then again, you've got Chas who can just fly in scoring position. I knew we were in pretty good shape either way so we were going to be aggressive."
Summerfield only briefly glanced to the outfield as he rounded third. The throw had yet to reach the cut off. He slid across home without a play at the plate, and Shehan, running in stride, followed steps behind. As Summerfield popped up from his slide, he was grabbed by Stoltzfus, who was on deck, and an instant later, a mob of Marauders swarmed McCormick in front of second base.
"Any time you can beat Mercyhurst in the playoffs is a reason to get excited," Shehan laughed remembering his celebration. "We had some absolute showdowns with that group, so yeah, I was pretty fired up."
The 7-6 win catapulted the Marauders into the PSAC championship game where they trounced East Stroudsburg 13-4 for their first conference title in 17 years. Shehan often says that tournament baseball is all about momentum, and after those late-game heroics, the Marauders had plenty of it.
"There are times I stand in the third base coach's box when you are down or in a close game and you don't have control," said Shehan. “You look at those three hitters—Summerfield, McCormick and Stoltzfus—three phenomenal hitters. When you think about the top 10 hitters in the history of the program, they have to be mentioned. Looking back you know they are capable but at the time you are witnessing history.”
Five years later, those two innings, those five plate appearance, and the subsequent championship remain special.
"We put in a ton of work from the 5 a.m., workouts, team challenges, playing in summer ball all year round. There's a ton of work," said Stoltzfus. "Anytime you can be rewarded by winning a championship, whether that is PSAC's or a regional, to be able to look back on it, and be like 'all that stuff we did led us to that' it's pretty awesome. I honestly have goosebumps thinking about it."
So do I. And guys, I really am sorry about not recording the start of the ninth inning. Thanks for not holding it against me.
