Baldwin baseball wins its first-ever Gateway final. Here's how
· Yahoo Sports
A Gateway Conference championship trophy on the diamond is coming to Baldwin.
And this time, it's not the trophy the town has collected year after year.
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With gritty performance on the mound from Chase Staley and a go-ahead home run from Turner Farah, third-seeded Baldwin stormed from behind to oust Sandalwood 4-3 on April 2 in the Gateway baseball championship.
For the first time ever, the school that holds five consecutive Gateway championships for softball is also baseball's champion for Duval County public high schools.
"We don't quit fighting," Farah said. "We just tried to keep the energy up the whole game."
Farah raised that energy sky-high at the start of the sixth inning with the score 3-3, when he blasted a pitch from Sandalwood's Parker Shuman over the left field fence as teammates rushed the plate in celebration.
The power surge is on for Farah. In his last four games, he's belted four homers.
"That ball went a mile," said Staley, who watched the go-ahead blast from the on-deck circle.
BALDWIN WINS ANOTHER NAIL-BITER
Call them Duval County's Team Nail-Biter. Baldwin's last eight games have finished with a combined margin of 11 runs, including the April 1 Gateway semifinal against Fletcher that got them here. That time, they trailed 3-2 in the bottom of the seventh.
"I think that's kind of been our thing all year," Baldwin head coach BB O'Steen said. "We're kind of a scrappy team. We like to play from behind, we like to play in close games and we kind of thrive in those environments."
Through missed opportunities — 14 runners left on base, two runners picked off, a pair of disputed calls in the fifth inning that potentially denied them at least two runs — Baldwin kept on coming.
Sandalwood (15-7) held the top seed but missed its top pitchers. A 12-inning April 1 marathon against Mandarin had forced the Saints to use aces Trentin Baskin and Bane Barker for extended duty in the semifinal, and although the two combined for 19 strikeouts in that game (10 from Barker in relief) the Florida High School Athletic Association's pitch count policy excluded them from the mound in the final.
Still, Sandalwood started well. They led 2-0 after Jandriel Agosto's single and Andrew Detlefsen worked out of trouble early, but eventually the flurry of Baldwin baserunners started to swamp the Saints. Staley reached five times and Maxwell Gallagher three, each time via hit-by-pitch.
After Farah's home run, Staley worked two outs into the sixth, and Zain Gillespie nailed down the save in the seventh amid swarms of celebrating Baldwin players.
This win comes with a trophy, and it's not the end of the story. For the B-Town squad, now 13-10, Gateway success also comes at the perfect time ahead of FHSAA districts, which open April 14. Baldwin entered the week ranked fifth in Region 1-3A, but their Gateway triumph could boost them to near-lock status for regionals.
"This is huge for us," Staley said. "We started off the year kind of slow, people still trying to figure things out, and now in the right time everyone's starting to get hot."
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Baldwin baseball wins Gateway Conference high school championship