Any successful athletic team is going to have to work through some adversity through the course of a season and this summer’s Jackson American Legion Post 130 baseball team is well aware of that.
It was remarkable, but at the same time Saturday’s championship round of the Division 2 Southwest Sub-State tournament at Veterans Field in St. James was just another day at the ballpark for the Tarantulas. And it was a long one at that.
Jackson would come away from the tournament as champions to earn a spot in next weekend’s state tournament in Luverne.
Jackson entered the day as the final unbeaten team in the eight team double-elimination tournament while St. James had one loss. That loss had come to Jackson in the first round and the host team then won four straight, including two on Friday night.
St. James won Saturday’s first game 9-3 to force the second championship game, which Jackson won 5-3.
With rain in the forecast in the middle of the day, tournament officials discussed starting play earlier in the morning but eventually the start time remained at 11 a.m. That turned out to be a good call.
A shower a little after 10 a.m. delayed the start a few minutes and then lightning and a harder shower stopped the game in the second inning. After that delay the sky cleared and the weather was perfect by the middle of the afternoon.
But the start to the day was far from perfect for Jackson, which found out in the morning that regular catcher Dylan Withers had become sick the previous night and wasn’t going to be available.
“The story of our whole season is people stepping up,” said Jackson Coach Blaise Jacobsen. “Right at batting practice we find out that our catcher, who all season long has caught every pitch got sick. He had heat exhaustion. He rock picked or something in the heat all day, goes and catches amateur ball and got sick.”
Aa it turned out, kind of a light moment at practice last Thursday would pay dividends on Saturday.
“I happened to have Payton catch batting practice on Thursday because I wanted Dylan to hit. We pitch live in batting practice and Dylan had caught everyone,” Jacobsen said.
“Payton goes ‘I can catch’ and I said ‘no you can’t’ and he said he had a mitt and I go ‘really?’ So I said all right, go ahead and he actually looked all right. He threw some darts down to second and I said ‘That’s neat’ and then today Dylan is sick and I said ‘Well Payton, what do you think’ and he says ‘I can do it’ and he did great. He stepped up at the plate, he blocked some pitches, threw a couple of guys out, he was great. I think that glove was from Little League. It was a small glove. It was an awesome job. I can’t say enough about his effort.”
Handevidt is left handed and it’s rare that a lefty gets behind the plate.
The last left-handed catcher to play in Major League Baseball was Benny Distefano, who caught three games for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1989. Before that, there had only been a handful.
“I caught a couple of times in Pony League and once last year in a Junior Legion game when they only had eight guys so they just threw me in to catch there,” he said.
The start of the day of the day was almost unreal.
With a catcher with limited experience, the very first batter hit a popup near the plate. While Handevidt and Post 130 was not able to make that play, things did get better.
“As the day went on I got a little better,” Handevidt said. “I felt a little more comfortable. It was a little rough to start but I figured it out.”
Handevidt was on Jackson County Central’s state football team in 2019, is a three-time individual state champion in wrestling and has been on two teams that went to state in wrestling including winning the title last season.
Even with all of that success, Handevidt says the run the Legion baseball team is on ranks high.
“I’ve gone in other sports, but this one is special because I’ve always just loved baseball and now we’re finally going somewhere so it feels nice,” he said. “Everyone did a great job and played their best and we came away with it.”
In the first game, Logan Butzon had an RBI double and Handevidt an RBI single for Post 130.
In the second game, St. James scored two in the top of the first but Cameron Scholten would settle in and shut down the host team after that.
“I started out kind of slow,” Scholten said. “Once I got in a rhythm and got the good timing they couldn’t really hit the ball. We got out of a couple of tough spots and that’s all we really needed to do.”
Scholten was more than pleased with the work of his catcher.
“Payton came in and caught and he did a great job,” Scholten commented. “He did better than anyone else could do there, but he’s kind of a freak athlete like that.”
Jackson scored a single run in each of the first five innings.
Scholten helped his cause with an RBI single in the first, Damien Phaly’s squeeze bunt in the second brought in a run, an error helped Jackson score in the third, Handevidt had an RBI single in the fourth and Phaly walked with the bases loaded in the fifth.
Jackson worked out of a tight situation in the top of the sixth.
St. James had runners on first and second with nobody out, bringing Jacobsen to the mound for a visit that led to this Tweet later in the day:
That’s a reference to the 1988 movie ‘Bull Durham’
In the movie, the last words from Pitching Larry Hockett were ‘Let’s get two’ and that’s exactly what happened in this situation for the Tarantulas.
“Blaise came out and he was telling me there were two lefties so this would be a good spot to put Logan (Butzon) in,” Scholten said. “But I told him I definitely would get us out of this situation, which I did. I was pretty confident. Throwing his timing off, he couldn’t really touch anything.”
Scholten finished out the inning with only his second strikeout of the game
Post 130 was retired in order in the bottom of the sixth and Butzon would come on to pitch the seventh for the Tarantulas.
After a leadoff double, Butzon, who pitches left handed so he falls off the mound on the third-base side, hustled into foul territory on the first-base side to catch a popup for the first out.
A single gave St. James runners on first and third before Butzon got a strikeout for the second out.
A walk loaded the bases and then another walk brought in a run and moved the tying run to second and put the potential winning run on first.
However, Butzon was able to induce a one-hopper back to the mound and Jackson qualified for its first state tournament since 2004.
Post 130 won't know who it is playing in the first round of the state tournament until Monday.
Sibley East and Norwood will play at 10 a.m. in Norwood. Sibley East is the unbeaten and Norwood has a loss. If a second game is needed, it would follow.
We’ll have more in newsletters as the week goes on.
First-round pairings Friday:
Morris vs. Chatfield
Jackson vs. Sibley East or Norwood
DGF vs. Atwater
Wadena vs. Luvern