Hamburg’s finest class goes out with championship finish
It is not a stretch to claim that Hamburg baseball just saw its most talented, accomplished class wrap their careers Sunday afternoon, July 30, at Central Columbia High School.
Ryan Smith, Logan Adams, Mike Procak, Derek Roberts and Janson Youndt were at head of a generation of ballplayers who delivered a District 3 Class AAA championship in 2016 for the Hamburg Hawks, then returned, recommitted and refocused their efforts to do similar great things for the American Legion baseball Hamburg Reds, all under the watchful guidance of head coach Nick Evangelista. (Those 2016 Hawks were one strike away from playing for a PIAA title when they let it get away in heartbreaking loss at Greene Township Park in Chambersburg.)
The Reds captured Hamburg’s first state Legion title since 1963 by defeating McConnellsburg 13-3 in six innings in the state’s inaugural Legion Division 2 state tournament, held at Central Columbia HS just outside Bloomsburg. Brady Adams laced a tworun single to center field with the bases loaded to invoke the mercy rule and anoint the Reds as Pennsylvania Legion’s first-ever Division 2 state champions.
No other class in the long history of Hamburg baseball has managed to win a PIAA District crown and a state Legion championship. It is a generational group of kids, the kind that doesn’t blow through a small town very often. Already bonded together in brotherhood on and off the diamond, they’ll be long remembered in a community that loves its hardball.
Here, each player gives his thoughts on that two-pronged journey – a full year apart – which culminated with the making of local history on Sunday.
“It took a team effort the whole way here. It really helped with a lot of the guys coming back from last year’s (District 3 champs). I know the school struggled this year, with losing a lot of those starters. But I’m really proud to be a part of this. This will never be forgotten. One last time to be on the field with all of my friends.”
“This feels great because we knew we could have won the state (PIAA Class AAA) title last year. We all wanted to do this. We all wanted to come back and do something special in our last year together.”
Mike Procak: “We knew with the team we had that we had the potential to win it all. We wanted to get out, stay focused and keep playing. This is one of the best feelings in the world, honestly. We knew we could make here and we did. Right when I saw Brady’s hit go through, I knew that was it. I was just getting ready for that dogpile at home plate.” “I was on the hill (at Greene Township Park in 2016). It’s tough, especially with not playing in college, to come back the next summer. You don’t know how you’re going to do. Did you lose it? But thank God it came back, for all of us. We all dug down deep and won the games we needed to. It was five, six nights a week. We were always together, even when we were not on the field, hanging out. Team chemistry was huge part of it. … The community is great. They’re always supportive. We were having a practice last week and 15, 20 fans came out, just sitting and watching us practice. They love us and we love them.”
“After the state run we had in high school last season came to a sour ending for us, we went right into that (2016) Legion season. It was hard to muster up the kind of intensity we had after that big letdown in the (PIAA) state semifinal. But we realized after last year’s Legion season ended that we still had guys that could come back and we still had another shot at this. We had one more try. We knew how good we are. We proved it last (high school) season. We are extremely excited that we got to come back and accomplish what we missed out on last year.”