The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Cardinal’s 15 homers is one for the record books
Once legitimized and confirmed, Cardinal High School’s 1999 baseball team will have the state record.
Plans in the works to recognize feat in state, national record books
All Thom Stowe wanted was a drink of Gatorade.
On a sunny afternoon in Burton on April 13, 1999, that task was easier said than done.
That was the day the Middlefield Cardinal Huskies hammered an unfathomable 15 home runs in a 41-0, five-inning bludgeoning of next-door neighbor rival Berkshire.
“It almost felt fake at the time,” Stowe said. “It was like every other batter was hitting a home run. You’d go to get a drink of Gatorade, hear the crack of the bat and be like, ‘Did we seriously just hit another home run?’ ”
Yes, they did. They did it a lot that day. Sophomore catcher Troy Yoder blasted four roundtrippers against the Badgers. Justin Smetana, John Karaba and Stowe — who pitched a one-hitter that day — hit three. Ben Jahn and Justin Hess, the No. 9 hitter, hit one apiece
The final line score for Cardinal was 41 runs on 34 hits. Fifteen of them left the park behind Berkshire’s elementary school.
Neither the Ohio High School Athletic Association nor the National Amateur Baseball Federation have Cardinal’s 15-dinger day in their record books for most home runs hit in a game, but efforts are underway to remedy that.
Once legitimized and confirmed, Cardinal will have the state record, eclipsing the nine home runs Fairport hit in a 1988 game, as well as the postWorld War II record nationally.
Atlantic, Iowa, hit 16 home runs in a 1928 game, but the most hit since then was 12 by Kewanee Wethersfield, Illinois, in a 2002 game.
Those associated with the Cardinal program look forward to the records being recognized on the state and national level. It might be 18 years after the legendary game took place, but as they say, better late than never.
“You don’t see that type of stuff, you really don’t,” said Karaba, 36, who lives in Leroy Township and is in the roofing business. “I mean, everyone hit the ball that day. Me and some buddies still talk about that day.”
There was no early warning that a record-shattering day was on the horizon. The previous day, Cardinal needed a brilliant pitching performance from Smetana to squeak out a 3-2 win over Berkshire and their staff ace Brett Tallion. It was a cold, bitter, 39-degree day, Stowe recalled, and the Huskies were frigid after having their blood thinned out during a successful spring break trip to the southern states.
Coach Rich Driscoll, who piloted the Cardinal program to six straight Division III regional tournament appearances in the 1990s, was not happy with the close call against Berkshire in their first game since returning to Ohio.
“Coach was like, ‘You’re a lot better than this,’” Karaba said. “So the next day we went out and beat ’em 41-0.
“I don’t think anyone saw that coming.”
Maybe if people flipped back a handful of years, they would have seen it coming. Back then, Stowe recalled, Middlefield had two youth league teams — one called Middlefield “A,” one called Middlefield, “B.”
The better of the two teams — Middlefield B — was dubbed “the Killer B’s” by the Geauga Mapleleaf, Stowe said, because of the way they mauled opposing teams on their schedule. Many, if not most, of the 1999 Cardinal Huskies were members of the “Killer Bs” team.
Here they were slaughtering Berkshire pitching six years later.
After Robert Jonath led off the game with a double, Smetana brought him in with a home run. Jahn then walked, then rode home on Yoder’s first home run of the game for a 4-0 lead.
Later in the first, Smetana homered again — a three-run shot — to open a 9-0 lead before the home team came to bat.
“After a while, the way we were hitting, it just kind of opened your eyes like, ‘Wow, maybe something is going on here,’ ” said Stowe, 36, an insurance underwriter in Kentucky.
Berkshire held Cardinal to two runs in the second inning. Both came on solo home runs, one by Yoder and one by Karaba.
Then came the big inning — a 17-run third in which the Huskies hit six more home runs.
Karaba hit two bombs in the third, as did Stowe — one of which was a grand slam. Smetana and Jahn also cleared the fence that inning to make it a 28-0 lead after three.
“I want to make this clear,” Driscoll said. “I’m not the kind of coach to embarrass another team, and I don’t coach my teams to do that. But you can’t tell kids to go up there and swing and miss.
“That day, it was like every time we swung the bat, it went over the fence. I’m tellin’ ya, we tried to slow the game down.”
A closer look at the box
score suggests that very well could have been the case.
Of Cardinals’ 34 hits, 15 were home runs. Of the remaining 19 hits, 17 of them were singles. Berkshire pitching surrendered 10 walks and hit two batters.
All 13 varsity players played that day, Driscoll said.
“Driscoll even made me bunt one time,” Yoder said with a laugh.
“Rich was strict,” Karaba said. “He didn’t want to run up the score. He told us when we hit the ball just stop at first. It’s just that most of the time that day, when we hit it, it went over the fence.”
Even with the bench cleared — including the top three batters in the order (Jonath, Smetana and Jahn) out of the game — the Huskies continued to hammer the ball. A fourrun fourth came courtesy of Hess’ grand slam, and a nine-run fifth included Yoder’s third and fourth home runs, as well as Stowe’s third and final homer.
“You know what was most disheartening?” Stowe said. “I never threw a nohitter. And some kid named Zach (Taylor) hit one down the third-base line that the umpire called fair. The game was so out of hand at that time, the umpire was a little disconnected.
“That was the only hit I gave up. I remember thinking, ‘Boy, a no-hitter woulda been special.”
Yoder chucked at the one hit Stowe gave up.
“It was way foul,” said Yoder, now 34 and a firefighter in Concord and Chardon. “I remember turning to the ump after he called it fair and saying, ‘Really?’ He goes, ‘Hey, you’re up 36-0. What do you want me to do?’ ”
Unlike some rivalries, many of the Berkshire and Cardinal players were
friends in those days and spent a lot of time together.
After the game, Yoder, Stowe and Berkshire standout Jared Sprogis headed to Chardon for “wing night” at an area restaurant.
“Jared was understandably down in the dumps,” Stowe said. “So we order wings and the waitress asks how many do we want? I said ‘We’ll take 41.’
“Jared was (mad). He goes, ‘Just let it go. Please.’ We get together every fourth of July at his house and I still give him guff about that day.”
The history of Cardinal baseball, particularly in the 1990s, is an impressive ledger. In addition to the six straight regional appearances, the Huskies were the Division III state runner-up in 1996, where they lost to Westerfield, 3-1 in the title game.
A state tournament bid in 1998 evaporated in a loss to Brooklyn and their stud pitcher Clint Nageotte, a fifth-round draft pick of the Seattle Mariners in 1999.
Not only were college baseball scholarships in Middlefield plentiful in that era, but pitcher Tony Fuduric was a second-round draft pick of the Detroit Tigers in 1993.
There were a lot of positives in the Cardinal baseball program in the 1990s. None stood the test of time like the record-breaking 15home run game by the Huskies on April 13, 1999.
“We had a damn good run those years at Cardinal,” Karaba said. “We were probably a bunch of knuckleheads, but we loved playing ball together and we had fun. Anybody on that team, one through nine, could hit the ball out of the park.”
They showed that on April 13, 1999, hitting more homers than any other team in the United States in one game since 1928.