It’s difficult to fathom the lengths a team has to go to win a championship when it has to compete against 343 others from across the country.
But Eric Dubose, Joe Caruso, Thomas Wilson, and their East Coast Sox Diamond 16-and-under baseball team didn’t focus on the enormity of the challenge they faced earlier this month.
Instead, Dubose, the coaches, and the players entered the 16u Perfect Game World Wood Bat Association (WWBA) National Championship confident that the team of players from Mississippi, Alabama, Ohio, Tennessee, and Arkansas could play with the best the rest of the nation had to offer.
“I don’t think you can talk about winning a championship when you’re one of about 350 teams, but we knew we had a team that could go out there and compete with anybody,” said Dubose, a former baseball standout at Mississippi State and pitching coordinator for East Coast Baseball. “When you have to win 12 games, you have to have some things go your way and get some breaks here and there. We knew with the personnel we had and with the arms we were putting on mound and the depth in the pitching we would have a chance and that it was a special team on paper. I know sometimes teams on paper don’t translate to the field as far as chemistry, but the team really took off. You could tell early in the week it was going to be something special.”
Dubose’s instincts proved correct as the East Coast Sox Diamond squad went 12-0 from July 8-15 to win the national showcase event at Emerson, Georgia.
The championship was the second for East Coast Baseball, which is based in Columbus, and the first for one of its teams based out of the Golden Triangle. Last year, a 14-U team based out of Jackson coached by former Ole Miss and Major Leaguer Chris Snopek won a WWBA championship.
“I just think it is just a model of what whole organization is about: selflessness,” said Caruso, a former All-American in baseball at Alabama who founded the organization with DuBose and Greg Sykes. Sykes’ son, Hunter, went to Heritage Academy in Columbus and played with East Coast Baseball. “It also is about the Matthew 20-28 mentality (which says, “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”). The kids waited for their turn and when it was their turn they just performed. It was great to see a group of guys come together for a common goal.”
The goal of East Coast Baseball, which is an offshoot of East Coast Grays Southeast, is to give players the opportunity to gain exposure to professional scouts and college coaches by attending premier showcase events, like the ones put on by Perfect Game, which calls itself “the world’s largest baseball scouting service.”
In the last two years, East Coast Baseball has grown from nine age-group teams and more than 162 players to 18 teams (one team in the Class of 2020, five in 2019, five in 2018, six in 2017, and one in 2016) and 350 players. The organization includes players primarily from Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. The East Coast Sox Diamond team also had one player from the state of Ohio. DuBose and Caruso said the organization also draws players from the state of Florida.
Mississippi State,
Alabama commitments
The East Coast Sox Diamond team featured seven payers who have committed to Division I schools, including four who have pledged to attend MSU (Chad Bryant, Chance Denson, JT Ginn, and Luke Hancock, who is from Houston High School) and two to Alabama (Dakota Bennett and Connor Shamblin). Cameron Tissue has committed to Central Arkansas, while Brandon Parker and Truitt Smith have pledged their services to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
Amory High right-handed pitcher Aubrey Gillentine, who is a member of the Class of 2018, is the only player on the team from the Greater Golden Triangle area.
Dubose was an All-American at MSU who went on to be a first-round draft pick by the Oakland A’s in 1997. He played five years for Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles (2002-06). The left-handed pitcher had a career record of 9-15 in 52 games with the Orioles. Dubose spent time as a coach at Wayne County High in Mississippi, as the pitching coach at West Alabama, and as baseball coach at American Christian Academy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, before joining with Caruso and Sykes to form East Coast Baseball, where he works full time.
Dubose credited the players and Wilson, the team’s coach, for coming together, starting out hot (7-0 in pool play, where the team outscored opponents 49-7), and staying focused in the marathon.
“We had a good mixture of guys who were vocal and a good mixture of guys who were steady guys who didn’t get up or get down,” Dubose said. “Luke Hancock caught the last five games on (artificial) turf, and in that kind of heat you never heard a word out of him. Everybody else couldn’t say they were tired because of what Luke was doing and he was not saying a word. There never was a time the guys were on fumes. They did a good job of taking care of their bodies and staying hydrated. The players did a really good job of being mature about the situation and policing themselves.”
Dubose said the pitching staff also played a pivotal role by giving up only 10 earned runs in 75 2/3 innings. He said all of the pitchers pounded the strike zone and worked ahead in the count, which made it easier on the defense.
Caruso said the performance of the pitchers epitomized the team concept that carried the squad to the title.
“The pitching staff was absolutely tremendous,” said Caruso, who is hitting coordinator for East Coast Baseball. “These guys all focused on the goal of pounding the strike zone with fastballs and letting the defense work. They didn’t try to strike everybody out or to throw their highest velocity. Our philosophy was to attack and mix the breaking ball in when you have to to get a guy off balance. It was fun to watch so many talented and committed players buy into one team’s approach for one week.”
Title road
The East Coast Sox Diamond team beat Titans Baseball 7-1, MSI Bubba 2018 3-0, and Central Florida Gators 4-3 on July 14. It defeated Knights Baseball Platinum 6-0 to reach the title game, where it beat FTB55 Elite 11-2 for the championship. Denson, Shamblin, Gillentine and Ginn, Bryant, and Richard Fitts delivered strong outings in the final five games to pave the way to a title.
Hancock, Ben Van Cleve, and Josh Hall had two hits, while Ginn had two RBIs against Knights Baseball. Tyler Kersh had three hits and three RBIs, while Hayes Hansford had two hits against FTB55 Elite.
Wilson, who lives in Tuscaloosa and is in his first year with the organization, worked for five years as a scout and as a “cross-checker” for Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds. A “cross-checker” is a second-opinion guy who gives a team another evaluation of a player. He also worked part time as a scout for MLB’s New York Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates. He said he had “a lot of fun” at the WWBA National Championship and credited the players.
“It was everybody. It is not one or two or three or four starters. Everybody on the pitching staff contributed,” Wilson said. “To play that many games in that few of days is a testament to everybody.
“It was all about the players. They got the momentum and they got hot. They overcame the negatives and stayed positive. It is just a tribute to those guys.”
The team’s biggest scare came against the Central Florida Gators. The East Coast Sox scored one run in the bottom of the seventh to force extra innings. The international tiebreaker loaded the bases with one out in the eighth. Central Florida scored two runs in the top half of the inning, but East Coast scored three runs in the bottom half of the frame to earn the victory.
“Our guys never quit,” Wilson said. “They were trying to win every pitch, every out, every inning, and every game.”
Caruso said the East Coast Sox Diamond team was able to win so many innings and go undefeated because the players sacrificed individual accolades for a bigger goal. He praised the character of all of the players and said they embraced wanting to get better every day and putting in the work they needed to to improve. He said an ideal example was Hall, a 5-foot-8 outfielder from Huntsville, Alabama. He said Hall only swung the bat twice and bunted every other time up, but he was one of the most valuable players on the team. Caruso said Hall entered the event without any college offers. Since then, Caruso said Hall has received five college offers.
Raising the profile
In addition to helping individual players, Caruso and Dubose agreed the championship will raise the profile of East Coast Baseball, which has existed in some form since 2009.
“Winning the title puts the organization on a national scale,” Caruso said. “When you have all of the other organizations saying, ‘You have gotten so good,’ or ‘You have really stepped up,’ it helps attract college coaches and notoriety to our program. If we can attract attention to athletics, it will help us attract attention to our alternate goal, which is to share Christ with others. … We are excited about what God is doing and has done and we are taking in all of the blessings.”
Garrett Brown (Madison, Alabama, Class of 2017), Dalton Hall (Morris, Alabama, 2018), Nikolas Hogan (Brandon — Northwest Rankin High, 2018), Cole Jones (Philadelphia — Leake Academy, 2017), Cade Pipoly (Medina, Ohio, 2017), Matthew Reed (Houston, Germantown, Tennessee, 2018), Edwin Smith (Kosciusko — Jackson Academy, 2018), and Daniel Swatek (Hoover, Alabama, 2019) rounded out the roster.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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