'Old Squirrel magic' has returned heading back into State title game

Veteran Aycorp Media Charleston Fighting Squirrel manager Michael Minner walks back to the dugout following an inning recently against the Southeast Tropics at Kelly High School in Benton.

Tom Davis ~ Tdavis@semoball.com

CHARLESTON – It’s been a laborious summer for veteran Aycorp Media Charleston Fighting Squirrels manager Michael Minner.

His baseball squad hasn’t been consistently successful all summer, and entering the 2024 Senior Babe Ruth State Tournament, an event the Squirrels are hosting at Hillhouse Park, his team had dropped six of seven games and had little mojo.

“I’ve been extremely negative with this group,” Minner said recently. “We’ve done a lot of things that just haven’t been baseball things.”

The tide has turned in tournament play and Minner’s kids are on the cusp of winning the State Tournament today.

Following a 15-0 rout of the Southern Missouri Revelers 18U team on Thursday to open the event, the Squirrels 19U squad beat its 18U counterparts 2-0 on Saturday. That win propelled the 19U team to its biggest win of the summer, a 3-2 come-from-behind victory over the defending Senior Babe Ruth World Series champions, and the Squirrels rivals, the Southeast Tropics on Sunday.

“This is a win that gets your program turned back around,” Minner said following the win, “and gets us rolling in the right direction headed to the World Series.”

The Squirrels (14-13) and Tropics (20-5-1) will play today at 5 p.m. at Hillhouse Park. A Tropics win will force a tiebreaker at 7:30 p.m. while a Squirrel win delivers the State Tournament championship to the hosts.

What the Squirrels got out of Sunday’s victory, as much as anything else, was confidence, which has lacked this summer.

“This team (that played on Sunday),” Minner said, “can beat anybody in the World Series.”

The Squirrels have found ways to lose games this summer, but that evaporated on Sunday when they kept fighting and fighting and fighting to come back.

“When you’re struggling,” Minner explained, “it can become like ‘How are we going to screw this one up?’ All of a sudden, we got that big hit, that ball that goes to the wall that wakes us up.”

That “big hit” came courtesy of former Chaffee High School star Levi McKinnie, who led off the seventh inning against the Tropics with a blast to the center field wall that went for a triple.

“It was like the old Squirrel magic was back,” Minner said. “We’re going to win this!”

When a team struggles through the heat of the summer and doesn’t find success, Minner said that it can zap your passion.

“I needed to be reminded why I love baseball,” Minner said. “These guys (on Sunday) reminded me why I love baseball and why I do this.

“It was a big win for our program.”

The Squirrels receive an automatic berth into the World Series in Cape Girardeau next month because they are the host team, so today's outcome will not affect them.

Because the Tropics will finish - at worst - as the State Tournament runner-up, and the Squirrels are not taking the champion berth, it is awarded to the Tropics. So, the Tropics win over the Cardinal Legacy Perfectos on Monday, which advanced them to today’s games, clinched that World Series opportunity for the Tropics.