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Quincy LeBlanc didn’t pitch in high school. But don’t tell the Kirkwood Community College hitters that.
The 6-foot, 170 pound right-hander scattered seven hits and gave up one earned run as Hinds stunned a number 1 ranked team for the third time in three weeks during our improbable, but not impossible miraculous post-season run in May of 1999. The Eagles defeated then #1 Northwest Mississippi twice to win the Region 23 title a couple of weeks before on their own home field.
Hinds won 3-2 to stay alive in the NJCAA Division II World Series at USA Stadium in Millington, Tennessee.
The Eagles got a solo home run from Kevin Cronin in the fourth inning and LeBlanc and closer Clay Overby made it hold up to send the top-ranked “other Eagles” (49-7) back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Hinds leadoff hitter Shandell Lockridge, who drove in Hinds’ first run with a single in the second inning, went 2-5 and stole two bases.
Jason Evans had a sacrifice fly to score the Eagles third run.
Mason Chastain went 3-4 with a double, Tim Axton had a triple and a double to continue his torrid post-season hot streak, and Curtis Jones had a triple.
LeBlanc, who became a Hinds post-season hero on the mound, improved to 5-2 on the season. Three of those wins had come in the post season in the District C Playoffs and in the World Series. He didn’t pick up his first win of the season until the end of April.
“I was relaxed out there,” said LeBlanc, a catcher in high school who began pitching last summer for his American Legion team about the time I was on a recruiting trip in Southwest Louisiana, where we had picked up a lot of key out-of-state players over the years, including former big league pitcher Pat Rapp.
“I mean they are the number 1 team in the country with all the pressure on them. We don’t have anything to lose and everything to gain,” LeBlanc added.
Quincy gave up a leadoff double down the third base line by Fernando Marion to start the ninth and I went to Clay, our closer, another key post-season performer on the mound. After Marion scored on a groundout, Overby struck out the next two hitters with his unhittable slider to pick up his sixth save of the season (and fourth of the post-season).
A play by Lockridge in center field was the difference in the game, Kirkwood coach John Lewis said. Lockridge gunned down Mark Seaton at the plate for the final out of the fourth inning. It was a perfect line drive throw to Axton, the catcher, who held onto the ball after Seaton ran over him.
Nathan Miller 6-1, took his first loss of the season for Kirkwood.
With the win we played Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan and lost a 4-3 heartbreaker. The coach was Russ Bortell who I met when we both coached in the U.S. Olympic Festival in Los Angeles in 1991.
It was a great run and that’s the only thing our players will remember about the 1999 season. We ruined seasons for Northwest, Co-Lin, St. Louis-Forest Park, Northwest Shoals, and Kirkwood. That’s one thing we said we wanted to do.
But the first change came from within that “6 inches of real estate” between the ears of our players. We changed our thinking. Everything begins by the way you choose to think and that’s how we flipped the script on an otherwise long and frustrating season.
And then we decided exactly what we wanted we want to do and backed it up with action that would get us what we wanted.
It’s just a real life example of what confidence, motivation, and determination can do; brain, heart, balls… the big four. Those four things produce peak performance. And when you start competing and playing well, the game becomes fun and almost effortless.
And it’s amazing how well you can play when you are loose, relaxed and fearless.
Most of the guys have said over the years that it’s the best time they ever had playing baseball.
I agree.
(Excerpts of this story come from an article by Mark Thornton, Sports Editor of the Vicksburg Evening Post, 1999).
Rick Clarke's Diary of a Mad Baseball Coach 