Johnstown is halfway to a guaranteed championship in the 80th AAABA Tournament. Pause a moment to allow that to register.
Johntown fans of my generation grew up lamenting so what’s new, out in two, back when two losses meant elimination from the tournament. This year, we’re on the verge of getting two through — to the title game!
The current event, having gone to a pool play format years back, entered Friday with a AAABA final four that included both Johnstown entries. And now, after Martella’s pulled off a dramatic, 5-4 victory Friday afternoon over New Orleans at Point Stadium, Johnstown has two of the three teams remaining alive.
It’s up to Mainline Pharmacy, champions of the Johnstown league this year and thereby Johnstown-1, to take care of business vs. New Brunswick tonight and we’ll have a Johnstown-Johnstown matchup Saturday for the title. A guaranteed championship for the hosts. Be still, my heart.
To think of something similar, my mind races back to my senior year of high school, when our 1972-73 Johnstown High School basketball team of Don Maser, Pat Cummings, Jack Buchan, Ken Horoho, etc., was unbeaten and played Johnstown Vo-Tech for the District 6 championship at the War Memorial.
The entire Vo-Tech starting lineup was Johnstown kids, too. It was like an intra-squad game for the district title.
I understand that all the players on the “Johnstown” AAABA rosters aren’t Johnstown kids. We’ve come a long way from the time our Junior League rules had a 25-mile limit, which produced Tom Qualters of Somerset being ineligible to play for Johnstown and instead coming here with the Baltimore team, which won the 1976 tournament. To rub it in, Qualters was co-MVP of it all.
To people who lament the presence of so-called “outsiders” on the Johnstown AAABA teams, do they really think all the Steelers, Pirates or Penguins were born and raised in Pittsburgh?
Do they root for college teams like Pitt and Penn State that recruit players from other cities, states and even countries?
So, it doesn’t bother me that Martella’s has a player on the roster whose residence is listed as Novi, Michigan.
I’m a fan of the teams that I root for winning games and titles. That’s why I got a bit excited today.
I will admit I didn’t enter the game with high hopes. Yes, this is not, as some told me even today, your father’s New Orleans team. But, it’s still a name one can safely predict to do well tournament after tournament.
It didn’t help my mood when New Orleans hit the scoreboard with a three-spot in the first inning. Frankly, another two runs or so for New Orleans and I was going to start up the metaphorical bus and leave.
But, here is where a tip of the cap to Martella’s is in order. This is a franchise with an obvious winning culture. It didn’t win the Johnstown league playoffs, but still came into the tournament expecting to succeed, and it has.
Down 3-0 in an elimination game, the team dug in, fought back, and eventually took the lead, only to hold on by the fingernails.
It is the kind of spirit typified by a quote from the legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who is purported to have said his team didn’t lose, it just ran out of time.
Even if Martella’s had lost this game, it would have been a noble effort.
But Martella’s won, on a game-ending doubleplay with a New Orleans runner inexplicably diving into first base.
I once heard the quintessential explanation for why running through the base is faster. If diving was better, then all sprinters would faceplant reaching for the finish tape. They don’t and neither should baserunners headed to first, where one does not need to stop at the base.
It was one of several such dives by New Orleans players.
New Orleans now can head home to practice those headfirst dives.
Meanwhile, Mainline Pharmacy has a game to play tonight. A win would assure a Johnstown team has a date with destiny Saturday.
On a side note, I’m hoping a crowd comes out tonight to root home Mainline. This afternoon game had attendance that fell more into the intimate gathering category than being a crowd. That was the only disappointing aspect of it all.
Sam Ross Jr's site 