FORT MYERS, Fla. – Play at the 19th annual Perfect Game WWBA Underclass World Championship had just gotten underway at the Lee County Player Development 5-Plex on Thursday morning and the excitement in the air was palpable.
One of the openers at the 5-Plex featured the highly regarded Dirtbag TapOut squad out of North Carolina going up against the lesser-known Wisconsin-based Midwest Halos and TapOut starter Kyle Percival was ready to get after it.
Percival, from the class of 2022 like every other player on the Dirtbag roster, is a lefthander and a Wake Forest commit ranked as a national top-500 prospect in his class. With all eyes on him as he went to work in the top half of the first, what did Percival do? Well, he walked the Halos’ leadoff hitter on five pitches.
“Right at first the mound was a little wet so I had all that mud on my cleats,” Percival told PG not long after the game’s conclusion. “I was just trying to find my release with that first batter and after that I settled down and got into my groove. That was pretty much how it went.”
That is how it went and it went very well for the Dirtbag TapOut after that base on balls to get things started. Percival retired the next seven batters he faced, struck out the side in the second inning and nine of the 14 batters he faced in four innings of work, and the TapOut rolled to 12-0 run-rule victory; Percival allowed just one hit and walked two.
It was a great start for a very good team that fully expects to challenge for the championship at this 197-team extravaganza that serves as an elite opening act for next week’s prestigious PG WWBA World Championship.
“My message to these guys is let’s take it one game at a time, put our best foot forward and see what happens,” Dirtbag TapOut head coach Trey Daly told PG Thursday morning. “At the end of the day I feel like we’ve got a legit shot to make a run at this thing but in a tournament like this you’ve got to get some breaks.
“There’s some really good teams out here and if you don’t get the first game it’s a long week,” he added. “You always got to get game one in order to be successful.”
Mission accomplished. The TapOut banged out 11 hits in the victory with contributions from the top of the order the bottom. Check it out:
Lead-off hitter Austin Hawke (No. 366, uncommitted) singled twice and scored a run; No. 2 hitter Tyler Albright (top-500, Duke) singled, was hit by a pitch and scored twice; No. 3 hitter Colby Shelton (No. 71, Clemson) didn’t get a hit but was walked three times in three trips and scored a run.
And on it went with cleanup hitter Connor Fuhrman (No. 77, South Carolina) collecting a single, an RBI and a run: No. 5 Carter Boyd (No. 199, Arkansas) a double and two runs; No. 6 Joe Specht (t-500, UNC-Wilmington) a single, an RBI and a run; No. 7 Brooks Brannon (t-500, North Carolina) a double and a run; No. 8 Andrew Shaffner (Follow, N.C. State) a single, double and a run; and No. 10 Bentley Yeatts (t-1000, The Citadel) two singles, two RBI and a run.
“We wanted to attack them early, just put runs on the board early and throw strikes,” Fuhrman said when asked about the onslaught. “We have pretty good team chemistry; we all get along well and I feel like that translates out on the field in the way we play.”
What’s interesting is that the Dirtbag TapOut’s most highly regarded player, third baseman Tucker Toman (No. 14, LSU) was unable to make the trip this week but plans to play for the Dirtbags at next week’s WWBA World Championship. He wasn’t needed on this day and the TapOut look to have enough firepower to keep this machine moving toward Monday.
There are several other highly regarded players rostered with the Dirtbag TapOut who didn’t play on Thursday, including middle-infielder Jay Dillard (No. 466, Clemson), righthander/utility Cade Miller (t-500, East Carolina) and catcher Caden Bodine (t-500, Coastal Carolina).
This is the same team that recently took home the title at the PG Underclass Coastal Fall Elite Championship in High Point, N.C., Sept. 18-20 with a 5-0-0 record. It was also the runner-up at the blockbuster PG WWBA 16u National Championship in Marietta, Ga., in mid-July when it finished 10-1-1; the TapOut came in at No. 7 in PG’s 16u End of the Summer National Travel Team Rankings.
Albright, an outfielder and the top-500 Duke recruit out of Greensboro, N.C., was the MV Player at the Coastal Fall Elite Championship and feels like that championship effort provided a nice boost coming into the WWBA Under World.
“We’re coming off a great weekend, feeling good, the bats are hot; the whole team is playing well,” he said Thursday. “We’re throwing strikes, we’re hitting the ball hard and hopefully we can go a long way in this tournament.”
Daly, who also wears the General Manager’s cap for the Dirtbags organization and works closely with program founder/owner/17u head coach Andy Partin, explained that the core nucleus of this team has been together for the past 2½ years.
The players know and understand the value of playing team baseball and that is, of course, a great starting point but Daly acknowledges the unpredictability that accompanies the game can always come into play.
“Every tournament is unique and different,” he said. “So at the end of the day you’re just trying to make the kids better, get them reps and the rest takes care of itself. … But for the most part, this group has done well for the last three years.”
The roster consists primarily of North Carolina kids although players from South Carolina and Virginia have also been welcomed on board. Even if their hometowns and high schools differ – and they mostly do – baseball brought them together even before they became Dirtbags.
It’s always been known that good players want to play alongside other good players so why not make a concerted effort to bring them together on one roster? They want to be challenged at this level because that brings out the best in everyone and because they know that everyone’s going to be good once they get into a college program.
Helping kids take the next step into college or professional baseball is what drives men like Daly and Partin and the other staff members inside the Dirtbags organization. And it’s not limited to the confines of this Dirtbag TapOut squad but is prevalent program-wide with an emphasis on helping develop every kid on every roster by surrounding them with the best players available.
“These kids are very talented but – we keep beating this message – the higher level ball you play the more talented the kids get,” Daly said. “A lot of the kids do get caught up in what type of ranking they got but at the end of the day it’s just about trying to win the game.
“Everybody’s got a job to do just like a coach or just like a parent or whatever you’re trying to do out here,” he added. “We just try to get these kids ready to produce at the next step in their life.”
Like most of the other programs that have teams playing here this weekend the primary focus for the Dirtbags is getting these teen-aged players ready to one day make the leap to college baseball.
Winning PG national championship tournaments with their best friends is an experience they’ll hold dear to their hearts the rest of their lives, of course, but it’s not an end-all. Once they reach the next level they’re going to have to start earning their keep and it won’t really matter all that much which travel ball uniform they slipped on as high-schoolers.
“Those college coaches, they’re making a living off what these kids do,” Daly said. “These kids have to realize you’ve got to be tough when you go into these environments, especially some of the upper-echelon schools these kids are going to.”
With the PG WWBA World Championship set to begin a week from today, it would be remiss not to mention the success Partin and the Dirtbags have enjoyed in Jupiter over the last decade (the WWBA World was relocated to Fort Myers this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Dirtbags teams were co-champions at the event in 2010, won it outright in 2016 and finished as runner-up last year.
This team is still a year away from attending the WWBA World as a complete unit but it’s a squad that seems to have the makeup to keep things rolling along when its time comes.
“This group of guys is family,” Percival said. “Every event that we play in we always come together and we’ll always compete with anybody; I’ll take this group of guys against any team. We always try to come out here and win no matter what team it is or where they’re from. … It’s just that whenever we need to do we'll do.
Albright echoed his teammates comments: “I feel like everyone is just giving it their all,” he said. “We’re all playing together well, no arguments and everyone’s like a family; that’s what it is and we’re just playing well. … Everyone’s cool with each other, everyone gets along, everyone wants the other person to do better; we’re hoping for the best for everyone.”
The Dirtbag TapOut will look to continue to build on that camaraderie when they take on the Arsenal USA Gold in their second pool-play game Friday morning at the jetBlue Park Player Development Complex. That’s when the classroom will once again be open for these North Carolinians and this won’t be virtual learning.
Daly called the game of baseball “a great teacher” and told PG that the message he and his assistant coaches conveys to his players at each new event – including one as elite as the WWBA Underclass World Championship – never changes: Be unselfish and play as hard as you can and then let the chips fall where they may.
That way, even a game that starts out with your ace issuing a five-pitch walk to the first batter he faces, a good team will find a way to right the ship and make sure even better things happen down the trail.
“We don’t come into this event putting all our eggs into trying to win it,” Daly said. “Now, we want to try to win it, of course, but the more pressure you put on the kid to perform the more he’s going to clam-up.
“If we leave here Monday, if we leave here Sunday – whenever we leave – if we leave giving our best effort then that’s good enough for me.”