Canova wins first title since 1979

All is well in the state’s biggest small-town baseball community once again.

Canova got six strong innings from Jared Donahue, Kevin Leighton played his final game and the Gang captured its first Class B state amateur championship in 30 years Sunday at Cadwell Park.

“This means just a little bit to this community. I don’t think there’s anybody left in Miner County right now,” Leighton said while celebrating with friends, family and teammates after the victory. “Thirty years is a long time to wait for one of these.”

The 51-year-old Leighton, who has hit 501 career home runs, went 1-for-5 in his final game as an amateur baseball player. At the beginning of the season he announced it would be the final one.

His one hit, an RBI single up the middle in the fourth inning, gave Canova a 2-0 lead. The hit scored Thomas Gulledge, a pickup player from Salem, who scored the Gang’s first run of the game in the second.

Donahue faced the minimum six batters in the first two innings, but he got some defensive help in the third with runners on first and second and two out.

On a high looping fly ball hit to shallow centerfield, the Gang’s Devin Alfson raced in to make a diving catch and saved at least one run.

The play ignited Canova’s offense, which scored five runs on five hits in the top of the fourth.

Curt Carlson and Grant Olson had back-to-back singles with two outs and catcher Garrett Gassman followed that with a two-RBI single to center.

“We didn’t stop scoring,” Canova manager Dave Gassman said. “We kept tacking on runs until the end of the game. You can talk about our pitching here today, but look at our offense and the way the guys played.”

Since 1979, the Gang has lost eight Class B state title games, and during that time span none of Canova’s teams ever scored more than nine runs in the title game.

In the sixth, Canova threatened to break that barrier with runners on first and second and no outs, but Dell Rapids turned the state amateur tournament‘s the first triple play since 1971 to end the inning.

Working on only two-days rest, Donahue got the first PBR batters out in the bottom of the sixth, and after a walk, he got the final out on a grounder to second.

“I’ve always been able to (come back on short rest),” Donahue said. “Today, I started out a little tight, but once I got going I loosened up and was able to go until I just wore out.”

After Canova put up its seventh and eighth runs of the game in the seventh, Donahue opened an at-bat against PBR’s Scott LeBron — who was the second batter of the inning — with his 110th pitch. Donahue, who picked up his second win of the tournament and was named the tournament MVP, gave up four earned runs in the seventh on three base hits and a walk before exiting the game. He finished the day with 123 pitches, which was only a fraction of his 426 total pitches during the tournament.

“I grew up in the years where we didn’t have pitch count,” said Dave Gassman, who owns both the all-time career wins and strikeout records in amateur baseball. “I’m definitely not saying what he did is overrated; I’m saying a lot of that comes from the heart. We used to say a pitch count was only how many pitches it took to throw nine innings.”

Lincoln Gassman pitched the remainder of the seventh inning, and Canova got a two-run homer by Alfson in the top of the eighth. Alfson crushed an 0-1 pitch over the left-field fence, giving Canova its tenth run of the game.

“We put together the game we wanted to that we haven’t been able to in the last eight state championships,” Gassman said. “Both pitching and hitting were going for us.”

Canova added one more insurance run in the ninth with Jason Miller led the inning off with a double. Leighton got up to the plate for his final career at-bat and slapped the first pitch he saw to PBR’s first baseman and Jared Hegdahl hit a high loopping single to shallow right field to score Miller.

Lincoln Gassman got two of the first three PBR hitters out in the bottom of the ninth, and after Kevin Krull knocked a two-run homer to get his team within five runs, he got the next batter to fly out to left field.

As Canova rushed the field to celebrate, one of the umpires said the Gang’s Curt Carlson didn’t catch the ball. Canova claimed after he made the catch, he bent down to pick up his sunglasses, which had fallen off of his head during the play. The umpires ruled no catch and the base runner, PBR’s Craig Hansen, raced around the diamond for an inside-the-park home run.

“He caught the ball,” Leighton said. “I just thought they’re going to have to do that four more times in a row. I just tried to calm everyone down after that.”

Three pitches later Gassman struck out PBR’s final hitter and Canova charged the field for what was the final out.

“When you’ve got eight runner-ups what can you say?” Dave Gassman said. “This is the highlight of the last 30 years of baseball for me.”

Six Canova hitters had two or more hits including Gulledge who led the team with a 3-for-4 game with a walk and three runs. The former Dakota Wesleyan player hit .412 over the course of the tournament with one homer and a team-leading nine RBIs. Garrett Gassman hit .444 over the course of the tournament, which topped Canova.