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It wasn't long after Bloomingdale graduate Gil Morales was hired at Jacksonville Eagle's View Academy that he began selling his team a two-year plan.
Here was the deal: He was going to take a team that never had played a varsity baseball season before, with barely a lick of experience and just a smidgen more talent, and turn it into a state championship contender.
In two years.
Yeah, sure he was.
"I thought he was crazy," said Tyler Calcote, then a freshman. "I mean, in summer ball the year before, we were really bad. I don't think we won but a game or two. There was no way we would be able to compete that fast."
But apparently, where there's a Gil, there's a way. Monday morning, Eagle's View was never better.
Morales delivered on his promise, and the Warriors stepped onto the lush and tenderly manicured field at Legends Field and into prep baseball heaven.
In a city where Morales had his best baseball moments, from his little league days to those as an all-county outfielder for Bloomingdale and a standout at Hillsborough Community College, this was tops.
He had come close to making the state semifinals as a player, when the tournament was held in Sarasota, but future Devil Ray Bobby Seay ended that dream in the 1994 region final. It felt like he thought it would, just better. And not just for him. In many ways, the Warriors have been Tampa's secret adopted team as friends and family monitored the process of the Warriors through the state playoffs and into the semifinals.
Morales was coming home with a winner.
"I love Tampa," he said after a 3-1 loss, smiling and still brimming with the kind of enthusiasm that can make a team believe in crazy two-year plans. "I love getting to the final four here. This has been great. Everyone that's still here, my dad still lives here, grandparents, uncles, aunts, are thrilled. To get back to the stadium here. ... I mean, I watched this thing get built."
From right up close. At HCC, Morales practiced just a ground rule double away. "I actually saw those pillars go up," he said, pointing.
He never imagined he would be back to coach a team on that very field. But a few years ago, he found himself on the campus at Eagle's View making promises that made some of his players believe he was crazy.
"I knew this year would be our first with seniors," Morales said. "I just told them I was going to get them here."
Hillsborough County has always loved its own, so Morales would have seemed an ideal candidate to return with a coaching job somewhere. Then he met his wife, Tracy, in Jacksonville while playing out his college career at North Florida, and they had a son, Major (as in, League).
Jacksonville, then, it would be. More specifically, Eagle's View Academy, a new school with double-wides for classrooms and a main building with an exterior that looked more like a roller rink than a place of academia.
Oh, and the baseball field? There wasn't one. Rather, isn't one.
"We made do," Morales said. "For me, it was a great chance to start a new program."
Morales and the Warriors entered the semifinals 13-15, deceiving because all but six games were against teams in bigger classifications. Against teams in Class A, Eagle's View was 6-0 and allowed just a run.
It was brilliant schedule-making. By the time the Warriors arrived in the postseason, they were more than ready.
"The schedule killed our confidence a little bit," said Calcote, whose team lost its last five games before the district tournament. "But Coach said it would work out. Then we started playing Class A teams, and we were blowing them away."
One bad inning did the Warriors in Monday, but as Morales walked toward the bus, he talked of his young players who now have the experience of playing at Legends Field, and how he believes his budding powerhouse will reap the benefits.
Morales stopped just short of promising the Warriors would be back.
Maybe he was saving it for the bus ride home.