Pasco: Dade City majors cope with losses

Dade City majors cope with losses

By WAYNE GRUMET

DADE CITY -- Dade City majors coach Dale Maggard was certainly disappointed with the way his baseball team finished the Section 3 tournament.

Wednesday night's 13-0, four-inning thrashing at the hands of Apopka followed Sunday's 10-1 loss to Bloomingdale. Dade City seemed to lose itself after beating defending state champion Apopka 3-2 on Saturday.

"We were very fortunate to beat them on Saturday. It gave us some momentum, but we came back not ready to play Bloomingdale," Maggard said. "You can't just make as many errors as we made in one ballgame."

Dade City's victory over Apopka on Saturday avenged a 3-2 loss suffered in last season's tournament semifinals. Wednesday, it didn't take long for Apopka to make certain there wouldn't be a repeat performance. Dade City starter Jamie Cruz almost escaped the first inning without allowing a run. But three errors later, Apopka had a 4-0 lead.

In the third inning, a two-out error by Dade City rightfielder Gerard Mathis started a nine-run Apopka rally. In the end, Apopka was again the team to hand Dade City its final defeat.

Maggard didn't focus on the negatives when he gathered his team after Wednesday's loss. Instead, he reminded his troops of what they accomplished.

"The positive sides outweigh the negatives 100-to-1," Maggard said. "This is one of those tournaments where the only way you succeed is to win the World Series. When you start, you're going to end up at this point sooner or later.

"There were a lot of people who thought we'd go 0-2 in the district. We swept the district ... and I told them tonight that I couldn't be any prouder of them."

Most of Dade City's roster isn't finished playing baseball just yet. Maggard and company will move onto AAU baseball before school starts. And next year, Dade City will move into the juniors category.

"Most of these guys are going to continue to play baseball. The key is "Did you learn something? If you did, you can grow from this experience,"' Maggard said. "This is a game of failure. This is the only sport you can be in where if you fail seven out of 10 times they let you in the Hall of Fame.

"You've got to be able to handle failure to play baseball."