TUESDAY MORNING MOUND VISIT: For nine days, Lewiston became 'Upset City' and oh, how wonderful it was
Jun. 2—By the way the week began, the ending should have been obvious.
Four games and four upsets rang in the Avista NAIA World Series — the annual small school baseball national championship extravaganza that animates the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley every May.
It started unsuspectingly enough. The seventh-seeded Mid America Christian Evangels (Okla.) beat the fourth-seeded Doane Tigers (Neb.) — a fellow first-time World Series qualifier — 7-3 to open the tournament May 22.
That ending in question? The eighth-seeded Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs’ 21-3 walloping of the top-seeded Taylor Trojans in the national championship game Saturday at Harris Field.
Back on Day 1, the 10th-seeded William Carey Crusaders slayed the top-seeded Trojans 7-4.
And things began to get serious.
That was just the second time since seeding began in 2003 that the 10th seed had beaten the No. 1 seed — the first instance was 2024 when Arizona Christian beat Southeastern (Fla.) 5-3 in 11 innings.
IU Southeast, the ninth seed, beat second-seeded Georgia Gwinnett hours later and the Lewis-Clark State Warriors, back in the World Series for the first time since 2023, had their spotlight stolen by the eventual national champion, the Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs, 12-4 in a game that began around 9:30 p.m. and ended past midnight.
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That’s pretty late for a baseball game, but not nearly the latest that the Bulldogs would stay up this week.
With the lower seeds going 4-0 on May 22 — we here at the Lewiston Tribune dubbed Day 1 ‘Upset City,’ on the front page of our Series Extra in the next day’s paper.
And the fun just kept going from there.
All told, the lower World Series seeds were a combined 11-8 against the higher seeds.
That’s the underdogs’ highest winning percentage in the World Series since 2011, when the lower seeds were also 11-8, according to Denny Grubb, the official statistician of the NAIA World Series. The ninth-seeded Concordia Eagles (Calif.) won it all that season.
The No. 3 Warriors contributed to the winning side of the record on Saturday when they beat the No. 2 Georgia Gwinnett Grizzlies 12-1 — cutting the eight consecutive qualifiers’ stay in Lewiston to just two days.
The higher seeds weren’t rudderless, though. Taylor launched a convincing run through the losers’ bracket with a thrilling victory over Doane on Saturday, and an 8-5 win over LC State in front of a Series-best crowd of over 3,700 people on Monday.
The Trojans just kept winning, earning a one-day bye going into the national title game and looking like the inevitable champions.
But, especially this year, we should have known better than that.
The Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs were your classic underseeded team.
TWU played about a month each without star players — shortstop Rob Gordon, and first baseman Josh Shelly.
Both were named to the World Series all-tournament team, and accounted for 109 runs, 17 home runs and 29 doubles combined this season. Most of those extra base hits belonged to Shelly, who his teammates proudly trumpeted as a would-be player of the year, had he not gotten hurt.
The two were good-to-go for the postseason, though, and the Bulldogs continued their underdog run through the postseason after finishing third in the Appalachian Athletic Conference behind Milligan (Tenn.) and fellow World Series qualifier Johnson (Tenn.).
TWU’s World Series run was rich with dominant victories. Tennessee Wesleyan won by nine runs over the Warriors, shut out AAC rival Johnson 11-0, and got a 10-3 win over IU Southeast after the Grenadiers beat them 5-0 on Monday. Of the Bulldogs’ final three games against the No. 5, 10 and 1 seed, which produced the slimmest margin of victory?
That’s right, it was No. 10 William Carey that challenged TWU the most. The Bulldogs squeaked out the 16-14 victory on Friday night in an unforgettable 4-hour and 17-minute masterpiece of a World Series third-place game that started at almost 10 o’clock at night after a three-and-a-half hour weather delay and concluded at 2:09 a.m.
The Bulldogs appeared en route to their typical runaway dominance up 8-0 in the sixth inning before William Carey capitalized on TWU’s dwindling pitching depth to score 10 runs in the sixth without the aid of an extra base hit — just six walks, six singles and a free bag via hit by pitch.
Down 13-9, TWU stormed back in front, lost the lead again and surged back ahead by two before shutting the door in the ninth inning.
It was the longest nine-inning game in World Series history, and even then, I wondered how the Bulldogs could possibly beat the Taylor Trojans, who entered the title game on a full day’s rest while TWU toiled away past midnight.
Billy Berry is how.
Berry is now a three-time national champion, having coached Tennessee Wesleyan to a second-most-in-NAIA-history three titles — each seven years apart.
It’s a unique dynasty in that sense, and it’s easy to see how it could be less than seven years before the Bulldogs do it again.
Weather delays were a constant this year. Six games times over four individual days were impacted by lightning and rain. This led to IU Southeast playing back-to-back games on Wednesday and going from undefeated to eliminated in less than a day. That was necessitated by the fact that Taylor and Mid-America Christian paused play in the fifth inning tied 4-4 on Tuesday, and resumed 16 hours later to the tune of eight unanswered runs by the title-round-bound Trojans.
Credit to the tournament staff, including LC State administrators and an army of volunteers, for rolling with the punches and unrolling the infield tarp a half dozen times.
Off the field, the World Series was an in-demand community event. With the Warriors back in the Series, attendance over opening weekend improved — each Warrior game attracted a crowd north of 3,000 people.
This was much appreciated by local vendors such as Wilson Banner Ranch, which told the Tribune of a marked boom in sales during Warrior World Series games.
Eric Wilson of Wilson Banner Ranch said his establishment enjoyed “an increase of about a transaction every two minutes higher than we had that same night the previous year,” on Saturday evening during LCSC’s game against Georgia Gwinnett.
With coach Jeremiah Robbins back at the helm, the Warriors’ place in the Series is as close to guaranteed as could be without the former automatic bid.
And as the Warriors learned first-hand this year, once they get there, the path ahead is anything but easy. The two teams that eliminated LC State this year each made it to the final.
That’s why the World Series is so fun to watch.
The best coaches and players at the NAIA level duking it out for a championship in Lewiston, with plenty of drama, high-flying action and fruit-filled waffle cones to go around.
Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2260, staylor@lmtribune.com, or on X or Instagram @Sam_C_Taylor.
