Editor’s note: The following information was compiled from Transcript-Bulletin archives.
Winning a state championship may have been the best thing to happen to the Grantsville boys baseball team since 2000, but the motivation they found to do so was the real story of the year.
Danny Nelson, a senior second baseman on last year’s title-winning team, experienced complications with Crohn’s disease over the season that affected his play.
“I had surgery the day before the home playoff games, but one of the coaches was able to let me watch the games on Facetime,” Nelson said in May. “My dad wore my jersey to the games.”
With Region 11’s No. 1 seed in the playoffs, Grantsville hosted the first two rounds of the 3A state tournament. The Cowboys blanked Morgan 7-0 in the morning on May 10, then blasted Carbon 6-1 in the late afternoon.
“It wasn’t looking good on Monday in the hospital and I was certain I couldn’t make it,” Nelson said. “But things got better early Wednesday. So I texted Krista and told her I was coming, but not to tell the team — it would be a surprise.”
After the first two victories, the team scheduled a dinner for Wednesday night prior to the tourney games in Orem. Team mother Krista Hutchins wanted Nelson to speak at the dinner.
“Now, I’ve played with you guys for my entire life, and for the last five years exclusively,” Nelson said in his speech. “We’ve been on the field together hundreds of times. But, thanks to this surgery, I’m done. I won’t be out there tomorrow. I can’t do anything to affect the outcome of that game. So I’m asking you guys, when you step on the field tomorrow, to give me everything you have until the last out is made. I know that term is used a lot but I want you to take it to heart tomorrow. Sprint to your position, beat out ground balls and lay out for anything in your area. When you step on the field tomorrow, play like it’s the last time it will ever happen, because it just might be. Trust each other tomorrow, and trust yourselves.”
Knowing he was in no condition to play, Nelson dressed for the final four games at Orem’s Brent Brown Ballpark, traveling with the team on the bus to the championship game.
With him in the dugout, the Cowboys beat Juan Diego 11-7 on May 15.
Grantsville then beat Desert Hills 3-2 in the semifinal before the Thunder clawed its way back from the loser’s bracket to earn a rematch in the championship game.
Or at least, it would have been the championship game if the Cowboys had pulled off the win to give Desert Hills its second loss in the tournament. As it turned out, Grantsville lost 13-8 to the tournament favorites to force a winner-take-all second game.
Junior Wyatt Barrus, who was named the Transcript-Bulletin Male Athlete of the Year for the 2013-14 sports seasons after the baseball finale, pitched Grantsville to an 8-7 win in the state title game after only one day’s rest.
“I was nervous in the seventh inning,” Nelson said of Grantsville’s 8-7 lead late in the game. “They got their lead-off hitter on and had that big first baseman coming to the plate, I could see him hitting a home run to win the game. Then we got a couple of outs, and even with two outs it was nerve-wracking. Then they hit a low-liner to center, and it looked like a base hit. But [Dallin Williams] came in to make the catch to end the game. I still can’t believe it; it was incredible.”
Barrus was instrumental in the title run. According to coaches, the junior led the team in home runs, RBIs and batting average. He knocked eight round-trippers, six triples and 13 doubles with a .536 batting average. In the final four games of the state tournament, Barrus hit two singles, one double, a triple, one home run and was intentionally walked twice.
And for Nelson, his team’s performance was a dream come true.
“Throughout the second game,” said Cowboy senior Dillon Hutchins in May, “I found myself looking to the dugout to see my best friend Danny cheering us on in full uniform, eye-black on and spikes tied — knowing that he was not going to play in the game that we had been dreaming about since we were little Yankees.”
“We did it for Danny,” he added.