Prep baseball: Hard work paying off for St. Michael’s in AAA state tourney

Lee Yobbi | The New Mexican

5/20/2008 - 5/21/08

It's cliché.

It's alphabet simple.

And it's devastatingly effective.

"It really is one game at a time," says Ken Duran, the head coach of the St. Michael's baseball team.

It's a phrase he's repeated. And a philosophy he has instilled in his players. It's worked to the tune of 21 successive wins, tying a single-season school record set in 1997.

It's an easy phrase to roll off the tongue, but much harder to make players believe. It's uttered too often and it seems too basic.

"It starts from the top and that's me," says Duran, the second-year skipper of the Horsemen. "It's starts with quality at-bats and not looking forward. It's with practice and our approach to practice. There are no lax days. They come out and bust their butts."

The Horsemen (25-3) have broken down the game to it's simplest components and then tried to perfect them. They hit every day, pounding between 50-70 pitches apiece, so it's no accident that they have eight players currently hitting .400 or better. They have one of the deepest staffs in the class, with five pitchers having earned two or more wins this season.

The defense is fielding the ball at a .938 clip.

"Winning against Santa Fe High kind of ignited this," says right-hander Ryan Crossingham (6-1).

Prior to that game with SFHS on April 3, the Horsemen were a pretty average team, having gone 5-3 out of the gate, including a 22-3 pounding at the hands of the Demons in the
St. Michael's Invitational.

The Horsemen met their city rivals nearly a month later and repaid the favor 19-7. It was then that they knew they could play at an elite level.

Santa Fe High has since advanced in the Class AAAAA state playoffs. St. Michael's has made winning look easy.

It took the Horsemen just 10 innings to win a pair of games against first-round opponent Tohatchi over the weekend. The Horsemen breezed by 14-0 and 10-0.

Hope Christian (17-12) advanced in much more dramatic fashion. The Huskies lost the first game of a best-of-three series in Raton 14-1 on Friday, then inched by 3-2 to even the series. Hope Christian escaped with a 7-5 win in Game 3 to advance.

"Hope is a different team than when we saw them at our tournament," Ken Duran says. "It's always tough to play up in Raton."

But if St. Michael's keeps doing what it does, it will be hard for any team to catch up.

"I think we just work harder," says shortstop Jordan Duran. "We know what a loss feels like."

St. Michael's lost last season to Albuquerque Sandia Preparatory in a heart-breaking 3-2 AAA quarterfinal game that went 10 innings at Rio Rancho High School. The Horsemen stranded 13 runners in that contest, including the tying run at third.

Probably nobody epitomizes St. Michael's maximizing of talent like Duran. He weighs in at just 130 pounds and is 5-foot-6. But his bat has the most pop of the lot. He holds the team triple crown with 10 home runs, 53 RBIs and a .464 average.

"I just look for pitches to hit," the senior says.

Pretty simple, huh?

Simple works for the Horsemen.