Navarro leadoff hitter junior Bryce Paschel stepped to the plate for his third at-bat to lead off the bottom of the seventh inning.

A little deductive math based on those details lets you know that things were not going very well for the home team against the visiting McCallum Knights.

Eighteen Vikings—or two trips through the Navarro batting order—had come to the plate in the previous six innings. And senior Knight ace Sam Stevens had vanquished all of them back to the home dugout at Nelson Field.

As a result, Stevens was three outs from a rare pinnacle—a perfect game—as Paschel prepared to step up to the plate.

Through those six innings, Stevens had thrown only 70 pitches.

About halfway through the game, Viking first-base Coach Kyle Gruver turned to Knight pitching coach Steve Searle with this assessment of Stevens’ effort on the mound: “Man, he is dialed in and just painting.”

Like Gruver, sophomore first baseman Max Satterwhite had a good view of Stevens’ developing masterpiece.

“Sam did an amazing job of attacking the zone and locating all of his pitches to ensure that Navarro never got any freebies,” Satterwhite said.

Or bases of any kind for that matter. The Vikings tried everything against stingy Stevens. Nothing worked.

Taking pitches and forcing Stevens to throw strikes did not work. He didn’t need any coaxing to throw strikes. The Vikings found that out in a hurry. Stevens fanned the first eight batters he faced over three innings, seven of them on a called third strike.

Swinging the bats didn’t work for Navarro either.

Three of Stevens’ next five strikeouts were on swings and misses while four swings produced only weak outs to the right side of the field.

So Paschel, a smart, speedy hitter who is among Texas High School Baseball’s Top 50 5A Players to Watch this season, devised a new plan to break up Stevens’ perfect game: bunt and force the Knights to make a play.

On the first pitch he saw in the seventh inning, Paschel laid down a beautiful bunt between the mound and the first baseline. Paschel’s perfect placement and his speed forced Stevens and Satterwhite into an immediate predicament. Who should field the ball? Who should cover first? If either player made the wrong decision in a split second, Stevens’ shot at a perfect game would be over, and Paschel and his teammates would escape the ignominy of being on the wrong side of one.

Stevens decided to go for the ball, but he said he wasn’t sure at first if he’d save his perfect game or blunder it away.

“The bunt was down the first base line, and it took me pretty far, so I was worried Max might come down to field the bunt and leave no one to cover first,” Stevens said.

Facing the same split decision, Satterwhite also assessed the situation and acted decisively.

“I hesitated to go for the ball because I knew Sam was an athlete and could field it,” he said. “Plus, if I were to go for the ball, Sam probably wouldn’t have been able to get over to the bag in time.”

Stevens pounced on the ball. Satterwhite raced to first where he received Stevens’ throw ahead of the speedy Paschel for the first out of the seventh inning.

“It was a well-placed push bunt,” Searle remembered, “between the pitcher and first baseman that could definitely have created some confusion, but Sam and Max both handled it well.”

Searle also tipped his hat to head Coach Trey Honeycutt for preparing his players precisely for a moment like this one.

“We actually work weekly on dealing with bunt plays like that,” Searle said. “We depend on the pitcher to be an athlete and make plays like that one.”

Stevens wasn’t done taking matters into his own glove either. Needing two outs to achieve perfection, he put the exclamation point on the Vikings’ sentence with two more strikeouts, the first on a swing and a miss for out No. 2 and the last on a called third strike to end the game. Stevens struck out 15 of the 21 hitters he faced in throwing a perfect game.

His battery mate, freshman catcher Tommy McIntyre said he was most impressed with Stevens’ poise and control.

“He never got flustered or anxious about the fact that he was pitching a perfect game,” he said. “He made my job easy because he hit his spots and pop.”

Satterwhite said that Stevens’ control was exceptional even for him.

“Sam definitely found a new level of control with all his pitches,” he said. “He typically has good control to begin with, but not walking anyone in a seven-inning game is extremely impressive.”

Pitching coach Steve Searle agreed that Stevens’ pin-point accuracy enabled his masterpiece.

“To throw 80 pitches over a seven inning game and to throw 62 of those for strikes? That’s unheard of,” Searle said. “That’s better than a 3-to-1 strike-to-ball ratio, and our goal is 2-to-1.”

While pounding the zone was no doubt a key to Stevens’ success, the maestro himself said that the key to his success was keeping the Viking hitters guessing.

“I was able to mix my pitches well to throw off the hitters’ timing and keep them off balance throughout the game.”

McIntrye explained that the battle between pitchers and hitters is the ultimate mind game.

“It’s all about keeping the momentum and trying to mess up hitters’ timing by using different pitches and locations,” he said. “I don’t call pitches, so I give credit to Coach Searle on that, but overall Sam hit his spots, and they couldn’t do anything about it.”

Coach Searle told MacJournalism that while he calls the pitches, Sam has the final say in what pitch he throws.

“With Sam and I working together for four years, he’s earned that trust. Afterward, I just want him to tell me his thought process. Even if the pitch ends up being a hard hit ball or an extra-base hit, I don’t get mad.”

There was no need for such heart-to-hearts on Friday because there weren’t any hard-hit balls and certainly no hits to test Searle’s patience. In fact, Searle said that several times during the game Stevens shook off Searle’s signs and went with a different pitch, and the results speak for themselves.

Searle hesitated to say that Stevens’ pitching on Friday was all that different from the dominant form he’s shown all year long. He was one strike away from a no-hitter against Burnet, when a Bulldog spoiled it, and he was named 5A pitcher of the week for all of Texas after he mowed down Westlake hitters over six sterling innings in securing a signature win for the Knights.

In Searle’s mind, Stevens threw a perfect game because he did not deviate from the process he has relied on all season and the three seasons before that.

“He stayed with the consistency of his approach,” Searle said. “and everything fell into place.”

McIntyre agreed with Searle’s assessment that Stevens’ perfect game was just an extension of his tremendous pitching all season long, but he conceded that Stevens had to be mentally tough to stay sharp in a game where he was staked out to a big early lead.

The Knights lead 4-0 after three innings after scoring two in the first and adding insurance runs in the second and third. The Knights did all their first-inning damage with two outs. Senior John Dietz lined a double to left to bring home Stevens who had been hit by a pitch to start the rally. McIntrye also hit a RBI line drive double in the inning. Seniors Sage Allison, Nico Sanchez and Nathan Nagy strung together three singles to make it 3-0 in the second, and Dietz scored in the fourth after hitting a leadoff double, advancing to third and coming home on senior Charlie Cox’s sacrifice fly.

Viking starter Juan Lopez settled in from there, throwing three scoreless innings before the Knights blew the game wide open with four runs in the top of the seventh. The inning was fueled by another Allison single, a bunt single by Lou Schavdra, a Sanchez sacrifice fly, a Nagy single, a Dietz walk and a Mcintrye single.

By the time, the smoke was clear, all that was left was for Stevens to finish the perfect game. And while he deserved credit for keeping his focus and getting it done, his teammates deserve credit for doing the same, especially when didn’t give them much to do all game because he struck out so many Vikings.

“It definitely can be a challenge,” Satterwhite said of the difficulty of staying focused. “But we were all motivated by Sam’s impressive pitching, and we had to stay focused for him to get the perfect game.”

Searle said that Stevens’ teammates were up to the challenge whenever they needed to be.

“Six of the outs were plays that had to be made,” he said, “and if even one of those plays goes awry, there goes the perfect game.”

Stevens’ teammates were up to another challenge that teammates must meet during a teammate’s perfect game. They said nothing about it until it was over.

“Everyone was aware,” Satterwhite said of Stevens’ possible perfect game, “but it’s baseball superstition to not mention anything until it’s over. Thankfully no one said anything.”

The Knights evidently learned that lesson the hard way when Stevens flirted with a no-hitter earlier this season.

“Nobody mentioned [Stevens’ possible no-hitter] at the beginning of the season,” McIntyre said. “He was one out away [from it], and someone said something, and he lost it with two strikes, so [on Friday], everyone was trying to act like nothing was going on.”

Searle offered some praise to McIntrye for catching a good game.

“Credit goes to the catcher whether it’s Tommy McIntyre or Jack Casey catching,” Searle said. “It’s really the pitcher and catcher being in sync, and Sam and Tommy were definitely in sync on Friday.”

McIntyre was quick to credit Stevens and the other Knight senior pitchers for trusting him to catch them even though he is only in ninth grade.

“Obviously it’s hard to trust a freshman when you’re used to a very experienced senior,” McIntyre said of replacing Class of ‘23 graduate Pablo Lopez behind the plate. “But I think that over the course of the year I’ve gained some trust, and I’ve definitely gotten a whole lot better from working with Sam, Nathan, John, [and the other pitchers.] He’s definitely been a great influence to me and the team.”

Searle made it clear that Stevens stands out, not just on this team but on all the ones he’s coached over a distinguished coaching career.

“Sam is really poised,” he said. “In all my years, he stands out as pretty impressive. … He has a pitcher’s mentality. He’s just a pitcher, truly a pitcher.”

GAME NOTES

McCallum and Navarro entered last week’s two game series with identical 7-1 record in district play, and the week ended with the Knights holding a two-game advantage after two shutout wins. Navarro did not score in the series. John Dietz pitched a shutout in Tuesday’s 10-0 game one Knight victory. Dietz threw six strong innings allowing no runs on five hits and two walks while striking out six.

Leadoff hitter and shortstop Nico Sanchez went four for five in the game, all singles. McIntrye was the only Knight with more than one run batting in, but the Knights pounded out 13 hits in the game.

Friday’s hitting heroes were Nagy, Dietz, McIntrye and Allison, who all had two-hit games. The first six hitters in the Knight order all had one run batted in. The Knights also stole four bases (Schavdra, Nagy, Allison and Stevens all nabbed a bag.) While the Knights pounded out 10 hits, Satterwhite said that they would have had more had the wind not been against them.

“We hit better in the first game compared to the second, but everyone credited that to the hard wind blowing in during the second game,” he said. “Sam, Tommy and Nico all had hits that were blown in by the wind to become easy outs.”

Next week’s district opponent is Travis. The Knights play at Garrison Park as the visitor on Tuesday. First pitch is at 5 p.m. Friday’s game two is at Northwest Pony Field with the first pitch at 7:30 p.m. After a series the following week against Eastside, the Knights have a non-district test in a noon game at Liberty Hill on Saturday, April 27.

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