As the ‘champagne’ dried on the black trash bags that lined the floor of the State College Spikes’ clubhouse, manager Johnny Rodriguez turned around, gave one last look to the scene and smiled before walking to the locker room.
Okay, perhaps it wasn’t champagne proper. It may have been a combination of sparkling cider and other faux-celebratory liquids, but the taste was the same. Familiar. Satisfying.
Earned.
The State College Spikes won the 2016 New York Penn League championship after a thrilling 2-1 victory over the Hudson Valley Renegades on Sept. 12. It was the club’s second title in the last three years, and their third championship appearance in the last four.
The game itself was a familiar grinding Spikes win. After falling down 1-0 after a rough first inning from starter Jordan DeLorenzo, the Spikes took the lead on an absolute no-doubt home run from Danny Hudzina in the bottom of the second.
That was all the scoring the Spikes would need. One of the best offenses in the NYPL could collect only three hits on this night — two from Hudzina — but with gutsy pitching performances, that was all that they would need.
Though the Spikes’ offense was subdued, the crowd on hand was anything but in the top of the ninth. As left-hander Brady Bowen mowed down three would-be Renegades base runners in succession by striking out the side, a crescendo of joy erupted that would be felt well into the night.
And that is when the real story of this winning night — this winning season — begins.
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Johnny Rodriguez is a man of faith.
That much is obvious. It has been obvious all season long. God and faith are frequent topics for Rodriguez, and the constant presence of a well-worn Bible on his desk speaks to the path that Rodriguez walks daily.
The pages are frayed. Multiple bookmarks dot the landscape. An accompanying notepad helps Johnny boil down the key lessons that he imparts to his group.
This is not his first rodeo. Johnny has won championships before. They have come at different levels and locales, but Rodriguez’s faith has been the one constant.
I made a point to watch Johnny as he celebrated with his team on the field after the final out.
He’s a small man. All of 5-foot-something. His gray hairs are wispy and outnumbered more and more by the day. The State College Spikes — to a man — do not see him that way.
To them, he is a fountain of baseball knowledge that has impacted them in the short time that they are all together. He is their biggest cheerleader and their most well-meaning critic.
But, after celebrating briefly with his players, I noticed him jog gingerly back to the dugout. He fished out a phone, and began typing out a text message with the steady hands of a man who has seen it all in his baseball journey.
I asked Rodriguez who he was texting.
“My prayer warriors,” Rodriguez told me. “My family. Before the game, I said, ‘Let’s go, prayer warriors. Pray!’ … I believe that God smiles on you if you walk with him.
“He’s smiling on me, trust me,” Rodriguez continued. “I feel like I’m in heaven. This is my third one, and it gets more and more exciting.
“The Lord has blessed me.”
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The affection that Rodriguez has for his players has been obvious all season. On this night, they gave it right back to him, patiently waiting for their manager to make his entrance before the first drops of sparkling cider hit the air.
Chants of “Johnny! Johnny!” filled the air and demanded a memorable entrance.
After literally sliding feet-first into the clubhouse celebration and getting doused, Rodriguez bounded back up — in a spry manner that no 60 year old should have — and led his team in a brief prayer before getting back to celebrating.
For the record, his son Sean, a major-league utilityman for the Pittsburgh Pirates — chimed in on Twitter to critique his father’s sliding technique.
“Not bad for a 60-year-old man,” Sean tweeted.
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It was a chaotic scene that my words can’t do justice to, but a strong sense of family prevailed through the celebration. To hear St. Louis Cardinals director of player development Gary LaRocque tell it, the atmosphere that Rodriguez and others have built breeds success.
“From start to finish, (The Spikes) have been right in there. The support system they’ve given the kids, it really pays off,” LaRocque told me.
Rodriguez did indeed know his club inside and out. When it came time to bring in a reliever to close out the championship game, Rodriguez knew who he wanted.
“I knew that Bowen was going to have his best stuff,” Rodriguez told reporters after the celebrations began to wind down. “Darin (Marrerro, Spikes pitching coach) said, ‘(Eric) Carter get ready,’ and I said, ‘No, Bowen is going to finish this.’”
The manager’s faith in the young player did not go unnoticed.
“It meant a lot,” Bowen said when asked about Rodriguez’s choice to bring him in for the biggest game of his career-to-date. “It’s awesome that someone actually believes in me enough to put me in that position.
“I take pride in that.”
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Through faith and slow heartbeats, Johnny Rodriguez got an ever-changing group of young men to come together and move toward one goal.
The nature of minor league baseball dictates that many of these players will not play on the same team again. The standouts of this year’s club — Tommy Edman, Vince Jackson and Jeremy Martinez, to name a few — will likely move on in their baseball journey, reaching for the next level, the next milestone, the next step toward a shot at the bigs.
Others may not. Others still may take a long time to get there, if at all.
Rodriguez knows that. But that does not stop him from instilling what many in the Spikes’ organization see as The Cardinals Way.
“We talk a lot about makeup,” Rodriguez told me. “We don’t have the best team, but we have guys who want to win and that’s why we have guys in the big leagues.”
