Fall BB season wrapping up time for learning, developing

The 2023 MSHSAA Fall Baseball season wraps up this week with the final rounds of the Fall Baseball Tournament at Bernie High School on Monday and Tuesday.

Though records are kept throughout the abbreviated autumn season each year, the true purpose of playing the 15- to 20-game seasons is mostly centered on learning and preparing for the all-important spring season.

“We definitely change (our training) up in the fall,” veteran Bernie baseball coach Marcus Massey said earlier this fall. “The first half of a practice is totally different than what we’ll do any other time of year.”

The Mules are wrapping up a 14-4 fall season in this week’s tournament at Bernie.

Bernie will face Bloomfield (8-6) in one semifinal of the Fall Tournament while Campbell (9-4) and Senath-Hornersville (12-4) battle in the other semifinal. Both games are at Bernie and start at 4 p.m.

The two winners will play in the championship game at Bernie on Tuesday at 4 p.m. while the Monday losers will compete in the third-place game at the same place and time.

Aside from a three-game skid in the mid-season, the Mules have improved and gotten better with each passing week this fall.

Massey’s team is currently riding a six-game win streak into Monday’s semifinal round of their own tournament.

“If you look back at one stretch,” Massey said, “we played seven games in seven days, and we went 4-3 in that stretch. In those seven games, there were no ‘gimmes.’”

He explained that in the spring, the focus is on winning every game, sometimes of which there are as many as four games in a week.

In the fall season, the emphasis is on player development, both skill-wise and mentally.

“We’ll spend the first hour of practice, where everything is working on fundamentals,” Massey said. “Fundamental breakdown of pulling ground balls, fundamentals on fly balls, and fundamentals on throwing.

“In the spring, we’re preparing them for conference opponents or District opponents, and the next gameplan. In the fall, we slow it all backdown.”

Advance coach Neil Johnson has done nothing BUT instruct this fall, as his Hornets have 12 freshmen and sophomores on its 16-player roster (with no seniors).

“I’m starting about five freshmen a game,” Johnson said recently.

The Hornets (3-9) will close their season with a home game on Monday against Twin Rivers (12-9) at 4:30 p.m.

“We’re very young,” Johnson said. “Fall ball, for me, is not all about wins and losses. It is about learning and getting better.”

There is no shortage of fall baseball programs throughout Southeast Missouri, with the abundance of smaller, non-football-playing schools far outnumbering the larger schools with football.

That opportunity gives all of the athletes, particularly those like the Advance kids, who desperately need experience on the diamond, repetitions that will pay dividends in the spring.

“That is the thing about small schools,” Johnson said, “we don’t have football programs, or anything like that, but when you have 16 boys show up for that first fall practice, and you don’t really know who is going to show up, (this opportunity) makes that all worthwhile.”

Massey was in the same boat as Johnson, to a degree, though his returning Mules have A LOT more experience on the diamond.

Bernie only has three seniors on this fall’s roster, to go with seven freshmen.

“We literally start from basic one,” Massey said of his teaching. “We have new freshmen (seven of them) coming in, and they have never done anything. So, it is a whole new world for them. We just build up every day. Our goal is to get one percent better every day.

“If we lose a few games, but we’re getting better every day, then it is what it is. We’re going to do some things (differently), and I’m going to do some things, and we’re going to throw some lineups out there where we might lose because of it. But we don’t have that option in the spring because there is too much on the line.”