By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP — The rain that came following the NJSIAA Group 4 baseball state championship at Veterans Park was cathartic. It cleansed the souls of the Cherokee High faithful, as 40 years of playoff frustration was washed away.
Cherokee capped off perhaps its greatest season ever on Saturday, wiping out upstart Westfield — a team in search of its first state championship in program history — with a 6-0 victory at Bob DeMeo Field. The other three state championship games scheduled for Saturday were washed out and will be played on Monday, and perhaps that’s fitting because being the only game of the day, the Chiefs had their moment in the sun — so to speak.
As has been the case all year, the Chiefs, who won their only state title prior to Saturday in 1985, got dominant pitching from the senior duo of Brett Gable and Henry Radbill. Gable, a Harvard University commit, went 5 1/3 innings, scattering five hits while striking out nine, and Radbill, a Rutgers commit, closed things out by getting the final four batters on just 19 pitches. The first batter he faced in the top of the sixth inning bounced into a double play turned by third baseman Brett Chiesa, ending the Blue Devils’ best scoring chance of the day.
Gable displayed his full arsenal of pitches, including a fastball that he runs up to about 90 miles-per-hour coupled with a very good change-up and a devastating knuckle curveball. He had at least one strikeout in every inning he pitched, including striking out the side in the fourth, and the only time he allowed multiple hits in an inning — in the top of the third — he erased both base runners with an inning-ending double play grounder to second baseman Brett Jackson.
For his efforts, Gable was awarded the coveted caution-orange blazer that the coaching staff hands out to the best player in that particular game. It’s a tradition that has become old hat for Gable, a senior lefty.
“I’ve had Gable for four years and this is his 14th jacket. I did the numbers yesterday but I didn’t want to publish them,” said Cherokee coach Marc Petragnani. “He’s the All-American kid. When he started as a freshman they called him ‘first-team All-Handsome.’ He’s a concert violinist. He’s going to Harvard. There aren’t enough accolades you can say about that kid. He battled. He wasn’t on a pitch count, but when you have Henry Radbill in the bullpen, you go to Henry Radbill.”
“I knew Gable was going to shut them down, but I knew if I had to come in during a big moment I’d be ready,” Radbill said. “I threw about 60 or 70 pitches on Monday and my arm felt great today. So, I knew I could close the door today after Gable did his job.”
Ironically Radbill, who throws in the low 90s with a wipeout slider, didn’t record a single strikeout. He got a double play to end the sixth, then a pair of groundouts and a routine flyout to end the game.
“(Catcher Mason) Kelleher wanted me to get the strikeout so he could pocket the ball, but any out mattered, obviously,” Radbill said of the final out. “After I saw the flyout I was like, ‘we did it!’ It took four years, but it’s amazing.”
Westfield ace Grant Como kept the Blue Devils in the game as the crafty lefty shut down the Chiefs’ powerful offense for three innings before Cherokee struck for a pair of runs in the bottom of the fourth on a sacrifice fly by Nathan Linden and a beautiful two-out drag bunt by Radbill that scored Jackson, who reached earlier in the inning on a single as part of a 3-for-3 day that included a double, two runs scored and a pair of RBIs. Jackson finished his junior season hitting .452 with 42 hits, 38 RBIs, nine doubles, eight home runs, 30 runs scored and 17 walks.
“He’s one of the best hitters in the state. He’s stepped up time after time after time,” Petragnani said. “I’m so proud of the development he’s made. He’s a baseball dawg. It’s all baseball, all the time. I can’t wait to see what he does as a senior, and I can’t wait to see what he does after he leaves us, but at least we get another year with him.”
It was Jackson’s two-out, two-run double over the first-base bag in the fifth that gave Cherokee a commanding 4-0 lead and all but wiped out any hope the Blue Devils had of making a comeback. Another run scored on a misplayed infield pop-up, and Radbill launched a solo home run in the sixth to cap the scoring.
“The fact that we scored first was huge. I felt comfortable with any lead, but you always want to extend,” Petragnani said. “You have to extend, because when you extend you take away hope from the other team. I don’t know that we did that, but when we can get three more runs on the board it just makes it that much more difficult against our pitching.”
“We’ve been working on this since the last out of last season, and to see it all come true is awesome. We carried over most of the guys we had from last year, and building that chemistry the last two years, we knew we had something special,” said senior shortstop Jason Brown. “It’s so fun playing with these guys. When you have pitchers on the mound like Radbill, Gable — whoever it is — it’s so much easier to go up there and hit. With the guys on the mound and the guys we have in the field, there was no doubt (we’d win this game).”
Cherokee finished the year 28-3, it’s only losses coming against Haddonfield, Eastern and Delran. The Haddonfield loss came in the second half of a Diamond Classic doubleheader after Cherokee had knocked off eventual Non-Public B state champion Gloucester Catholic earlier in the day for the Chiefs’ 20th straight win to start the season.
“We knew the Diamond Classic was going to be tough. After beating Gloucester Catholic, the next game was tough, and we knew that. And the other two games we lost, we just weren’t playing our brand of baseball. But when the playoffs came we just snapped back into it and really got going,” Radbill said. “From last year, going 16-9, to 28-3 this year, we knew we had a great group of guys who were going to help us succeed. Going undefeated was a goal, but this was our main goal. I’ll don’t know (my ring size), I’ll have to get fitted for that.”
“(Winning a state title) was the goal all season and we didn’t shy away from it, we talked about it all year,” Petragnani said. “We thought we were the best team in Group 4, we thought we were the best team in South Jersey. You go through some trials, you go through some tribulations. You have to play two games in a day sometimes. But we’re talented, we work hard, we take pride in everything we do, and today it all came to fruition.”
Cherokee won eight of its final nine games, including six straight in the state playoffs, and the team batted .333 with 28 home runs and 220 runs scored in 31 games. The Chiefs also had one of the best pitching staffs in the state, as 10 pitchers combined for a 1.48 ERA and 318 strikeouts compared to just 73 walks.
“It’s an honor of a career (to coach these guys). It was an embarrassment of riches,” Petragnani said. “You work your whole career for a team like this, that buys into everything. Like stupid gummy worms when you get on base, (post-game MVP) jackets, getting together during teachers’ conventions to go to Top Golf as a team because we know how important chemistry is. They bought into all of it, and it’s a source of pride for the rest of my life. That’s really what it will be. They were fantastic. I know more of my career is past me than in front of me, but I can’t wait until March to get back at it again and try to do this again.”
