Holiday’s one-hitter propels American Heritage back to state after blanking McCarthy

The sign as you approached the baseball field at American Heritage High School in Plantation on Monday night said it all.

“No tickets, no entry.”

And there you had it, another in one of many storied battles between rivals Archbishop McCarthy and American Heritage was on the horizon. And without an empty seat in the stands and people lined up down both the left field and right field lines, the two teams delivered another classic.

This time, a pitchers duel.

With both aces on the mound for each team, it was Heritage’s Talan Holiday who outdueled McCarthy’s Stephen Joyce as the Patriots, the defending Class 5A state champions, emerged a 2-0 winner in the Region 4-5A championship game.

The Patriots (21-10) will head back to Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers as the No. 2 seed and will take on either Tallahassee Lincoln or Green Cove Springs Clay in a state semifinal on Friday at 1 p.m. No. 1 Tampa Jesuit will take on No. 4 Wesley Chapel in the other semi.

Holiday, only a junior but who has already committed to North Carolina, showed why every major college in the country sought his services as he proved to be virtually untouchable all night.

Through five innings he had faced just one batter over the minimum (having hit McCarthy designated hitter Juan Cerra to lead off the second inning) before losing his no-hit bid when Bryan Arrieta led off the top of the sixth with an infield single in between shortstop and third base. That would be the only hit Holiday yielded as he finished his remarkably efficient 75-pitch night with a complete game one-hit shutout.

“I just went out there on the mound, tried not to overdo it and do too much and just pound the zone,” Holiday said. “My slider and my changeup were my best pitches tonight and staying ahead in the count was the biggest key. I was just comfortable out there and it just a matter of let’em hit it and watch my defense do the work. They had my back and that’s the way it all played out.”

Heritage coach Bruce Aven, who jumped back in the driver’s seat running the program (after stepping down to be the school’s athletic director a few years back) when Mike Macey suddenly and unexpectedly resigned due to health reasons right before the season, could only sit back and enjoy the ride his ace pitcher took him on.

“He’s just a very poised kid out there,” Aven said. “When he first came in as a freshman, we had to check to make sure he had a pulse.(laughing). Sometimes it was like ‘hey man, this is a big moment are you excited?’ But that’s just his personality, he’s a cool customer and you saw that out there on the mound tonight. He won’t get rattled by anything. Tonight was a great game between two great programs with a lot on the line and it was like a walk in the park for him out there.”

On a night where there was very little offense on either side, Heritage’s No. 3 hitter Luca Ramirez emerged the hero.

After the Patriots scratched out a run off Joyce in the first inning on a pair of infield singles (one by Ramirez) and a fielder’s choice, Ramirez stepped up in the last of the fourth and drilled a towering drive over the fence in right center for a home run and Holiday had all the offense he would need. Ramirez came back up in the sixth and hit one almost to the same spot as the ball hit off the fence for a two-out double.

“I went to school after my first at-bat because he gave me a first pitch fast ball that time and I took it for a called strike,” said Ramirez, a University of Tennessee commit on his home run swing and who finished with three of his team’s six hits. “I was looking for that same first pitch the next time I came up and got it. It was right out over the plate and I just got good barrel on it and away it went.”

The only time Holiday was in anything resembling a jam was in that sixth when he gave up the leadoff hit. After he made an errant throw trying to pick off Arrieta at first, Arrieta advanced to third on a ground out.

With a runner on third and only one out, he got Greg Caban to ground out to second with a drawn-in infield. After walking Joyce to put runners on the corners, that great defense Holiday referred to came through when Danny Machado hit a fly ball in foul territory that third baseman and Florida State commit R.J. Machado chased down right up against the fence for the final out.

“We had some bumpy roads at the start and the kids had to adjust to my style which was a little different but we also played a really tough challenging schedule and it helped us grow as a team,” Aven said. “We don’t lose 10 games in a season very often around here but I knew if we could just hang in there, get everybody healthy and locked in down the stretch, we would be just fine and that’s what we did.”