Upset sends Germantown to state

Germantown — There were high expectations for the 2009 Germantown baseball team, but a great many things went wrong, leading to a disappointing season.
Chief among those difficult things were the "Tommy John" elbow surgery that took out ace pitcher Tyler Thicke for the entire summer and the frightening, almost fluke on-field injury that almost cost shortstop Jordan Infield one of his kidneys when he accidently elbowed himself diving for a pop-up.
As a result of football jerseys those unfortunate incidents, Thicke, with his elbow braced and hinged at an awkward 90-degree angle, and Infield, with a carefully placed pad covering his still healing kidney, had a lot of time to sit and talk in the dugout over that long summer.
A lot of the talk was about the future, Infield said. A future that reached a happy, stunning, impossible-to-believe high point on Saturday, when the Warhawks, behind the strong pitching of Thicke, upset top seed and area rival Menomonee Falls, 2-1, in the WIAA sectional final on the Germantown "Dream Field."
"Tyler and I would talk about a moment like this," Infield said. "Now, it's actually here. It's unbelievable. There we were, hurt, and now, here we are."
It's especially unbelievable for Thicke, the great promising athlete, the four-year letter-winner, who threw a five-inning no-hitter at Grafton as a freshman in 2007. He still had the Division 1 scholarship offer (contingent on performance) from Indiana in his pocket, but he didn't know how the summer of 2010 would go since his elbow was still recovering.
Slow, steady progress
Coach Parrish Wagner, himself a former pitcher, was going to play it cautiously with Thicke. The only promise about when he would pitch this summer, was "the first game of regionals."
It turned out to be a little more than that, but only a little more, as Thicke had to get comfortable on the mound again. It was one inning a week, then three, then five.
"Everything was going so slowly," said Thicke. "One inning here; two innings there. I'd tell him (Wagner), 'I'm ready, I'm ready,' but he built me up slowly and, as it turned out, perfectly. All I have now is a little soreness, which I expected."
Thicke won that Steelers jersey regional game for Germantown, 4-3, over Sussex Hamilton on July 20.
But with Thicke never having thrown more than once a week all summer, Wagner remained cagey about when the star lefty would throw in the all-important sectional.
The heavy rains that flooded many in the area July 22 helped Wagner out in that regard as they had one beneficial effect. They postponed the sectional that Germantown was hosting by a day, allowing Thicke to come back on a somewhat normal three days rest as opposed to the short, two days rest that would have been the normal schedule.
"All I knew," Wagner said, "was that he was going to get the ball. I just didn't know when."
But he still would be pitching for the second time in a week for the first time all summer.
Keller comes up big
And there wouldn't have been any second time for Thicke had it not been for sophomore Brian Keller.
Keller, who started the year on junior varsity before a call-up three weeks into the varsity season, and who still didn't have his name listed on the Germantown sectional roster, was Wagner's gambler's choice to throw the sectional semifinal earlier in the day against Slinger.
"I have a great deal of confidence in Brian," Wagner said.
And Keller bore that confidence out. Nerves got to Keller and the Warhawks in the first inning, with two errors and the only two runs of the game for the Owls.
But Keller persevered, shutting out the Owls (17-13) the rest of the way, putting down 15 in a row at one point as the Warhawks, not known for their stellar defense all season, suddenly made play after play behind him. Wagner could not stop talking about the effort of senior first baseman Tony Farrand, who had assists or putouts on at least 12 plays in the game.
Germantown tied the score in the seventh on a Jimmy Doedens sacrifice fly and won it in the eighth on an Eric Brown single over a drawn-in infield with the bases loaded.
"This feels great," said Keller. "I had Chargers jersey such good help from my team behind me, and I have a lot of confidence in my defense now. My job is to just throw strikes and then let them do the work."
With that victory and Keller's effort, the Warhawks now had their best chance at beating their high-powered rivals to the south, Menomonee Falls (33-11), the sectional's top seed, in order to earn their first state tournament berth since 1986.
They had Thicke on the maximum rest he was going to get, facing the moment of a lifetime.
A few days before the sectional, Thicke admitted that the team had been playing a "little rough" these last few weeks with errors and other mistakes. In other words, doing what Wagner had been lamenting most of the summer:
"Not finishing games."
Thicke regains form
But also in that conversation, Thicke talked about how things were coming together for the team and how he felt comfortable with his change-up and what he called his "mystery pitch," a combination knuckleball/split-finger fastball.
"Hitters really aren't used to that," he said.
That much was evident, as Falls didn't have a single extra-base hit in the final.
Right before the Sussex Hamilton game, Thicke said that Indiana called to wish him luck.
"They're very nfl throwback jerseys excited about me coming down there," he said, "and I'm anxious to get there in the fall and prove myself (in order to earn possible scholarship money)."
But after Saturday, he, and the rest of the Warhawks don't have to prove anything to themselves anymore.