The Tampa Alonso baseball team has its share of big-time players this season.
Senior pitcher Ray Delphey, before he was lost for the season with a knee injury, pitcher Thomas Dorminy, who stepped into the No. 1 role, and pitcher Jose Fernandez, whose escape from Cuba in a speed boat has been well documented, have stepped up to become standouts.
Not to mention Tyler Ding, Casey Smit and Adam Pendleton, who’ve each had big hits along the way as the Ravens reached the state’s Class 6A final four.
But Ed “Nook” Williams had perhaps the biggest outing during the prep baseball season’s biggest stage.
A football player who joined the baseball team mid-season, Williams scored both winning runs in the semifinals and finals as Alonso captured its first baseball state championship in the program’s eight-year history.
Alonso advanced to the state final four in 2004 but lost in the semifinals.
This year the Ravens (30-3) got past the defending Class 6A state champion Altamonte Springs Lake Brantley 1-0 in the semifinal round.
Offensively, Alonso only mustered two hits, but one of them - Pendleton’s second-inning triple - proved huge. Williams, inserted for Pendleton as a pinch runner, took over from there. And when Joe Lorenzo dribbled a grounder to second base, Williams scored when Lake Brantley’s infielder botched the throw to first.
It would be enough as Dorminy led the way with a complete-game, three-hit, 10-strikeout performance.
A day later, facing Miami Columbus in the state final, the Ravens took a 2-0 lead in the first when Ding and Dorminy both scored on errors.
But Columbus came right back, scoring three runs off Fernandez in the bottom of the first to take a 3-2 lead.
Fernandez locked down Columbus from that point, retiring 18 straight batters until he left the contest in the seventh inning.
Meanwhile, Alonso tied the score in the fifth inning when Smit and Matt Brandy hit back-to-back doubles.
An inning later, Williams was at it again.
Pinch-running, Williams stole second and third base. And when he dangled himself a little too far down the third base line, the Columbus catcher went for the pickoff but sailed the ball into left field.
That allowed Williams to trot home, scoring what would be the winning run.
Alonso, which also won the prestigious Tony Saladino Tournament in Tampa during spring break, becomes the first Hillsborough County school to win a state championship since 2001 when Tampa Catholic accomplished pulled it off.
The Ravens became the first public school in the county to win a title since Tampa Plant in 1988.
