The story ended the way it was supposed to—with mighty Lowell winning and lowly Mission losing, with tradition intact and history upheld—but not before the Bears put up a fight.
In a matchup of the league’s haves and have-nots, the Cardinals ended Mission’s season and advanced to the semifinals of the San Francisco playoffs with a 5-4 win. For Mission fans, the score seems disappointing at first, a successful season coming to a bitter end with a tight loss in the playoffs.
But this was not just any game. This was Lowell and Mission.
This was Lowell, the league’s defending champions. This was Mission, the league’s perpetual bottom dwellers.
This was Lowell, a high-profile team from a high-income neighborhood, a group that traveled to Portland and San Diego on road trips this season, where out-of-town tournaments served as tune-ups for league play. This was Mission, which asks its players to hop a couple buses just so they can practice on a patch of grass and a pile of dirt that can hardly be called a baseball field.
This was Lowell, with a combined varsity and JV roster of more than 30 players. This was Mission, which sometimes barely manages to field a complete team of nine.
This was Lowell, full of tradition and talent. This was Mission, full of effort and heart.
And for one full game on Wednesday, you could barely tell the teams apart.
Mission battled and bullied its way to a near upset of historical proportions, almost earning what coach Dan Grossman said would have been the program’s biggest win since its city title in 1990. Not only had no one on Mission’s team ever beaten Lowell, but they had never even come within 10 runs. The last eight times the schools had played, Lowell won by an average score of 16-1.
Not Wednesday.
“This was the best we’ve ever played in my entire four years here,” said senior shortstop Mark Bradford. “I’ve never been more proud about the way we played.”
It was a game full of moments that will etch themselves in the minds of many, images to be summoned years from now when they look back on the way the season ended—and the way it almost kept going.
There was Bradford sprinting around the bases, announcing to the Cardinals and the crowd that Mission was here to play with a second-inning home run that tied the game at one. There was Prithu Joshi squeezing two RBIs out of a sacrifice bunt, then safely stealing home on a botched suicide squeeze.
There was Ryan Mullaney’s father, watching every minute of the game except for his son’s at-bats, when he had to get up and wander around the park, too nervous to look as his son came up with a couple late-inning hits. There was centerfielder Jonathan Sanchez laying his body on the line for two separate diving catches, both fit for a Sportscenter highlight, then exploding to his feet to the cheers of his teammates.
“In a game like this, I knew that if it comes my way, I have to catch it,” he said. “I just did what I had to do.”
So, too, did the Cardinals. After a Chris Chen triple drove in two runs to tie the game at four, and a sixth-inning Oscar Gales-Kent single put Lowell in the lead, the team with the tradition did what they were supposed to do. They ended the Bears season. And for four Mission players—sparkplug Bradford, rock solid Mullaney, steady presence Ronnie Herbert and mercurial talent David Osborne—the Cardinals ended their high-school careers.
“They’re our four best players,” Mission coach Dan Grossman said, “and they left everything out there on the field. They will be sorely missed.”
After the loss and after the hugs and after the tears—ones small enough to be erased but too big to be ignored—those seniors changed out of their uniforms and handed them over to Grossman, who tucked them away, storing them for the next generation. And then they lingered, talking and laughing and looking ahead to college, where they hope to continue playing the game they love.
“I’m just going to miss playing with these guys,” Bradford said, his voice barely raising above a whisper. “I’m going to miss being a part of this team.”
As a few teammates continued gathering their equipment and talking with friends, Bradford took a couple steps out onto the turf, placed his hand on the fence, and looked at the empty diamond. For a moment, the omnipresent smile slipped away from his face, and he looked out onto the field where he had nearly made school history, where he had nearly pulled off a shocker, where he had nearly, so nearly, kept his career alive for at least one more game.
He lowered his head, turned around and rejoined his teammates. The smile returned.
Time to move on.
It is interesting how this article juxtaposed the sports team of Mission High and Lowell: “In a matchup of the league’s haves and have-nots…This was Lowell, full of tradition and talent. This was Mission, full of effort and heart.” Way to go Mission!