OUR COMMUNITY

42 | MAY 26 • 2022 

I

t happened in 1998, then not again 
until 2015. Now it’s happened again.
What’s happened? The West 
Bloomfield High School baseball team has 
won a league championship.
The Lakers — guided by 26-year-old 
Coach Josh Birnberg — won the Oakland 
Activities Association White Division title 
this spring, only their third league cham-
pionship in 25 years.
“
A day I will never forgot” is how 
Birnberg describes May 16, when the 
Lakers swept a doubleheader on the road 
at Birmingham Groves to lock up the 
OAA White championship.
West Bloomfield beat Groves 6-2 and 
11-2.
Senior Josh Weiss was the winning 
pitcher in the opener, allowing two runs 
in 4⅓ innings, and he went 3-for-6 at the 
plate with two RBIs during the twin bill.
“Our league is so competitive and on 
top of that, every team in the league is a 
rival for us,” Birnberg said. “Winning the 
league has been a huge emphasis for us 
this season. To see all our hard work come 
to fruition is awesome.
“We were in the hunt for the league 

championship last year. We got a taste of 
what we could do. We knew we weren’t 
that far off.”
The league championship is particularly 
meaningful for Weiss.
“To win it as a senior, well, that means a 
lot,” he said.
West Bloomfield was 9-2 in the OAA 
White last week with one league game to 
play, at home against Groves.
North Farmington (8-4) was in sec-
ond place, followed by Groves (6-5), 
Birmingham Seaholm (4-7) and 
Farmington (1-10).
The Lakers won all of their three-game 
series in the league. They were the only 
league team to achieve that feat.
Seaholm did West Bloomfield a huge 
favor two weeks ago by taking two of 
three from North Farmington.
Farmington went 12-3 in the league last 
season and won the title. West Bloomfield 
finished in a three-way tie for second 
place with North Farmington and Groves, 
all at 9-6.
This is Birnberg’s third year as the West 
Bloomfield baseball coach, although his 
first season (2020) was wiped out by the 

COVID-19 pandemic.
He’s a former West Bloomfield baseball 
star.
He was the starting shortstop for the 
Lakers for four years, including the 2014 
team that shocked perennial power 
Birmingham Brother Rice in the districts 
and went on to advance to the regional 
finals.
He never won a league title as a West 
Bloomfield baseball player.
“We were the league champion in 2015 
... one year after I graduated,” he said.
The Lakers were 25-15 overall last sea-
son. They were 24-6 overall this season 
going into last week’s game vs. Groves.
Their biggest non-league win this 
season was a 3-0 shutout of defending 
Division 1 state champion Grand Blanc on 
the road April 20. Weiss earned a two-in-
ning save in that game.
Next on West Bloomfield’s plate is a 
Division 1 district tournament the Lakers 
are hosting June 4.
If the Lakers beat Troy in a 12:30 p.m. 
semifinal game, they’ll likely get a shot at 
Orchard Lake St. Mary’s (31-0), one of the 
country’s top high school baseball teams, 
immediately afterward in the district 
championship game.
“We’ve known all season that we could 
play St. Mary’s in the state tournament, 
but we haven’t thought about it,” Birnberg 
said. “We’ve been focusing on the task at 
hand.”
Now the task at hand is the state tour-
nament.
“It was great to win the league, but we’re 

26-year-old coach leads West Bloomfi
 eld 
baseball team to its 3rd league title in 25 years.
Diamond Dandies

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

West Bloomfield 
baseball coach 
Josh Birnberg.

JOSH BIRNBERG

Josh Weiss smacks 
an RBI single for West 
Bloomfield during the 
second game of a May 
16 doubleheader at 
Birmingham Groves.

TERANCE BOWERS

