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