28 | JULY 4 • 2024
J
N
T
he Frankel
Jewish Academy
baseball team
won the Catholic League
Intersectional 2 Division
championship this spring
while riding in a bus.
But that didn’t matter to
the Jaguars.
“We’ll take a champion-
ship any way we can get
it. We’re not complaining.
Another banner is going
up in the gym,” said senior
first baseman Harry
Shaevsky.
“But we were disap-
pointed, too,” Shaevsky
said. “We preferred to win
the championship on the
field, not by forfeit. We
were so amped up for the
game.”
The game Shaevsky
referred to was against
Detroit Cristo Rey. Frankel
was 2-1 and Cristo Rey
was 3-0 in the three-team
division heading to their
May 22 showdown for the
championship at Cristo
Rey.
Frankel needed to beat
Cristo Rey by at least seven
runs May 22 to win the
tie-breaker for the division
championship.
Why seven runs? Because
Cristo Rey beat Frankel by
six runs (9-3) when they
met May 2 on Frankel’s
home diamond at Total
Sports in Wixom in “easily
the worst game we played
all season,” said first-
year Jaguars coach James
Swanson.
Ten minutes before
Frankel arrived at Cristo
Rey for the showdown,
Frankel athletic director
Robert Walker got word to
the team that Cristo Rey
was forfeiting the game
because of a scheduling
problem.
A forfeit win goes
as a 7-0 score in high
school baseball. Mission
accomplished for the
Jaguars.
“We were confident we
could beat Cristo Rey in
that game,” Shaevsky said.
“We under-estimated them
the first time we played
them. They weren’t very
good in previous years.
They took it to us in the
May 2 game. They slapped
us in the face. But it was a
wake-up call for the rest of
the season.”
Frankel won its next
five games, including the
forfeit, after its loss to
Cristo Rey before losing
a 3-2 heartbreaker May
23 to Whitmore Lake in a
Division 4 district game on
a walk-off wild pitch. The
loss dropped the Jaguars’
season record to 7-4.
Swanson also was
confident Frankel could
beat Cristo Rey in the
rematch.
“I told the kids before
the game that we’re a better
team than they are and all
we needed to do to win was
play our game,” he said. “I
also cautioned them that
they didn’t want to go out
there thinking they had to
win by seven runs. If we
played well, that would
happen.”
The Jaguars beat Detroit
Loyola 15-0 on May 14 and
17-4 on May 16 in their
other two division games,
setting up the showdown
game with Cristo Rey that
never happened.
Swanson took the Frankel
baseball coaching job in
February, replacing Joe
Bernstein, who resigned
after nine years in the
3-PEAT!
The Frankel Jewish Academy baseball
team wins its third straight
Catholic League Intersectional 2
Division championship.
STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The Frankel baseball
team poses for a
selfie-style team
photo after its final
game of the season.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Frankel baseball coach James Swanson shakes hands with
Elliot Salama during the Jaguars’ Senior Day festivities.
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