Somehow the Healdsburg High Greyhounds baseball team made it through an entire season, including an NCS Div 4 playoff run, without hitting a home run. Hayden Mariani hit two triples and eight doubles, and Nova Perrill II and Xander Harms each slugged nine doubles, but no one hit a four-bagger.
It took the Healdsburg Prune Packers less than two innings to start sending balls over the Rec Park fence. Center fielder Jonathan Kim of the University of Michigan slammed a high fly over the right field fence with two runners on, and from that point on the power-hitting Prune Packers have made hitting homers part of their game plan.
Judging from the scores, it’s a plan that’s working. The Pack won the season opener on Friday, June 6, against the South Bay Storm, 8-5. They won again the next day, 22-1, against the same team. On Sunday they claimed a new victim with a 13-5 victory over the California Red Tails.
So far not only Kim but Jake McCoy, Jacob French, JC Osorio-Agard, Logan Sutter and Antonelli Savattere have hit home runs. But they probably won’t be the only ones as the season continues for the next two months.
“We have nine position players to open up the season as the other seven hitters that we have are in super regionals right now,” said coach Joey Gomes before the opening night game. The other seven he referred to are the collegiate players whose teams are in division finals across the country.
“But certainly the star power is going to be here tonight,” Gomes said. “A couple of guys to just highlight and look at would be Logan Sutter—he was first team all-Big 10, and he’s getting a lot of draft consideration. He hit over .380 for Purdue.
“The next guy would be Cade Campbell, who is going to be our starting shortstop. Cade was an all-ACC player,” he continued, referring to the American Athletic Conference of 13 member teams. “Then there’s Jacob French, who hit .380 for Cal this summer. So those three guys right there are not bad for our lineup tonight.”
In all of the three games thus far, those bangers confirmed the dominance of the Prune Packers offense as they enter the second year of Pacific Empire League, the six-team association of West Coast wooden-bat collegiate clubs.
With the rest of the Prune Packers set to arrive in the next 10 days or so, Gomes expects to have the team “locked and loaded” for the coming PEL season, which starts with the first conference game on Wednesday, June 11, against the Solano Mudcats.
The next league game takes place almost a week later, June 17, against the Humboldt Crabs, another venerable community team in Northern California that joined the new PEL. Nearly all games in June, including non-league as well as PEL games, are played at Rec Park.
The Packers won the first PEL season with a 3-game series victory over the second-place Lincoln Potters last August. It was their fourth league championship in a row, after a three-peat in the California Collegiate League, 2021-23.
If there’s such a thing as a five-peat, Healdsburg baseball fans stand a good chance to witness it this year.
Follow the Prune Packers at prunepackers.org/schedule.
