Best of Three

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ABOVE LEFT: The Frankel Jewish

ABOVE RIGHT: Daniel Bernstein

The Frankel Jewish Academy baseball team put an accomplishment on its resume this season that it hadn’t been able to do since 2005.

The Jaguars won a Catholic League division championship.

The Intersectional 2 division had just three teams in it and each of the teams played only four division games, but Frankel coach Joe Bernstein said that doesn’t take the luster off the Jaguars’ title.

“No one can take championship away from us,” he said.

The Jaguars went 4-0 in division games, sweeping two games from Detroit Cristo Rey (2-2) and Detroit Loyola (0-4).

Frankel’s short path to the division championship isn’t unusual for the Catholic League.

“The Catholic League has several three-team divisions, and they’re in many sports,” said Frankel athletic director Rick Dorn.

There’s more to the baseball Jaguars’ 2022 story than winning the division title.

After starting the season 0-4 and 1-5, they finished 6-8-1.

“We were playing our best baseball as we headed toward the end of the season,” Bernstein said.

The season stopped May 13 after a tie with Bloomfield Hills Roeper because Frankel juniors and seniors went on the school’s annual spring trip to Israel.

The Jaguars didn’t play again until June 3, exactly three weeks after the Roeper tie, when they lost 15-0 to Lutheran Westland in a Division 4 district semifinal game at Plymouth Christian Academy.

“We looked like a team that hadn’t played in three weeks,” Bernstein said. “We only had two practices before that game.

“The trip to Israel was fabulous, of course, but if we had played a few games during the time we were off, I think we would have gotten to 10 wins for the season.”

Bernstein said his team faced more than its share of adversity this season, but persevered.

“Injuries and illness always hit you during a season, but they hit us the worst times this season,” he said.

Through it all, Bernstein said, the Jaguars had a “never-say-die” attitude, never complained, refused to give up and showed great mental toughness.

Perhaps the grittiest of what Bernstein called a gritty bunch was junior catcher Ethan Gray.

“The weather this season was terrible. It went from 20 to 80 degrees. But Ethan never asked out,” Bernstein

said. “And he was our best hitter at the end of the season. He has the heart of a champion.”

Senior Charlie Tobias was happy to play this season.

He missed his sophomore season because the Michigan High School Athletic Association shut down spring sports after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then he missed his junior season because of an elbow injury.

“There was no way I was going to miss this season,” Tobias said. “I wanted to spend my last season of organized baseball with my friends.”

Tobias hit .367 this season. He pitched in four games and had a 4.30 ERA.

He’s headed to Michigan State University to study social work.

Senior Benji Schmeltz (.457), sophomore Ryan Schmeltz (.429), senior Daniel Bernstein (.395), Tobias (.367), junior Merrick Michaelson (.366) and Gray (.353) were Frankel’s leading hitters.

Benji Schmeltz also led the team in hits (16) and runs (16) and tied for the top spot with Daniel Bernstein in doubles (four) and RBIs (16).

Daniel Bernstein is the son of the coach. Son and father shared an emotional moment at the district semifinal game just before Daniel’s final at-bat for Frankel.

“I talked about how this is something we’ve done every spring and summer together for 13-14 years. Spend time on the baseball diamond. And now it’s coming to an end,” Joe Bernstein said.

Daniel Bernstein will be attending the University of Michigan.

Also on the Frankel baseball roster this season were senior Matthew Kay, juniors Coby Robbins and Ethan Baker, sophomores Noah Hack, Elliot Salama, Ryan Rubin and Harry Shavesky, and freshman Caleb Starr.

Joel Fealk was the team’s assistant coach.

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