Sentinel photo by ERIN THOMPSON Mifflin County Babe Ruth League has a place on the Liberty Bell sculpture in front of the Mifflin County courthouse.

By Ray Wilde

Sports correspondent

There was a lot of baseball news coming out of Midd-West High School and the Beaver Springs Babe Ruth team.

Griffin Paige has announced that he is transferring to West Virginia University from Wright State in Dayton, Ohio. Paige graduated from Midd-West High School.

Last year in the NCAA Division 1 baseball tournament, Paige was the winning pitcher as Wright State upset the number one seed, Vanderbilt.

Paige played for Beaver Springs in the Mifflin County Babe Ruth League and was on the 13-year-old All-Star team that finished third in the state in 2018. He also played on Beaver Springs’ league championship team in 2020, the only league title for Beaver Springs.

Another former Midd-West and Beaver Springs player has gotten off to a good start in his college career. Caden Wolfley hit. 322 as a redshirt freshman for Charleston (South Carolina ) Southern and was named to the all-freshman team in the Big South Conference.

In recent years, there were two other players who played in the Mifflin County Babe Ruth League that were named to All Freshman teams from NCAA Division 1 leagues, Ben Yoder (Belleville), Patriot League (Bucknell) and Elliot Searer (Strodes Mills, McVeytown), Big Ten (Penn State).

Wolfley was a member of the Mifflin County Babe Ruth 13-year-old All-Star team that won the 2019 Pennsylvania state title and finished third in the Mid-Atlantic Regionals. Wolfley was also a member of the 2020 Beaver Springs team that won the league title.

Braxton Smith, who just graduated, will play baseball next year at King’s College in Scranton. Smith was a three-time All-Star for Mifflin County and was a member of the 2022 14-year-old team that went to the World Series in Williston, North Dakota, and finished fifth in the country.

Smith had the key hit in extra innings in the regional final in 2022 at Milroy against Broomall-Newtown.

———-

Mifflin County High School had one of its best seasons ever (fall, winter, spring) this past April-May.

The girls softball team won the District 6 5A championship. The baseball team won the Commonwealth Division of the Mid-Penn League and then went on to claim the title in District 6, 6A championship. Mifflin County advanced to the state playoffs (Sweet 16) and lost to Butler 2-1. Butler lost to Neshamity (Levittown) in the state finals, 7-3.

The Mifflin County boys track and field team placed fourth in the 3A meet. Mifflin County had 24 points as it had two firsts, Carter Smith in the 1600 and first in the 3200 relay. Wyatt Kauffman was fifth in the 800.

Other team results were girls 3A champions, JP McCaskey (Lancaster), 40 points; boys 3A champions, La Salle College, Philadelphia, 32 points; girls 2A champions, Shenago, 40 points; boys 2A champion, Quaker Valley, 47 points; (Juniata was sixth with 22 points).

——–

With the upcoming July 4 semiquincentennial celebration, it should be noted that the Mifflin County Babe Ruth League has a place on the Liberty Bell sculpture in front of the Mifflin County courthouse. The Liberty Bell depicts different parades through the years. On August 20, 2016, there was a parade from Strodes Mills to the Armagh Memorial Field in Milroy to honor the returning Babe Ruth national 13-year-old champions.

Mifflin County won the title in Ottumwa, Iowa on August 18 at 8:11 p.m. Central Standard Time as it beat Hawaii for the national title, 5-3.

To see the part honoring the Babe Ruth League, you must park your car and look on the back of the bell.

I wanted to thank the local artist Jennifer Hartzler for including the Mifflin County Babe Ruth League as part of the all-time history of Mifflin County.

On July 2, 2022, I wrote an article on the sixth anniversary of the national championship.

Here is how I ended the story:

On a personal note, I took the train from Harrisburg to Ottumwa, Iowa. The first stop was Lewistown. My ego got the best of me, so I stood in between the cars to see if anyone would recognize me.

Then something happened that was like a scene from a 1940s movie. Someone on the platform yelled, ‘Where are you going?’ and I yelled back, ‘I’m going to Iowa.’ And then the train slowly pulled out of the station.

When I returned 10 days later (on the train) on a Saturday morning, the national championship parade was well underway.