Fort Myers’ Hammond Stadium is one of those locations with more history than its small size would imply. For a few days every May, it serves as the hub of Florida high school baseball, a sport that, if you haven’t noticed, operates at a level of drama and execution that surpasses much of professional baseball. The majority of the year, it serves as the Minnesota Twins’ spring training facility. That was brought home to me this past week.
Three games for the championship. Three entirely distinct tales. There is one thing that unites them all: this is how the sport appears when players are still participating in it.
With bases loaded and a tie game, South Walton High School from the Florida Panhandle won the Class 3A championship with a suicide squeeze bunt. This type of play has virtually disappeared from professional baseball but endures in prep baseball like a rare species shielded from the analytics revolution. The runner scored. The season came to an end. The field was crowded with children. In the history of the program, South Walton had never taken home a state baseball title. They had placed second in both 2024 and 2025. The 6-5 victory over North Broward Prep was the kind of event that truly qualifies as a “finally” moment.
It’s an odd feeling in 2026 to watch a high school player lay down a squeeze bunt to win a state championship; it’s more like relief than sadness. Not everyone has embraced the launch angle era. The children of the Panhandle are still proficient in bunting.
Then there was St. Johns Country Day in Class 1A, where the Spartans defeated Orangewood Christian 6-2 thanks to a Florida State commit named Brayden Harris pitching a full game on one day’s rest and striking out ten batters. With a career total of 165 this year and 526 over five varsity seasons, Harris finished the season 12-2 with his second consecutive Florida strikeout title. This total reportedly surpasses the high school strikeout record held by a young Nolan Ryan. It is undeniable that Harris is the type of prep pitcher who forces scouts to take out their phones in the third inning and forget to put them away, whether that is astounding, apocryphal, or perhaps both. In the sixth inning, he also hit the game-winning RBI single, which seemed to be necessary as well.
Buchholz was another. For the third year in a row, the Gainesville school visited Hammond Stadium in an attempt to win the Class 6A championship. They departed without one for the third year in a row. This time, it was a 5-1 loss to Broward County’s St. Thomas Aquinas, which came after two defeats to the same program. It begs the question of what it means to be the top team in your classification for four consecutive years without winning a trophy. The Bobcats had their moments, including a deep drive to left that died at the warning track and a leadoff runner reached in three straight innings, but Mauricio Clement’s two-out fly ball that narrowly avoided center fielder Angel Irizarry in the fifth inning changed everything, and Buchholz was never able to regain it.
Chris Malphurs, the coach, was forthright about it afterwards. Too many errors for a program of St. Thomas Aquinas’ caliber. Just two hits. a base running error that could have altered the outcome. “When you only have two hits, that’s a bit of a surprise offensively,” he replied. He didn’t offer any justifications. The most instructive aspect of Buchholz baseball is probably that restraint rather than the actual loss. All four pitchers who had significant innings are among the nine seniors who have left. It is truly difficult to be the best four-year class in program history when they graduate. Four are accepted into Division I programs: Drew Almond to Stetson, Reed Thomas to Florida Gulf Coast, and Aidan Kastensmidt and Dion Wilburn to Jacksonville.
Standing in the Fort Myers sun and watching May baseball in Florida gives me the impression that professional baseball’s issues, such as dead bat philosophy, pace of play, and the disappearance of anything resembling small ball, haven’t quite reached this point. Squeeze plays continue to occur. After their most recent game, the seniors are still crying. Coaches continue to say things like “one of these days it’ll go our way.” All of this is quietly absorbed at Hammond Stadium as the Twins prepare to return in February.
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