Mason Palmer (Photo by Noah Clooten)
CASSELTON — As Mason Palmer paced off the mound, pumping his fists, the first teammate to celebrate with him was his brother Max.
The Palmer twins leapt in the air. They bumped chests. The rest of Mason’s teammates surrounded him until he ran out of room by the first-base dugout.
“Oh man, it’s insane,” he said. “It didn’t even feel real.”
Palmer could finally exhale. He’d just gotten a swing and a miss on a high fastball to finish off an ultra baseball rarity: a perfect game.
“Been doing this for 17 years at the Legion level, and that’s the first one of those that I’ve been blessed to have a part of,” Devils Lake coach Brent Luehring said.
It was also Palmer’s first no-hitter or perfect game at this level. He dominated to the tune of a 0.93 ERA during the regular season, then brought his best stuff Friday night at Valley Process Technologies Field. He retired all 21 batters he faced, 11 via the strikeout. He threw 87 pitches.
His effort led the Storm (29-9) to a 6-0 defeat of Fargo Post 2 (30-9) in the second round of the Class A Legion state tournament.
“We’re feeling great now,” Palmer said. “We’ve just gotta get our bats on a roll and see if we can get the job done.”
For the first five innings, it was the bats — or lack thereof — that kept things interesting. Fargo right-hander Finn Bergseth kept the Storm off the board through the first three innings. Devils Lake had a runner reach second base in two of those innings, but Bergseth struck out four batters along the way.
“He was locating everything well,” Storm left fielder Will Heilman said. “And we were kind of getting ourselves out on bad pitches.”
Bergseth, though, started losing the zone a little bit in the fourth. After walks to Trason Beck and Hunter Remmick, Heilman came up with two on and one out. On a 1-1 count, he lifted a ball to right field that initially looked like it might be caught, but it carried over outfielder Jack Joyce’s head for an RBI double.
The Storm were on the board.
Heilman said his approach was to “just get a pitch for me to drive, and not get myself out on anything that I can’t hit hard.”
It worked. But after the Storm left two in scoring position, Palmer still had a tight game to work with.
Six of his 11 strikeouts — and five of the first seven — were of the looking variety. He was landing his breaking stuff from the beginning.
“The curveball looked like it fooled them,” Palmer said. “They took a lot of curveballs for strikes.”
He got through the first three innings on an efficient 34 pitches. He struck out the side in the fourth inning, with a called third strike to finish each one.
At one point, he struck out five in a row.
“He just kept getting ahead of guys and locating both pitches, and it was pretty special,” Luehring said.
Joyce, swinging on the first pitch of the sixth inning, tapped one softly past the mound. It was probably the biggest threat to Palmer’s perfect game thus far. But Max Palmer, the second baseman, made his first of two plays in the inning to help his brother throw a 1-2-3 frame.
The perfect game was getting more real.
“It was in the back of my head, for sure,” Mason Palmer said. “I tried not to think about it. I only started thinking about it in probably like the sixth inning. I was like, ‘Oh, this could happen.’ But I tried not to think about it as much as I can.”
As is baseball tradition, the dugout stayed silent.
“I knew he had a no-hitter; I didn’t know he had a perfect game,” Heilman said. “But I was trying not to say anything to jinx him.”
With Palmer three outs away, he and his offense stretched the wait time before he could go back out. It was Palmer himself who drew a leadoff walk. After hitting Beck, Bergseth departed the game. He received a robust ovation from the crowd; though not as spotless as Palmer, he turned in a strong performance in his own right for the Jets.
Joyce, the right fielder, took over on the mound. Brody Rainsberry got a bunt down, and the third baseman threw it wildly for a run-scoring error. Remmick added an RBI single. The Storm started to run away with this one.
Heilman added an RBI sacrifice bunt. Joyce then walked back-to-back hitters, including a 10-pitch one to Taydon Triepke. That brought it back to the top of the order in Max Palmer, who slapped an RBI single for the fourth run of the inning.
Mason Palmer ended up batting twice in the frame, with the perfect game still weighing on his shoulders. He drew his second walk of the inning, this time with the bases loaded, to make it 6-0.
Five runs and 11 batters later, Palmer finally got to retake the mound.
“It didn’t really disrupt my rhythm,” he said. “But I was really anxious to get back out there and see what I could do.”
He had to contend with the top of the Fargo order in his final inning. Leadoff hitter Sam Chase made probably the best contact against Palmer all night, lining one into right-center. The right fielder Triepke initially hesitated, looking like he might play it on a bounce. But the ball held up long enough for him to grab it.
“It looked like he was about to let it drop, and I was like, ‘Oh, no! No!’” Palmer said with a laugh. “Then he made the catch, and I was extremely proud of him.”
Palmer fell behind 2-0 on each of the final two hitters. But he worked his way back to strike out each of them. He landed a called third strike on Colby Ebeling, then got Ryan Ommen to chase for out No. 21.
“That was pretty sweet,” said Heilman, who had the longest trek to congratulate his pitcher, coming all the way from left field. “I’ve never been part of a perfect game, and odds are I’m probably not gonna be part of one ever again.”
Palmer’s only slight flaw as a pitcher this summer has been his walks. But there was none of that Friday night. He now has 14 scoreless innings under his belt this postseason.
“Some of those games early in the year, where he maybe wasn’t as efficient as he’d like to be,” Luehring said. “These last two starts, he’s just been able to get ahead of guys and be able to feed that curveball off it.”
With two wins already under their belt, the Storm still have Ben Larson, Remmick and Rainsberry available to pitch. They can potentially bring back Heilman as well. Luehring opted to go with Palmer instead of Larson on Friday because Larson had already faced these kids a few times this year, between Fargo South in the spring and the Jets in the summer.
Larson was the staff ace for most of the summer. He threw a team-high 43 1/3 innings during the regular season, with a 1.87 ERA, although he struggled a little bit in the region tournament. Devils Lake has a fortune of riches pitching-wise.
“We’re feeling pretty good where we’re at,” Luehring said. “It’s just getting to the next game and trusting what our strengths are: It’s pitching the ball and playing defense behind it. And hopefully we can keep it up and keep getting some timely hits. That’s this group. That’s how we play.”
The Storm play Saturday at 5:30 p.m. against the winner of Friday’s matchup between Kindred Post 117 and Casselton Post 15.
