Top 15 baseball finals in 15 years at Wild Things Park: Shady Side Academy tops North Catholic in 2009

By: HSSN Staff
Thursday, May 17, 2018 | 6:57 PM

The TribLive High School Sports Network is counting down the Top 15 WPIAL baseball championship games held over the past 15 years at Wild Things Park.

Catch all the postseason action on the exclusive broadcast home of the WPIAL baseball playoffs, the TribLive High School Sports Network.

Here's a look at No. 12:

2009 Class AA championship: Shady Side Academy 3, North Catholic 2

Nickel is a chemical element with the symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. In 2009, the Nickel brothers were an outstanding duo on the ballfield that helped make Shady Side Academy No. 1. These Nickels helped make the Indians pure gold.

During the 2009 regular season, Shady Side Academy was dominant and entered the postseason with an 18-1 record.

But that dominance didn't carry over to the postseason, where the Indians scratched and clawed their way to victories over Riverside, 7-4; Center, 14-13; and South Fayette, 4-2; to reach the WPIAL Class AA championship game.

The Indians' opponent in the finals was North Catholic. The Trojans were on a bit of an “odd” streak, having won the district crown in 2005 and again in ‘07.

Shady Side Academy jumped on top and appeared to be in good shape as starting pitcher Tim Giel was on cruise control with a 2-0 lead through five innings.

But North Catholic finally found some offense and scored a run in the top of the sixth and another in the do-or-die seventh to tie the game at 2-2.

But that set up the dramatic bottom of the seventh as Bo Stewart singled and courtesy runner Scott Majesky was sacrificed to second with two outs. Senior Billy Nickel was due up, but North Catholic coach Pat Walsh — the current coach at Central Catholic — decided to intentionally walk Billy to bring up his younger brother Brian.

“The decision to walk Billy Nickel was a no brainer,” Walsh said. “In an earlier meeting against them, he had four hits and had one or two in that game. His brother Brian, we had success against him both in the earlier game and in the championship game.

“Sometimes good decisions are wrong,” Walsh added with a laugh.

Junior center fielder Brian Nickel delivered the gold with a single that scored Majesky just ahead of the throw from North Catholic freshman right fielder Matt Smith. The same Matt Smith who later in his scholastic career helped pitch Seneca Valley to back-to-back WPIAL titles in 2011 and ‘12.

Giel limited the Trojans to six hits and struck out 12 in picking up the win — the Indians only WPIAL baseball crown to date.

“That 2009 game was a classic,” Walsh said. “SSA had a dominant pitcher we were able to scratch two runs off while my pitcher (Christian) Wolosik struggled early but found his groove after the second or third.”

Don Rebel is a TribLIVE High School Sports Network broadcaster and staff writer. Reach him at drebel@tribweb.com.

Tags: Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic, North Catholic, Shady Side Academy