MULBERRY — Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You Can’t Go Home Again,” but he certainly wasn’t talking about the Mulberry baseball team.
Several players returned home when David Gotauco was hired as head coach – Gotauco himself lived in Mulberry – and the result was a historic season for the Panthers.
Mulberry’s upset win over McKeel on Friday in the Class 4A, Region 3 final sent the Panthers to the state tournament. Mulberry will play Fort Lauderdale Cardinal Gibbons at 4 p.m. Tuesday in the semifinals of the 2024 FHSAA state championships at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers.
If it’s not a season of firsts, it certainly is a season of firsts in quite a long time. Mulberry reached the playoffs for the first time in 17 years, won a regional playoff game for the first time 31 years and reached the state tournament for the first time in 64 years. Mulberry is looking to win its third state title in baseball, having won in 1951 and 1960. The Panthers also were state runners-up in 1933 and 1934.
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Recent history certainly hasn’t been kind to Mulberry baseball, as the program went through five coaches in five seasons, and homegrown players have gone elsewhere to play. That stopped when Gotauco was hired last June. The baseball team got an influx of talent, and Gotauco’s job was to transform individual talent into a team.
“From the beginning, they believed in me,” said Gotauco, who coached All Saints for two seasons before taking over at Mulberry. “What a lot of people don't realize is they’re zoned for Mulberry. A lot of these other schools had got them: Nic (Partridge), Dom (Gotauco), JJ Sweeney, Hayden Wyatt from Bartow. These guys have played together, and they came back home. That's pretty much what happened. They bought in from the beginning, and they went through their trials and tribulations, but it started really coming together towards the end there.”
One player who had stayed at Mulberry and gone through the hard times before this season’s turnaround was starting pitcher Alex Fischer, who turned in a brilliant effort against McKeel in the regional final. Baseball became fun again for Fisher this season.
“This is the most fun I've had all year,” Fisher said. “Everything that we do as a team, I was looking forward to having fun and enjoy it.”
Fisher as seen the benefits of having a more talented squad around him when he takes the mound. Fisher is 5-3 with a 2.92 ERA, often against the Panthers’ toughest opponents.
“It made my job,” he said. “I could trust my defense behind me knowing that no matter what they have my back even when they're swinging up there at the plate. So it really just kind of took a lot of weight off me as a pitcher. It made me more comfortable out there.”
Fisher is the biggest contributor among the returning players. Jake Buffington, a junior, also had been playing a big role, batting .355, but he’s missed about half the season with an injury, playing in 15 of the team’s 28 games.
Of the new players, Partridge has been the key. Gotauco has coached Partridge since Partridge was 10, and he and Partridge’s father Dominic, who joined the Panthers’ staff, have been coaching together for years.
“Me and coach Dom have been coaching together, for nine years now,” Gotauco said. “We kind of went through the same path. I played professional baseball in 2000 with the Braves organization. He came in 2001. I already got released and we were playing independent ball somewhere.”
The younger Partridge, a junior, has committed to Florida and has been one of the top players in the county the past two seasons at Lakeland. He leads the Panthers with a .448 batting average and 13 extra-base hits, including seven home runs, and is second with 27 RBIs.
Partridge knew expectations for Mulberry had changed because of the new players.
“Everybody was expecting Mulberry to have talent because of all the players coming in, but at the same time, Mulberry doesn’t have the best past in baseball,” he said. “Everybody was expecting us to be good, and we’re showing it.”
Despite’s his big role, Partridge doesn’t put pressure on himself to carry the load and knows there’s a lot of talent around him.
“Everybody has a big responsibility on this team, whether you're a an infielder or i outfield,” said Partridge, who was 2-for-3 and scored both runs in the win over McKeel. “Everybody has their part in this team. And I feel like that's my part. I need to try to produce in line up and play good defense in the field, and I feel like everybody has that same role.”
Other players who have been big contributors include junior catcher Hayden Wyatt (.364), senior first baseman Cooper Wright (.364), junior center fielder Brock Thielen (.350), junior second baseman Dominic Gotauco (.303), pitcher Noah Campbell (4-1, 1.86 ERA) and left fielder/pitcher Jaden Sweeney (.300), who is third on the team in innings pitched but 7-0 with an 0.21 ERA.
“At the beginning of the year, everybody was like, we're a good team, but we didn't really know like the potential we had until like mid-year when we came together,” Partridge said. “But as the time went on, we all were like, yeah, we have a good chance. We're really good, but we can be better. There's always room for improvement for all this. So we just had that mentality.”
Mulberry got tripped up in the district semifinals against Hardee but had played a strong enough schedule to make the playoffs as a sixth seed in the region.
The Panthers have been underdogs and have embraced that role. They’ll be underdogs again when they face Cardinal Gibbons, a team that entered the playoffs raked No. 2 in the FHSAA power rankings behind No. 1 McKeel.
Mulberry is ranked No. 27 and have defeated No. 17 Jefferson, No. 34 Tarpon Springs, and No. 1 McKeel in the playoffs. Tarpon Springs had knocked off Dunedin in the regional semifinals, so two of the top three teams in 4A are out.
The other two teams remaining in Class 4A are No. 6 South Walton and No. 9 Merritt Island.
Gotauco, whose daughter Ori won three state titles in soccer at Lakeland Christian, feels his team is ready for the level of competition in the final four.
“I knew we had to play a tough schedule,” Gotauco said. “People were telling me I was crazy with a schedule, but I knew we had to test ourselves and go through the battles.”
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