Any official worth the stitches in their britches will tell you what they think is the toughest assignment in the officiating circles they work within. Having worked football, basketball and baseball, I think it's Game Four behind the plate of a collegiate conference weekend.

It's the toughest game of the weekend with the least resources available. The teams are tired. The coaches are tired and the umpires are tired. Both teams are down to their fourth or fifth best pitcher at the start of the day and it's the game no one can afford to lose. One team is down 3-0 or 2-1, making Game Four a must-win situation for the team trailing the series. The difference in splitting a four-game series or losing three of four is huge, just as salvaging one of four as opposed to being broomed is a huge swing.

In high school baseball, schools play what I think is an archaic, backward rotation of games in terms of importance. High school teams play their more important league games during the weekday and leave the weekend for non-league doubleheaders and tournaments. Often times issues like weather, drive-time traffic and school-related conflicts interfere with the league game played mid-week.

Unlike football or basketball, where the speed and emotion of each play is like a wave crashing upon the shore over and over, baseball is more akin to a slow, simmering pot, one that you're never really sure if or when it's ready to boil over and flip it's collective lid.

This past weekend Oakland University hosted Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne (IP-FW) in a Summit League conference series. Save for one inning, a frame resumed after a 30-minute rain delay where Oakland blew a close game apart, each school played each inning of the four games with no more than a two-run difference and most of the time the difference was one run or tied. Oakland took three of four but IP-FW could have just as easily split of taken three of the games. The game Oakland dropped was a 2-1 decision in the nine-inning opener Saturday afternoon.

When I first entered umpiring, I can honestly say I didn't have a strong appreciation for just how great it is when you can work a weekend series or a mid-week doubleheader without anything or anyone going sideways or ballistic. It's taken some trial, error and a healthy does of failure to acquire the appreciation I have for being able to walk off the field without feeling like you've stepped through a mine field.

As an official, one of the worst things you can do is look to make a call that is borderline just to prove you can make a tough call. There's plenty of opportunity to make tough calls without trying to cut a piece of hair in half just to prove you're that good. It's the many games that allow you to walk off the field with little or no incident that make you thankful for the handful of times you have to jump onstage and make a call that doesn't get questioned, scrutinized or ridiculed for no other reason than it wasn't a popular decision.

This season, more than any I can remember in a long time, there hasn't been a lot of discussion about this ruling or that decision, which is nice. It means either the games have long been decided or that the teams in the area of metro Detroit and the Great Lakes as a whole, both at the collegiate and prep level, are taking care of their own business by making plays instead of needing an umpire's call.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing

For as long as anyone can remember in Oakland County, there's been few communities that represented the county's bedrock better than Ferndale. Its' small but distinctive footprint from Eight Mile to I-696 (formerly known as Ten Mile Road) has been witness to tremendous change, both good and bad and good again in the past 60 years, but the one constant has been Ferndale High School.

Could it be that is about to change? Will the 2008-2009 school year be remembered as the final season Ferndale High competes in Oakland County? Today the Detroit Free Press reported that Ferndale High School is considering leaving the Oakland Activities Association (OAA) for a possible reformation of the defunct Northwest Suburban League, which folded in 1992 in the shadows of the Mega League's inception in 1993.

Ferndale Athletic Director Shaun Butler told me today nothing could be further from the truth.

"While it's true we're always looking for options to serve our student-athletes, we're very happy with the OAA right now and have no plans on leaving," Bulter said.

So how did Ferndale become one of the schools mentioned as possible deserters?

"In today's economic conditions, especially with the cost and time as it relates to travel in educational athletics, everyone's considering options. What really changed for us was Waterford's schools leaving the OAA," Bulter explained. "While I hated to see them go from a competition standpoint, because they were very competitive with us, it means I don't have to travel out to Waterford Kettering on a Tuesday afternoon. Going that far was a hard sell in educational athletics from a resource standpoint."

How long has Ferndale been part of the Oakland County landscape? Consider the school's football team, which regularly opened with Royal Oak High (later Royal Oak Dondero) for nearly 40 years. The Eagles played a huge league game with Royal Oak Kimball (now Royal Oak High) for nearly as long, and how many SMA championships were decided between the Southfield Blue Jays and Ferndale's Eagles? Finally, the school's grudge match with the neighboring Vikings of Hazel Park High is entering a 8th decade, with the Vikings holding a 37-33 margin in 70 games.

The Eagles were part of the old Eastern Michigan League (EML) until 1964 and are charter members of both the Southeastern Michigan Association (1964-1993) and the OAA (1994-present). The Eagles also played an annual home-and-home game with Pontiac High (now Pontiac Central) that alternated between Wisner Stadium and Ferndale's stadium, now called Gus Hanson Field, pictured above.

"A lot of scuttlebutt was discussed when the northern Oakland County schools started coming into the OAA, but rest assured, we're not leaving the OAA," said Butler.

Today the Detroit Free Press reported that the Mega League, a 28-member high school league domiciled in Wayne County, is about to crumble. The paper reported eight schools will leave the Mega and form a new league, tentatively called the Downriver League, in early May, and another six schools seem poised to leave the Mega just as quickly to reform the Northwest Suburban League.

The charter Northwest Suburban League existed from 1963-1984 and included Oakland County schools Birmingham Groves, North Farmington High and Oak Park High. It also housed the first Class A football champion, 1975's Livonia Franklin Patriots. After a dormant 1985, the NSL reformed in 1986 until it folded in the shadows of the Mega.

The eight schools rumored to form the yet-to-confirmed Downriver League? Allen Park, Southgate, Woodhaven, Trenton, Gibraltar Carlson, Wyandotte and Taylor rivals Truman and Kennedy. The six schools contemplating leaving for the reformed NSL are Garden City, Dearborn Edsel Ford and competing rivals Crestwood and Annapolis from Dearborn Heights and Redford's Thurston and Union high schools.

That doesn't seem to include Ferndale. While not toney like the Bloomfields and Birmingham, Ferndale is distinct and unique without glitzy clubs and posh restaurants. It's got a little bit of grit and some strong flair of it's own. It's an Oakland County renaissance story. On the preps scene, Ferndale is still a long-standing competitor in many sports. Their football, basketball and baseball tradition remains strong and the school annually hosts one of the more well-attended boys' basketball quarterfinals.

Thankfully, we're not talking about another Michigan institution pulling up stakes. Ferndale's Eagles are staying put right where they belong.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit’s High School Football Rivalries, due August 25, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.

(Photo of Gus Hanson courtesy of The Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, Michigan)

My wife and I returned last night from New York City and the weekend's 37th annual American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) conference. I moderated a panel on successful blogging Saturday at the Grand Hyatt, connected to historic Grand Central Station. I take great pride that a healthy number of professional writers represented our metro in New York so admirably. New York City is an unbelievable town, it's my favorite U.S. city to visit and I'm happy to say we added a little something to the journalism world from Detroit.

But I'm thankful to be home, too. It was nice to be on Orchard Lake Road at midnight last night with no honking horns, cabbies with guard rails on all four sides and streets clogged with pedestrians and trash in equal numbers. I'm thankful for green grass. There's hardly any grass in New York City, save for small patches in front of three-story brownstones that could be trimmed with scissors from the junk drawer in your kitchen. It's one of the reasons Central Park stands out in NYC. I'm thankful that our schools have lawns, shrubs, stadiums and fields. Our schools don't have to rent auditoriums and parking isn't confined to a seat on a subway car.

We have a special, unique aspect of our metro we all call Detroit. We're one of the smallest big cities you'll ever see. We're about coney islands and chili fries. We're suburbs and street signs. We're not landlocked. We're not congested and co-mingled beyond recognition. Our schools have names, faces and traditions. New York City has schools called Public School 180, and that gets shortened to PS, who on any given day PS 180 might play PS 148 or PS 127. We have Eisenhower and Chippewa Valley, Pershing and Denby, Troy Athens and Lake Orion. New York City schools rise among concrete jungles, decorated in colorful murals tagged on five-story buildings. Our schools have manicured greens, atriums with doors matching the school's colors and bands that march downtown before football games.

We're not at all like New York City, and in some ways that's sad. Our big city is corrupted and confused, sorely lacking leadership and professional direction. We have no mass transit of any kind, and no, the People Mover doesn't count -- we all know this. The building clocks and neon signs that mark other big cities are missing here. Remember the Goodyear auto production counters perched above our freeways? Gone. The neon letters of General Motors? No more. The Yellow Pages ad seen from the Lodge? It no longer works. We've allowed those aspects of our city to die. We allowed our city, county, regional and state leaders to take us to nowhere. It's truth.

But we also have some things to point to that make us special. We still love high school football, and why shouldn't we love high school football game? We have an excellent high school baseball tradition in this area, with numerous major leaguers coming from metro Detroit. We have beautiful gyms and a basketball heritage most major cities would love to claim. Our schools are clean. They offer gleaming facilities and opportunities that big city institutions can't come close to offering. In our schools, 10 dollars buys you a ticket, a program, a hot dog, popcorn, something to drink and a great game to watch with your neighbors and friends. In New York City, it might get you a trip uptown and back, and a cup of coffee from a cafe you've never seen but passed a million times before.

A fun place to visit, that New York City, but not somewhere I'd want my kids to be kids. New York City takes your childhood and makes you grow up too fast. Metro Detroit isn't New York City. That isn't going to change, and I hope it doesn't any time soon.

I love New York City right where it is. Detroit? We call that home.

In the past two years, they’ve played three times and played 29 frames of gut-check baseball. Each school has scored 13 runs against the other. Since 2006 they’ve split three games.

Who splits three games? Birmingham Groves and Birmingham Seaholm do, going 1-1-1 versus each other since ‘06, when the Groves-Seaholm varsity baseball game went an amazing 15 innings and was suspended in twilight at a 7-7 standstill. The two Birmingham rivals have found they have more in common with each other than zip codes, toney restaurants and designer coffee houses. They’ve found bragging rights to be harder to secure than anyone would have believed without seeing it first-hand. In 2007 the two Oakland Activities Association (OAA) rivals split a pair of one-run games at Seaholm, with Groves taking a 5-4 nightcap after dropping a 2-1 decision to the Maples in the front end of a doubleheader.

Usually a good high school rivalry is more-commonly associated with football or basketball. Pontiac Central and Pontiac Northern's basketballers meet twice a year on an annual basis and the gym throbs with energy. Birmingham Brother Rice and Novi Catholic Central is must-see football. Novi and Northville High battle for the Baseline Jug while Clarkston and Lake Orion is must-see football and basketball. So why is Seaholm – Groves becoming a contest circled in red on the diamond?

For one, many of the kids that play youth baseball together end up scattered among the two schools. A healthy group of Maples and Falcons started playing travel baseball on teams named the Mariners, Red Sox or Motor City Pride. That familiarity breeds a healthy respect, but also a working knowledge of their rivals’ strengths and weaknesses, meaning every pitch and subsequent play is contested to the last available inch.

A second reason would be a refusal to roll over when the rival rallies, as was the case in the 2006 game. Jamey Sackett saw it first hand – he sat on the Groves bench for five innings, up on the varsity as a freshman with his brother, Jay Sackett, who started the game at catcher. A captain of the ’07 Groves team and current member of the Alma College baseball squad, Jay Sackett was summoned to the pitcher’s mound in the 6th inning of the game with two Maples on and nobody down and younger brother Jamey replaced him at catcher. When you’re a freshman and you enter the game with two innings to go, the last thought on your mind is the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s (MHSAA) 30-out rule, but they found out soon enough. Brothers Jamey and Jay teamed as a battery for the next 10 innings, which equaled 30 outs. Jay Sackett could no longer pitch to another hitter, by rule, and the game was suspended after the final Groves hitter was retired in the bottom of the 15th inning against a setting sun.

"It went so fast, I can barely remember it today, "said Jamey Sackett, now a junior and Groves' starting catcher. "At the time, I was caught up with so much energy and emotion. It was an amazing game to have played and at the end, I was too excited to even know how tired I was." The Sackett brothers played travel baseball as youngsters in 2001 with Seaholm’s catcher in '06, Casey Starnes, who logged all 15 innings for the Maples that day. If the average high school at-bat is five pitches, and the Maples faced approximately 75 Groves hitters, Starnes caught close to 400 pitches in the game. On the adjacent diamond next to Falcon Field, the junior varsity Groves –Seaholm game started and finished, and a youth game to follow also started and finished before the 15-inning marathon was suspended.

The Sacketts have a unique look into the Birmingham rivalry. While their two sons wear the green & gold of Groves, as does father Mark, an assistant coach under Jim Crosby, both parents are Seaholm grads. To top it off, Don Sackett, father to Mark, led what many call the most famous championship in the history of the Michigan high school baseball tournament. The 1988 Seaholm team, christened the ‘Miracle Maples’, finished third in the now-defunct Southeastern Michigan Association (SMA) behind now-closed Royal Oak Kimball and runner-up Troy High. Both Troy and Kimball lost in their district openers but Seaholm, after winning the district, thundered to a dramatic championship by winning the regional final, quarterfinal and semifinal in their last at-bat. The Maples captured championship gold after defeating Steve Avery and Taylor Kennedy 11-9 in the MHSAA's title game.

In 2008 the Maples and Falcons are scheduled to lay it on the line at Groves on May 10th for a doubleheader. Will another 15-inning classic be played? Will a walk-off victory or no-hit performance grace the rivalry? One thing is for certain: Nothing will be surrendered easily when bragging rights are at stake between two of Birmingham’s diamond gems.

T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit’s High School Football Rivalries, due August 25, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.

Between the rusted fences, crooked baselines and lumpy outfields lies a game, unfettered by negotiations, eight-figure egos and contracts to define every person's shuffle and step. It won't be seen by millions but rather, a handful or friends and neighbors. There's no fireworks or heart-throbbing music before an at-bat. No gimmicks, trivia questions or foul balls to keep. There's no advance ticket booth and the only season-ticket holders are usually the local volunteer, a man who gets senior discounts and watches every game from his folding chair.

That's the difference between prep baseball and professional baseball. Prep baseball is still baseball. Major League Baseball is The Show.

Pictured to the left is longtime Birmingham Seaholm baseball coach Don Sackett, coaching his last game against his school's longtime rival, Frank Clouser and the Royal Oak Kimball Knights, on May 11, 1990 at what is now Royal Oak High. Sackett's 'Miracle Maples' won the 1988 Class A state title when his Seaholm team won the regional final, quarterfinal semifinal and championship game in their last at-bat. Clouser's Kimball teams went to the title game in '71, '72, '73 and '80 and captured the 1972 title. There's no media relations or sports information department in high school sports. It's hand-written notes and facts committed to memory.

Major League Baseball is a heavy metal band's six-month gold album tour compared to prep baseball, and Opening Day commands our attention in Detroit like a Black Monday automotive press conference. Everyone knows about it, many will be there to witness it first hand and nearly everyone has an opinion about it, too. That's metro Detroit. We love our sports and the Tigers will always own this town in that regard. It's the one game we've all played at some point in our lives. Prep baseball, by comparison, is hundreds of scores and names jammed into agate type in your local paper.

It was amusing to watch and listen to the fans, many sporting a double-fisted 16-oz opinion, talk baseball yesterday in Comerica Park. The game is the same at either venue but the presentation at the major league level distorts the reality of what wins and loses a game. Most fans walked out of Comerica Park yesterday describing a gas can with arms and legs, that being the Tiger bullpen. The Tigers dropped yesterday's opener because they stranded about a dozen runners on the bases yesterday in what should have been an 8-3 Tiger win instead of a 5-4 extra innings loss. Today we're talking about the failure of the Tiger bullpen. The high school coach will talk about all the runners his boys stranded on the island.

That's the difference of prep baseball. It's a game worthy of following or attending. Why do prep players hustle every single ball out when it looks like major leaguers are on cruise control? Because anything can happen in a prep game; a good major leaguer errs about once a month. A prep player gets 20-30 games to prove himself; a major leaguer will play another sold-out concert tomorrow, and the night after that, and the night after that. A prep player doesn't make millions and still has algebra homework to finish after the game.

We don't apply the scrutiny to our kids that we do to million-dollar adults. Prep baseball is what we can improve on; pro baseball is about what didn't get done more than what did. There's going to be 161 more chances at glory for the Tigers. Losing the one game you'll play for first place all season makes high school special in it's own way, too.

If you love baseball as much as you love the Tigers, you'll get to high school game this spring. It's still baseball the way Abner Doubleday saw it. It's gritty, emotional, raw and pure. It's a history teacher who has prepped for 25 dates for the 10 months since last season ended. It's a neighbor or nephew who gets dirty at the first chance he gets. It's a fight to the finish, a handshake at the end and a hug from a girlfriend after it's all over.

That's a real baseball game, and it doesn't need a 40,000-seat stadium to be important.

(Photo courtesy The Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, Michigan/Craig Gaffield)